Courses — BNDS A-Level Programme

S1 Lesson 06: Media Exploration

A Level Art & Design · Unit 3 · Lesson 06 of 15 · ← L05 | L07 →

At a glance

Sessions5 days (W7) — Unit 3 opens
DatesMon 2026-10-12 → Fri 2026-10-16
AO focusAO2 Explore, with AO3 opening
DeliverableTwelve media experiments run as one three-day session; a keep-or-change decision made with evidence
FeedsCS5 collected Fri 2026-10-16
HomeworkSketchbook: continue the two most promising experiments at home, ten minutes each

Goal

You run twelve prescribed experiments in three days to find which media carry the theme, not which describe it. Experiments are allowed to fail; safe tests teach nothing. Your decision at the end is made with evidence, and you name the rejections.

Key content: the twelve experiments

Run in three blocks of four, one block per day, on A5 unless stated. Every experiment uses your own source material.

  1. ink and stick, blind then sighted
  2. charcoal laid then erased back
  3. watercolor wet-in-wet, tone only
  4. collage cut from your own printed photographs
  5. monoprint, one pull
  6. frottage from actual theme surfaces
  7. wax resist under ink wash
  8. acrylic impasto with card scraper
  9. pen stippling or cross-hatching, one passage pushed to full dark
  10. mixed-media layering, any three stacked
  11. low-relief test: card or clay maquette photographed in raking light (the 2D-to-3D loop)
  12. digital pass: your own photograph through threshold and overlay, printed

How it runs

  • Mon 10-12 — the twelve are presented with one exemplar strip each; plan the exploration (which source feeds which experiment, formats and order fixed); stations set up.
  • Tue 10-13 → Thu 10-15 — three-day run: experiments 1–4, 5–8, 9–12, one block per day, roughly ten minutes each, annotating as you go; each day closes by circling the most surprising result.
  • Fri 10-16 — lay out all twelve in grid order; keep-or-change sort (carry forward / adapt / drop) with a written reason for every drop; CS5 collected; preview of testing the keepers at scale.

Assessment

CS5 (twelve experiments documented, sketchbook) collects Fri 2026-10-16 — see the full register. At least one experiment must fail, and its annotation says so and says why.

The collection date may move to the following Monday if Foreign Culture Day falls on that Friday; this will be confirmed in class.