Process Portfolio: Documenting Investigation, Experimentation and Refinement
The process portfolio is the externally assessed 40% component. It tests sustained evidence of art-making as inquiry: how you investigate, experiment, take risks, refine and reflect. It is not a sketchbook dump, and it is not a portfolio of final outcomes.
Core rules
- SL: 9–18 screens. HL: 13–25 screens.
- The assessed strands are skills, techniques and processes; critical investigation; and communication of ideas and intentions.
- Show a range of media and approaches, but make the range purposeful rather than a sampler.
- Annotate decisions: what you tried, what failed, what changed, and why. Photograph tests, samples, works in progress and unresolved states.
- Sequence screens so they read as a visual argument about developing practice.
Worked example
A student testing cyanotype exposure times makes three prints from the same negative at 4, 8 and 15 minutes. The 4-minute print is pale; the 8-minute print holds detail; the 15-minute print solarises and loses mid-tones. The student annotates the coating variation, records the exposure variables, explains why 8 minutes was retained, and then applies that finding to a series about family archives. This earns credit because it shows technical skill, controlled investigation, and a clear link between process and intention. The failure is not hidden; it is used as evidence.
Traps that cost marks
- Showing only polished final works with no evidence of testing or revision.
- Including experiments without reflection on what they taught you.
- Using text-heavy screens that duplicate what the images already show.
- Presenting a random range of media with no developing focus.
- Poor photographs, inconsistent labelling, or no connection between process and the body of work.