Happy New Year! I will admit that I am missing being in the classroom this week. I’ve been looking at some excellent student artwork for my job running the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards in Massachusetts through the affiliate, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. As we walk through the judging of all 8 thousand plus entries we receive in our region, it dawned on me that My Art Lesson readers might be interested in hearing some of my recommendations for being smart when entering work to the Scholastic Awards. There are no tips or tricks to scoring a win, but I urge people to be super careful to comply with all the rules to be sure your work is judged. Now that I am behind the scenes, I see a surprising amount of mistakes students and teachers make.
Read the Category Description and Choose Carefully
Every year, we see submissions that aren’t entered into the correct category, and once judging starts, there is no way to change the category. The onus is on the submitter to pick the best category for their artwork. The category descriptions can be found here. Each category listed at the top links to a longer description found lower on the webpage. Sometimes, students make silly mistakes like entering a Ceramic Vase in the Photography section. That’s a clear mistake that will disqualify you.
Sometimes, mistakes might be more subtle, though. For example, defining the difference between a painting and a drawing can be challenging. For Scholastic, painting is “applying wet materials to a 2D surface.” On the other hand, “Art that is composed of marks made with dry materials on a 2D surface” should be placed in the Drawing & Illustration category. But what if it’s an illustration made with wet media? Based on the information in the painting category description, illustrations made with any paint belong to the painting category.
Other categories people frequently confuse include Photography and Digital Art, so read carefully. Photography is “images captured by either an analog or digital camera.” The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards description goes on to explain that minor touch-ups are fine, but if a work was heavily edited, it should be placed in Digital Art. Artwork digitally collaged, cloned, layered, merged, or distorted? That belongs in the Digital Art category, then.
Every category description lists examples. But just because the Sculpture category uses artist books as an example of something that might be in the Sculpture category, the examples aren’t set in stone. You may read the mixed media description and find that a student-made artist book might fit better into that category. If your work is in a gray area in MA, we do our best to judge it through the lens of the category of the student who submitted it. But, when in doubt, it doesn’t hurt to reach out to your local affiliate or the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers (the nonprofit that runs the Awards) and ask about the appropriateness of a category. if you are in a region at large, write Scholastic using their contact form, or if you’d like to attach a photo of your work, write to info@artandwriting.org. Be sure to write well in advance of your deadline.
Take Care with the Photographs
The images uploaded for an entry should be clear and a good representation of the art. Don’t just take a quick snap with your cell phone. On a 2-dimensional piece of artwork, avoid casting your own shadow onto it. You want even lighting. Be sure to look at the shots critically and ask yourself if they needed any editing such as tweaking the colors to make it accurate to reality, adjusting the contrast, or cropping our backgrounds, etc. What you don’t want to do is make any changes to the actual artwork. For example, if you have a drawing where the values aren’t fully developed, you shouldn’t increase the value range when editing the image.
Follow any additional instructions Scholastic requires. Mixed Media, Sculpture, Ceramic & Glass, and Jewelry are all 3D categories and require four images of the artwork. Each category description provided information on what type of photographs should be submitted; please read carefully. Consider the lighting and the background, and take multiple shots from different angles and close-ups of three-dimensional artwork. One requirement often forgotten in the sculpture category is “an image with a ruler for scale.” Consider a detail shot as well. Also, consider your background. With three-dimensional works, keep the backgrounds simple. Scholastic recommends a “white or neutral-colored background.” I will take that one step further and ask that if you use fabric, ensure it lays smoothly. No visibly wrinkled fabrics, please. Ensure the artwork is in focus and the image is of good quality. Scholastic asks that work have a print resolution of 300dpi, and the file size should be around 3MB–5MB. Upload the best quality images in that range that you have. My Art Lesson has a good handout, Student Guide to Photographing Artwork, which I highly recommend for teachers and students when photographing artwork. Copy Stands, like this one, can be a good investment for taking Photos if you enter a lot of contests and are helping students prepare portfolios for college.
Also, be aware that Scholastic strives for blind judging. Scholastic shares that blind judging means, “Entries are selected for awards without knowledge of the student’s gender, age, ethnicity, or hometown.” That means if there is an artist’s signature on the work, please edit it out.
Payment
Scholastic charges 10 dollars for every individual entry and 30 for a portfolio. A fee waiver is also very simple to access if a student cannot afford the entry fee. Lastly, if your school pays the bill, be sure to follow your local affiliates’ instructions. In my region, we allow schools to pay in bulk with a check, but that requires the teacher to apply “Invoice” to all the submissions the school is paying for. Works can be disqualified for lack of payment.
Pay Attention to Plagiarism, Copyright, and Participation Terms
Tune in to the Pagarism and Copyright page. Please note, “If an entered work is found to have been copied from another artist or writer, the work will be disqualified from the Scholastic Awards.” That means making artwork that is a recreation of someone else’s photograph is off-limits. If your students participate in projects like the Memory Project (that sends you a photograph of a child to make a realistic portrait from a photograph they send you), they can’t be entered into the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Also, Scholastic shares that “Entries that are heavily influenced by the work of other artists, even if no materials are directly copied, will not be considered original and should not be entered into the Awards.” That means if you do work where students emulate a certain artist closely, it runs the risk of being disqualified.
The Criteria and Judging
When creating work and selecting work for Scholastic, please be thoughtful in your choices of artworks to enter. Scholastic shares that work is evaluated with three criteria: originality, skill, and emergence of a student’s voice. I’ve seen highly technical work be passed over because technical strength is only a portion of what is considered. All judging panels use the three criteria as the tools they use when judging. I know every year I participated, I was always surprised by some judging decisions. I have also learned that art teachers are not impartial. We often see the learning that went on and the effort a student put in, and we no longer see the work as a stranger might see the work. When teachers ask why students didn’t win, I always encourage them to consider volunteering as a judge. When I was a teacher, I just assumed teachers couldn’t be involved in the jurying, but there is no rule against it, although if you are in the same state you teach, you do have to recuse yourself if you come across student work you are familiar with.
I also like to remind people that the goal of the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards is “to identify and celebrate exceptional artistic and literary talent in students from grades 7-12.” If you’ve ever had a student enter and win, you know how rewarding it can be for the student. Regardless of the outcome for my students, I always took my upper art classes to see the exhibit. Seeing the works they exhibit is always educational and motivating for my students and me. It can be a great time to discuss the subjective nature of art. I ask them, “What work stood out for you?” and “What work surprised you?”
It’s wonderful to celebrate a win, but it’s also important to build resiliency in our students. A good art program provides a variety of ways for students to experience success. I wish you all good luck with this year’s results and hope that some of the advice I give here will be helpful for future Scholastic entries.