Example 1 — Two versions of the same inquiry statement

Weak. My inquiry is about identity and how people present themselves on social media.

This is a topic. It tells you what to depict and gives no way of knowing when you have found something out. Any picture of a person with a phone satisfies it.

Strong. I am testing how much of a photographic portrait can be replaced by hand-painted areas before the viewer stops treating it as a document and starts treating it as an image. I am working with printed family photographs and oil, replacing regions in increments.

This is a question answerable by making. It states the variable being changed (proportion of painted area), the materials, and what would count as a finding (the point at which viewers' treatment changes). It could produce a result the student did not expect — which is the definition of an inquiry.

Note the second version is not more ambitious. It is more specific, and specificity is what makes the making evidential rather than illustrative.

Example 2 — Documenting a failure so it earns marks

A weak entry. Tried printing on fabric. Didn't work. Went back to paper.

Three problems: what was tried is not repeatable, what happened is not described, and no reasoning connects the outcome to the next decision.

A strong entry. 14 March. Screen-printed the same image onto unprimed cotton and onto 300gsm paper, same ink, same pressure, to see whether the support changes how the image is handled.

The cotton absorbed the ink into the weave, so the edges softened by roughly 2mm and the fine lines in the hair closed up entirely. On paper the line held. I had expected the fabric to be the more interesting surface because I wanted the image to feel domestic and touchable — but the softening removed the descriptive detail the whole piece depends on.

So the choice is between the material association I want and the resolution I need. Next: try priming the cotton with a thin acrylic ground to reduce absorption while keeping the cloth visible at the edges. If that fails, mount paper onto fabric so the association survives without the bleed.

Why this earns marks. It is dated. The test is controlled — one variable changed, everything else held. The result is described, with a measurement, not judged. The student names the expectation that was defeated, which is what makes it evidence of thinking. And it ends with two specific next actions, one of them a fallback.

The failure has become the most informative page in the portfolio.

Example 3 — An influence used properly

Weak. I was inspired by surrealism and dreams.

A movement, not a work. Nothing here indicates the student looked at anything.

Strong. I looked at a single painting in which a domestic interior is lit from a source outside the frame, so that every object casts a shadow toward the viewer. What I wanted was the feeling that something is present but not depicted.

I tested it in study 7: kitchen table, light from off-frame right, shadows running to the bottom edge. It did not work. In the original the room is otherwise plausible, so the impossible light is the only anomaly and carries all the weight. My table was already distorted, so the shadow read as one more distortion rather than as evidence of an absent presence.

The lesson is that the device needs a plausible surround to function. Study 8 returns the interior to conventional perspective and keeps only the light as the anomaly.

What makes this strong. One specific quality is isolated — light from outside the frame — and tested. It fails, and the student diagnoses why in a way that is genuinely about how images work: an anomaly needs a normal background to be legible as an anomaly. That is a finding, and it came from making rather than reading.

Example 4 — Linking the portfolio to the resolved work

Assessors look for the resolved artworks to be visibly the outcome of the inquiry. A short entry that does this explicitly is worth writing:

Resolved work 2 uses the primed-cotton solution from 14 March at full scale (120 × 90 cm). The painted regions now occupy roughly 40 % of the surface, which in the increment tests was the point at which viewers I asked began describing it as "a painting" rather than "a photo of your grandmother". That threshold is the finding the whole inquiry was built to locate, so this piece sits at it deliberately rather than by preference.

This is a small paragraph doing a lot. It connects a technical decision to a dated experiment, cites the informal evidence gathered, and states that the resolved work embodies the inquiry's conclusion rather than merely following it. Without a paragraph like this, an assessor may not see the connection you can see.

Educerie · original worked examples written against the published IB Diploma Programme structure for Visual Arts, Task 1, first assessment 2027. All portfolio extracts are invented for this material and describe no real student's work. Last reviewed 5 September 2026.