Visual Arts: Craft, Design and Three-Dimensional Work
Domain focus
This domain tests designing and making functional or decorative three-dimensional work. You must show a design process, understand materials and joinery, and justify form, structure and surface treatment against a brief.
Core rules and concepts
- Design cycle: brief, research, thumbnail sketches, development, prototype, final piece, evaluation. Constraints include function, user, cost, safety and sustainability.
- Three-dimensional elements: mass, volume, plane, space, texture, colour. Structure needs a centre of gravity, stable base and joints suited to the material.
- Clay: wedge to remove air; build by pinch, coil or slab; join leather-hard pieces with score-and-slip; dry slowly; bisque fire before glazing. Clay shrinks during drying and firing, so size allowances matter.
- Wood: measure twice, cut once; use halving joints, dowels or screws; sand along the grain. Paper and card: score folds, use tabs and gussets. Recycled materials need clean, strong connections.
- Relief is raised from a background; in-the-round is free-standing. Subtractive carving removes material; additive modelling builds it; construction joins parts.
Worked example
Design a slab-built ceramic bowl for daily use. Reason: roll slabs to even thickness to avoid warping; cut a circle for the base and a strip for the wall; join with scored, slipped edges; support the wall with newspaper while drying; add a foot ring for stability; dry under plastic slowly; bisque fire, then apply a food-safe glaze to the interior and a decorative exterior glaze. The reasoning links material behaviour, function and safety.
Traps
Joining bone-dry clay; trapping air pockets; uneven thickness; ignoring shrinkage; decorating a food surface with unsafe glaze; making a design that cannot stand; skipping the brief and research stages.