Edexcel GCSE Art and Design artist and contextual research overview quiz quiz

They are exactly the same activity, just called by two completely different names by examiners

Describing says what is in it; analysing explains how it is made and what it communicates

Analysing is always shorter and easier than describing the work in full detail

Describing needs far more skill and understanding than analysing the work does

Copying the image as accurately and neatly as you possibly can

Writing down the artist's birthday and other biographical facts

Ending with a decision about what to take into your own work

Giving the artwork a mark out of ten based on how much you like it

The submission deadline

Neat mounting and presentation

The word count of the page

Context and meaning

As a toolbox of approaches to apply to your own subject

As a long list of dates and names to learn off by heart

As something to ignore once you have chosen your theme

As a finished outcome that you can copy straight into your project

Fragmenting the subjects into multiple overlapping viewpoints on a single flat plane

Capturing fleeting light with broken, visible brushstrokes and bright colour

Bold commercial imagery in flat blocks of colour, drawn from advertising

Smooth realistic perspective and idealised classical form copied from life

Exploring dreams and the unconscious mind through strange imagery

Capturing changing light and atmosphere with quick visible brushstrokes

Fragmenting subjects into multiple viewpoints on a flat plane

Borrowing mass-produced commercial images from advertising and packaging

It is simply an enjoyable day out and does not really count as research of any kind at all

It is secondary research, because someone else made the artworks you look at

It needs no recording at all, since you only have to turn up and look around

Seeing work first-hand shows real scale, surface and colour that reproductions cannot

It explains decisions and judgements with specialist vocabulary

Neat, careful handwriting that is easy for the moderator to read

It is written in bright colour so that it stands out clearly on the page

It is kept very short so that it does not take up space meant for images

Only at the very end, written all at once after the work is finished

As the work progresses, recording decisions in sequence

Never, because the images should always be left to speak for themselves

Before starting the project, then left unchanged for the rest of the work

To sound clever and impress the moderator with long and difficult words

It is banned by the exam board, so only plain, everyday language is allowed to be used instead

It shows you understand the techniques you are using, which the specification asks for

To fill up empty space on the page when there are not enough images to show

As an idol whose work you copy exactly, without changing anything at all

As irrelevant, so their work need not influence your own project at all

As a competitor to beat by making work that looks better than theirs

As a collaborator whose choices you analyse and test in your own work

It gives different routes to develop the same idea and richer experimentation

It is not useful, since looking at one movement is always more than enough

It saves time, because you can study two movements at once without going deep

It avoids primary sources, letting you work only from books and the internet