Writing for the Arts

Describing your work

Tutors expect you to form opinions about artists, designers, makers and their work. Explore their motivations and the context in which they work. You need to draw conclusions.

You could be deciding on the aesthetic value or originality of works or debating to what extent their work is useful to you in your creative process.

You can show a discerning eye.

Sometimes you may decide other works are not useful to you and in such cases explain why.

This is about convincing the reader you have developed ‘ways of seeing’ or understanding artistic or creative works in your field.

There are many ways to describe your work. You could explain:

Try to follow up a description with a critique or an exploration of what the work signifies.