Martingrove Collegiate Institute Reviews
50 WINTERTON DR, Etobicoke, Ontario M9B 3G7, Canada
Take photographs of every single one of your assignments before you submit them including all written assignments and artwork you create. This may be helpful to you if you see grading discrepancies in the report card. Try to use your own art supplies if at all possible, the resources available in the classroom are extremely old and often quite dirty. This is especially true of the paints, paintbrushes and a lot of the found materials that are used for sculptures. Work on projects at home as much as possible. You will run out of class time to complete all of your assignments and it is often difficult to arrange use of the classroom outside of class time so try to make artwork that you can transport home to work on it there. A lot of marks in this class come from random sketches in a sketchbook so make sure you have the time in your schedule to do a lot of drawing outside of class time. The classroom is extremely messy and it can be difficult to find working supplies so bring your own things to class, especially the simple stuff like glue, scissors, tape, pencil crayons, paintbrushes, etc. and other things like canvases, paints, clays and whatever else you might need if you are able to do so. This is not an easy class to succeed in. Grades tend to be extremely low so do not take this course if you think it is going to be an easy A. The workload is extremely heavy. Marks tend to be higher for artworks with some sort of meaning or political message behind them. Although it is sometimes easy to find a political motivation for a piece, other times it can be difficult. My suggestion is to create the piece that you want to create and come up with the inspiration later on. Some portion of the mark you receive is attributed to sharing work with the class so make sure you volunteer to share your artwork on occasion. Do not take the AP section of the course unless you are prepared for a huge workload, lots of sharing your projects with the class and the school as a whole, and many many works with political messages. One benefit to the AP version of the course is that there is a lot more freedom in terms of what kinds of mediums you can use to create your artwork. For example, I work best in sculpture and was permitted to do 3D pieces for every project we did that year except for one that specifically focused on painting in acrylic. For Grade 9, a huge portion of the year focuses on curriculum regarding Aboriginal art, except for the pre-AP Grade 9s who have much more variety. So you just have to decide which course is the best option for you.