Eduqas GCSE Art and Design: media, techniques and processes (drawing, painting, print, 3D, photography, textiles, digital)

What this area covers

This area is the toolkit of Eduqas GCSE Art and Design: the media, techniques and processes you work in. Across the seven titles students use drawing, painting, print, three-dimensional, photographic, textile and digital media. Whatever the medium, the AO2 demand is the same: choose a process appropriate to the idea and refine real control of it. This area covers each medium family and how to develop it.

This guide ties together the six dot-point pages for the area.

Drawing and painting media

Dry media (pencil, charcoal, pastel) and wet media (ink, watercolour, acrylic, oil) each behave distinctly. AO2 rewards choosing one whose qualities suit the idea (charcoal for drama, watercolour for delicacy) and refining real control through a progression of improving studies, not sampling many materials once.

Printmaking techniques

Printmaking transfers ink from a matrix, giving marks the process's own character: relief (bold), monoprint (textured), etching (fine line), screen (graphic colour). Editioning and registration are the technical challenges. AO2 is evidenced by proofing and refining, not a single print, with the print's distinctive marks part of the meaning.

Working in three dimensions

3D work makes objects in real space, seen in the round: modelling, carving, construction, assemblage, ceramics. Development happens through maquettes (test models), and refinement means solving real making problems (structure, joining, clay cracking). Resolve the outcome as a genuine object considered from all sides.

Photography and lens-based media

Photography is a considered lens-based process and a Eduqas title. A made image controls composition, light, viewpoint and focus. It is developed through shoot, select, edit, refine toward a personal outcome; the selection and editing matter as much as the shooting, and that cycle is the AO2 development that separates art photography from snapshots.

Textiles and surface techniques

Textile Design is a Eduqas title: stitch, applique, print, dye, weave, surface manipulation. Work is developed through samples, explored then refined through improving attempts that solve problems (tension, fraying, colour fastness), then scaled into a resolved outcome, with texture, colour and structure carrying meaning.

Digital and mixed media

Digital tools and media combinations earn AO2 only when developed: a digital image refined through iterations (shown, not hidden), or a purposeful combination where each medium does something the others cannot. Avoid the one-step effect, a filter clicked once or media layered at random.

How to revise this area

1. Choose appropriately. Match the medium's qualities to the idea; say why (AO4).
2. Refine, do not sample. Develop control through improving studies, proofs, maquettes or samples.
3. Use each process's character. Print, 3D, photo and textile each offer something a flat drawing cannot.
4. Develop photography and digital. Show the shoot-select-edit-refine and the iterations.
5. Combine media purposefully. Each part should carry meaning, not a generic effect.

The dot points in this area

Each links to a focused answer page: drawing and painting media, printmaking techniques, working in three dimensions, photography and lens-based media, textiles and surface techniques and digital and mixed media.