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The IB Visual Arts Art-Making Inquiries Portfolio is your chance to show how you think, create, and problem-solve as a visual artist. If you are in the process of completing your portfolio and are wondering if there is a word count, this post is for you! In this guide, we will outline whether the Art-Making Inquiries Portfolio has a word count, as well as provide recommended ranges for you to follow.
IB Visual Arts Art-Making Inquiries Portfolio Word Count
The Art-Making Inquiries Portfolio has a strict maximum word count of 3,000 words for both Standard Level (SL) and Higher Level (HL) students. This portfolio is a curated collection of visual evidence and critical reflections that demonstrate your art-making as inquiry. To stay within the limit while providing sufficient detail, you must ensure your portfolio is detailed yet concise, covering various aspects of your creative process across one or more lines of inquiry.
For this task, students are required to submit:
Portfolio Screens: A PDF file of up to 15 screens featuring curated visual evidence and written materials.
List of Sources: A separate text file listing all sources used, which does not count toward your total word count.
The portfolio pages should demonstrate your development and refinement of a visual language. These pages must include:
Inquiry Questions: Explicitly stated inquiry questions or generative statements that guided your work.
Visual Evidence: Sketches, studies, and documentation of resolved and unresolved artworks from your visual arts journals.
Critical Reflection: Written materials that articulate your artistic intentions, critical analysis, and choices throughout the creative process.
The portfolio should maintain a balance of text and visuals, but visual materials must be predominant. To stay within the 3,000-word limit across 15 screens, we recommend writing approximately 200–250 words per screen. This value may change depending on the depth of your explanations and the space taken up by your images. All text on the screens, whether typed or handwritten (such as scanned journal notes), is included in the word count. However, title pages, image labels (author, title, medium, size), and citations are excluded from the count.
We hope you found this post helpful in learning more about the IB Visual Arts Art-Making Inquiries Portfolio word count. For more useful materials associated with the IB, check out the wide variety of IA, EE and TOK exemplars available at Clastify and other guides available on our blog.
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