36-Week WAEC Revision Programme β Visual Art
September to the May WAEC sitting. SS3 is not a year of new material so much as a year of pressure on material already met, so this is not a course to work through from the beginning β it is a testing programme. Each week you answer cold, work the ones you got wrong, and have the AI explain why you got them wrong. Anything you turn out never to have been taught, you learn there and then, and meet again three weeks later.
A week is one block of the syllabus and the prompts that cover it. You are not meant to do all of them: answer the questions first, and let what you get wrong decide which of the rest you need. Fifteen or twenty minutes a subject is a real week's work β nine subjects do not fit any other way.
Every week, in this order
Start with the questions, not the explanation. The first two steps are in every week; a purpose-written mistake or pitfalls prompt appears in about half of them, and where it does not, your own wrong answers are the material for step three.
- 1. Retrieve β Answer cold, with nothing in front of you. Wrong answers are the point β they show you where the week's work is.
- 2. Drill β Work the ones you missed properly, showing every step, so you and the AI can both see where it went wrong.
- 3. Explain my error β Ask why your answer was wrong, not just what the right one is. Where the week offers a Spot My Mistake or WAEC Pitfalls prompt, use it.
- 4. Teach me β Only if the error turns out to be something you were never taught. Then come back and retrieve it again.
Elements and Principles of Design
β Jump to week- Week 1
- Quiz: The difference between fine art and applied art
- Quiz: Colour and the effect it has on a viewer
- WAEC prep: The careers open to a trained visual artist
- WAEC prep: Form and texture, and how each is created on a flat surface
- Practice set: Identifying every element at work in a given artwork
- Spot my mistake: Assuming art is only about drawing and painting
- Spot my mistake: Treating negative space as empty area that plays no part in a composition
- Let me explain: Why art matters to a society's identity
- Let me explain: Space, and the difference between positive and negative space
- Teach me: The branches of art and what each one covers
- Teach me: Line and shape as the first elements of a composition
- Week 2
- Quiz: Rhythm and repetition as organising principles
- WAEC prep: Emphasis and variety, and how a designer uses them
- Practice set: Critiquing a composition against the principles of design
- Spot my mistake: Treating balance in a composition as putting the same thing on both sides
- Let me explain: Proportion and scale in a picture
- Teach me: Balance and harmony in a composition
- Week 3
- Quiz: One-point and two-point perspective compared
- WAEC prep: Foreshortening and the illusion it creates
- Practice set: Drawing a street scene in correct perspective
- Spot my mistake: Assuming a two-point perspective drawing uses two horizon lines
- Let me explain: Aerial perspective and how distance changes colour
- Teach me: Linear perspective and the vanishing point
Materials, Terms and Inter-Relationships
β Jump to week- Week 4
- Quiz: Painting tools: brushes, palettes and easels
- Quiz: Silhouette and relief
- WAEC prep: Caring for brushes and storing colours properly
- WAEC prep: Aperture, montage and other studio terms
- Practice set: Matching craft terms to the works they describe
- Spot my mistake: Damage caused by poor care of art materials
- Spot my mistake: Treating chiaroscuro and sfumato as two names for one effect
- Let me explain: The grades of pencil and what each is for
- Let me explain: Tie and dye, and biscuit ware
- Teach me: Drawing tools: pencils, charcoal, pen and ink
- Teach me: Chiaroscuro and sfumato
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 5
- Quiz: How visual art serves drama through set and costume
- WAEC prep: The shared elements across all the arts
- Practice set: Designing a set for a school drama production
- Spot my mistake: Treating stage set design as decoration rather than as part of a play's meaning
- Let me explain: Illustration as the meeting of literary and visual art
- Teach me: How visual art relates to music and dance
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 6
- Quiz: The materials traditional West African artists used
- WAEC prep: The geographical spread of the major art traditions
- Practice set: Describing a traditional artwork and its purpose
- Spot my mistake: Treating traditional African art as work made purely for decoration
- Let me explain: The beliefs that shaped traditional art
- Teach me: The art forms found across traditional West Africa
Revisit from three weeks ago
Traditional Art of West Africa
β Jump to week- Week 7
- Quiz: Ife bronze and terracotta heads
- Quiz: Dogon and Bambara art of Mali
- WAEC prep: Igbo-Ukwu bronzes and Esie stone figures
- WAEC prep: Mende and Dan masks of Sierra Leone and Liberia
- Practice set: Matching art forms to the peoples who made them
- Spot my mistake: Dating a Nigerian art tradition wrongly
- Spot my mistake: Assuming a mask serves the same purpose among every people who carve one
- Let me explain: Benin bronze plaques and their court function
- Let me explain: Senufo and Baule art of Cote d'Ivoire
- Teach me: Nok terracotta and what it tells us
- Teach me: Ashanti and Fante art of Ghana
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 8
- Quiz: Bida brass work and calabash carving
- WAEC prep: Indigenous decorative motifs and their meanings
- Practice set: Producing a design based on a traditional motif
- Spot my mistake: Treating the Oshogbo school as a formal art college with a taught syllabus
- Let me explain: Abuja and Winneba pottery traditions
- Teach me: The Oshogbo art movement and its artists
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 9
- Quiz: Fon art of the Benin Republic
- WAEC prep: Kissi art of Guinea
- Practice set: Wollof, Mandinka and Jola art of the Gambia
- Spot my mistake: Treating the art of West Africa as one tradition shared across every people
- Let me explain: Mossi, Bobo and Kurumba art of Burkina Faso
- Teach me: Bamileke art of Cameroon
Revisit from three weeks ago
Contemporary Art
β Jump to week- Week 10
- Quiz: Museums and galleries and what each does
- WAEC prep: INSEA, NSIAD and other art organisations
- Practice set: Planning a visit to a Nigerian gallery or museum
- Spot my mistake: Treating a museum and a gallery as institutions with the same purpose
- Let me explain: Arts councils and their role in promoting art
- Teach me: The work of art schools and art departments
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 11
- Quiz: The media contemporary West African artists work in
- Quiz: The materials early man used to make images
- WAEC prep: The contribution of named artists to art's development
- WAEC prep: The functions pre-historic art served
- Practice set: Describing a named pre-historic work
- Spot my mistake: Attributing a work to the wrong artist or movement
- Spot my mistake: Assuming cave paintings were made simply to decorate the cave
- Let me explain: How contemporary artists draw on traditional forms
- Let me explain: The beliefs behind pre-historic art
- Teach me: The training and style of a leading Nigerian artist
- Teach me: Cave painting and what it depicted
Revisit from three weeks ago
World Art History
β Jump to week- Week 12
- Quiz: The conventions of the Egyptian figure
- WAEC prep: Egyptian architecture: pyramids, temples and tombs
- Practice set: Identifying Egyptian works by their conventions
- Spot my mistake: Reading the twisted pose of the Egyptian figure as a failure to draw correctly
- Let me explain: Egyptian sculpture and its purposes
- Teach me: The beliefs about the afterlife that shaped Egyptian art
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 13
- Quiz: Classical Greek sculpture and the search for ideal form
- Quiz: The media Medieval artists used
- WAEC prep: Greek architecture and the three orders
- WAEC prep: The place of the church in Medieval art
- Practice set: Describing a Medieval work and its characteristics
- Spot my mistake: Confusing Greek periods by their sculptural style
- Spot my mistake: Judging Medieval painting a failure because its figures lack perspective
- Let me explain: The Hellenistic period and its emotional drama
- Let me explain: Stained glass and illuminated manuscripts
- Teach me: The Archaic period and the kouros figure
- Teach me: The features of Medieval art
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 14
- Quiz: Masaccio and the mastery of perspective
- WAEC prep: The High Renaissance and what set it apart
- Practice set: Comparing a Medieval and a Renaissance treatment of the same subject
- Spot my mistake: Treating the Renaissance as a sudden break with no Medieval roots
- Let me explain: Donatello and Renaissance sculpture
- Teach me: Giotto and the beginnings of the Renaissance
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 15
- Quiz: Monet and Manet and their differences
- WAEC prep: Post-Impressionism and how it broke from Impressionism
- Practice set: Identifying Impressionist works by their handling of light
- Spot my mistake: Treating Impressionism and Post-Impressionism as one movement
- Let me explain: Seurat and pointillism
- Teach me: What the Impressionists were trying to capture
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 16
- Quiz: Analytical and synthetic Cubism
- Quiz: Drawing from nature: plants, shells and bones
- WAEC prep: Picasso and Braque and their partnership
- WAEC prep: What examiners look for in an observational drawing
- Practice set: Setting up and drawing a still life of your own
- Spot my mistake: The claim that Cubism simply copied African art
- Spot my mistake: Drawing an object from what you know it looks like rather than from what you see
- Let me explain: How African sculpture reached European artists
- Let me explain: Drawing the human figure from life
- Teach me: What Cubism set out to do with form
- Teach me: Composing a still life from arranged objects
Revisit from three weeks ago
Drawing and 2D Design
β Jump to week- Week 17
- Quiz: Poster design and how it captures attention
- WAEC prep: Printmaking: linocut, woodcut and screen printing
- Practice set: Designing a poster for a school event
- Spot my mistake: Treating a poster as a picture with words added rather than as a designed message
- Let me explain: Book and magazine illustration
- Teach me: Lettering styles and their uses
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 18
- Quiz: Tie and dye techniques and the patterns each yields
- WAEC prep: Tapestry and its uses
- Practice set: Producing a tie and dye piece
- Spot my mistake: Assuming the wax in batik colours the cloth rather than resists the dye
- Let me explain: AppliquΓ© and how the pieces are joined
- Teach me: The batik process from wax to dye
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 19
- Quiz: Mural painting and its scale
- WAEC prep: Mosaic and collage and the materials each uses
- Practice set: Making a collage from local materials
- Spot my mistake: Treating mosaic and collage as the same technique under two names
- Let me explain: Photography: portrait, landscape and seascape
- Teach me: Painting an illustrative composition from imagination
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 20
- Quiz: Product design and modelling
- WAEC prep: Crafts: basketry, jewellery and calabash decoration
- Practice set: Planning a three-dimensional project for submission
- Spot my mistake: Treating modelling and carving as the same sculptural process
- Let me explain: Ceramics: moulding, hand-building and throwing
- Teach me: Sculpture in clay, wood, metal and cement
Revisit from three weeks ago
Mixed WAEC Practice
β Jump to week- Week 21
- Quiz: Outline, contour and hatching
- Quiz: Mixing secondary and tertiary colours
- WAEC prep: How line direction guides the eye
- Practice set: A line exercise exploring weight and rhythm
- WAEC prep: Complementary and harmonious colour schemes
- Practice set: Mixing a controlled palette from three colours
- Spot my mistake: Treating outline and contour as the same kind of line
- Spot my mistake: Assuming mixing paint and mixing light give the same result
- Let me explain: Line as a way of suggesting form and volume
- Let me explain: Warm and cool colours and their effect
- Teach me: The types of line and the mood each conveys
- Teach me: Primary colours and the colour wheel
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 22
- Quiz: Visual texture and how it is simulated
- Quiz: How a shape becomes a form
- WAEC prep: Texture in sculpture and in ceramics
- WAEC prep: Form in the round and form in relief
- Practice set: Turning flat shapes into convincing forms
- Spot my mistake: Confusing pattern with texture
- Spot my mistake: Treating shape and form as one element under two names
- Let me explain: The techniques that create texture in drawing
- Let me explain: Modelling form with light and shade
- Teach me: Actual texture you can feel on a surface
- Teach me: Geometric and organic shapes
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 23
- Quiz: Asymmetrical balance and how it is achieved
- WAEC prep: The effect of imbalance on a composition
- Practice set: Rebalancing a composition that feels lopsided
- Spot my mistake: Assuming an asymmetrical composition cannot be balanced
- Let me explain: Radial balance in design
- Teach me: Symmetrical balance and where it suits
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 24
- Quiz: Regular, alternating and progressive rhythm
- Quiz: Creating emphasis through contrast
- WAEC prep: Rhythm in traditional African decorative art
- Practice set: Building a composition with deliberate rhythm
- WAEC prep: Subordination and how it supports emphasis
- Spot my mistake: Treating repetition as rhythm even where nothing varies
- Spot my mistake: A composition with competing focal points
- Let me explain: How a composition directs the eye's movement
- Let me explain: Creating emphasis through placement and isolation
- Teach me: How repetition creates visual rhythm
- Teach me: What a focal point is and why a picture needs one
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 25
- Quiz: Scale and how it signals importance
- WAEC prep: The golden section and its use
- Practice set: Checking proportion in a figure drawing
- Spot my mistake: Reading hierarchical proportion in traditional art as poor observation of the figure
- Let me explain: Hierarchical proportion in traditional art
- Teach me: Proportion in the human figure
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 26
- Quiz: Masks and masquerade costume
- WAEC prep: The artistic significance of festival objects and symbols
- Practice set: Documenting the art of a festival in your area
- Spot my mistake: Treating a masquerade costume as dress rather than as part of a whole performance
- Let me explain: Body decoration and its meanings
- Teach me: The art forms displayed at Nigerian festivals
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 27
- Quiz: The Ona art movement
- Quiz: The Ghana Craftsmen Association
- WAEC prep: NSEA and The Eye Society
- Practice set: How joining an art body helps a young artist
- WAEC prep: The Gambia Art Teachers Association
- Spot my mistake: Treating the Ona and Ulli movements as one approach under two names
- Spot my mistake: Confusing a professional body with a government agency
- Let me explain: The Ulli art movement and its philosophy
- Let me explain: The Ghana Arts Council and its remit
- Teach me: The Society of Nigerian Artists and its aims
- Teach me: The Ghana Artists Association
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 28
- Quiz: Art used in rites of passage
- Quiz: Fetishism and the power attributed to figures
- WAEC prep: Art for everyday domestic use
- Practice set: Classifying traditional objects as sacred or secular
- WAEC prep: How belief shaped the form of traditional objects
- Practice set: Reading a traditional object for its beliefs
- Spot my mistake: Assuming any traditional object carved with figures must be a sacred one
- Spot my mistake: Treating animism and fetishism as the same belief
- Let me explain: Art for royal and political display
- Let me explain: Mythology as a source of artistic subject matter
- Teach me: Art made for shrines and worship
- Teach me: Animism and the belief in spirit within objects
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 29
- Quiz: Benin bronze casting and the guild that held it
- Quiz: Why the Ife heads were modelled with such lifelike proportion
- WAEC prep: Bida brass work and its products
- Practice set: Describing the stages of a cast from wax to metal
- WAEC prep: What terracotta finds tell us about early societies
- Spot my mistake: Assuming the wax model survives the lost wax casting process
- Spot my mistake: Confusing terracotta with stone carving
- Let me explain: Ife bronze and its naturalism
- Let me explain: The Esie soapstone figures
- Teach me: The lost wax process step by step
- Teach me: Nok terracotta and its distinctive features
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 30
- Quiz: Abuja pottery and Ladi Kwali's work
- WAEC prep: Firing methods in traditional pottery
- Practice set: Making a coiled pot
- Spot my mistake: Assuming every traditional pot is thrown on a wheel
- Let me explain: Winneba pottery of Ghana
- Teach me: Hand-building methods in traditional pottery
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 31
- Quiz: Ashanti and Ewe Kente compared
- WAEC prep: How Adinkra cloth is printed
- Practice set: Designing a cloth using Adinkra symbols
- Spot my mistake: Treating Kente and Adinkra as two names for the same cloth
- Let me explain: Adinkra symbols and their meanings
- Teach me: How Kente is woven and what the colours mean
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 32
- Quiz: The products of traditional weaving
- Quiz: The materials used in wall decoration
- WAEC prep: MacramΓ© and other fibre crafts
- Practice set: Producing a small woven or plaited item
- WAEC prep: The purpose Mbari served in Igbo society
- Practice set: Designing a decorated wall panel
- Spot my mistake: Treating weaving and plaiting as the same technique
- Spot my mistake: Treating an Mbari house as a permanent building meant to be preserved
- Let me explain: Leatherwork and the centres known for it
- Let me explain: Mbari houses and the sculpture within them
- Teach me: Basketry materials and weaving techniques
- Teach me: Traditional wall decoration and its motifs
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 33
- Quiz: Mesolithic art and its changes
- Quiz: Middle Kingdom art and its portraiture
- WAEC prep: The pigments and tools early man used
- WAEC prep: The continuity of style across the kingdoms
- Practice set: Placing Egyptian works in the right kingdom
- Spot my mistake: Assuming pre-historic art was purely decorative
- Spot my mistake: Assuming Egyptian art changed completely from one kingdom to the next
- Let me explain: Neolithic art and settled life
- Let me explain: New Kingdom art and the Amarna period
- Teach me: The Paleolithic period and its art
- Teach me: Old Kingdom art and the age of the pyramids
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 34
- Quiz: Contrapposto in Classical sculpture
- WAEC prep: Named Greek sculptors and their works
- Practice set: Dating a Greek sculpture from its features
- Spot my mistake: Reading the Archaic smile as an expression of the figure's mood
- Let me explain: Hellenistic movement and emotion
- Teach me: The Archaic smile and the rigid stance
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 35
- Quiz: Painting outdoors and the study of changing light
- Quiz: Gauguin's flat colour and symbolism
- WAEC prep: Seurat's pointillism and optical mixing
- Practice set: A study using broken colour
- WAEC prep: The influence of Post-Impressionism on later art
- Spot my mistake: Assuming broken colour means the colours were mixed on the palette before painting
- Spot my mistake: Confusing Impressionist and Post-Impressionist handling
- Let me explain: Cezanne's treatment of structure and form
- Let me explain: How Post-Impressionists departed from observation
- Teach me: Broken colour and the Impressionist brushstroke
- Teach me: Van Gogh's expressive brushwork and colour
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 36
- Quiz: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and its mask-like faces
- WAEC prep: The legacy of Cubism in modern art
- Practice set: A Cubist study of a familiar object
- Spot my mistake: Assuming a Cubist image shows its object from one viewpoint at a time
- Let me explain: Multiple viewpoints in a single Cubist image
- Teach me: The geometry African masks offered European artists
Revisit from three weeks ago