Five words is the entire official brief
Here is everything the Council of Architecture publishes about the first question on your paper: A1 - Composition and Colour - 25 Marks. That is not a summary. That is the whole of it. No sample prompt, no format, no marking criteria, no past paper — none is released, and under the brochure's own weeding-out rule (§12.0) the examination record is kept for only ninety days. Anyone who tells you exactly what A1 will ask is telling you what they remember or what they guessed.
What is actually known
Strip out the guesswork and a surprisingly solid picture remains.
Twenty-five marks, one of three questions in a 90-minute offline Part A worth 80 in total. On paper, by hand. In dry colour — the permitted list names dry colours specifically, which rules out watercolour, poster paint and ink markers. Without instruments — no compass, no set squares, and a scale no longer than 15 cm. And the question is titled Composition and Colour, in that order.
That is genuinely a lot to work with. It tells you the medium, the time, the tools, and — in the title — the priority. What it does not tell you is the prompt, and no honest source can.
The order of the title is not an accident
Composition and Colour. Composition first.
It would be unwise to build a whole theory on word order, so treat this as a reading rather than a fact. But it is consistent with everything else the exam does. Part B names Design Sensitivity and Thinking. A3 asks for an interesting 3D composition. The through-line of the entire paper is spatial and visual decision-making, not craft.
Read that way, A1 is not a colouring task with composition attached. It is a composition task that happens to be in colour — and the colour is there because it makes composition harder, not because the exam wants to know whether you own good pencils.
This matters because it tells you where the marks probably are, and where candidates most reliably lose them: not in colour handling, which is easy to admire and easy to practise, but in the underlying arrangement, which is invisible until you look for it.
What to prepare when you cannot know the prompt
The same logic as A3 applies, and it is oddly freeing: rehearse the capability, not the artefact.
You cannot pre-plan an A1 answer. You can be someone who, handed any prompt, can compose a page in colour under thirty minutes with dry media and no instruments. That person scores well regardless of what the prompt turns out to be. The person who has memorised three set-piece compositions and hopes one fits scores well only if they get lucky.
So the preparation is unglamorous and it is not a secret: compose, in colour, on paper, under time, repeatedly. Vary the prompt so widely that no specific prompt can surprise you. If you find yourself hunting for the likely A1 topic, you are trying to convert an aptitude question into a recall question, which is the same mistake that makes people cram for NATA in the first place.
The rules behind this
Sourced to the official brochure rather than restated here, so there is one place to correct when the Council revises it.
Part A is three questions: A1 Composition and Colour (25), A2 Sketching and Composition in Black and White (25), A3 3D Composition (30).
Eighty marks across three questions means each is worth roughly 13% of the whole exam. There is no salvaging a bad question by volume, the way a 50-question paper allows.
Source · verified 2026-07-16
No official NATA mock test or sample paper exists. COA has published none.
Neither nata.in nor coa.gov.in hosts one, and neither brochure version mentions mocks or sample papers. Every 'NATA sample paper' in circulation is reconstructed by a coaching institute. Official papers are unlikely ever to be released: §12.0 Weeding Out Rules preserves the examination record for only 90 days after results.
Read this carefully: Claims that "COA releases the NATA mock test on nata.in" appear only on coaching sites and could not be verified on either official domain.
Source · verified 2026-07-16
No instruments are permitted — no compass, no set squares — and no calculators, phones, or wet media.
Appendix-II states "Don't bring any instruments". Also barred: Bluetooth devices, slide rules, log tables, electronic watches with calculators, and any textual material. Numerical Ability is examined without a calculator.
Source · verified 2026-07-16
Bring: the downloaded original Appointment Card, an original photo ID, pencils, erasers, dry colours, and a scale up to 15 cm.
Source · verified 2026-07-16
What almost everyone believes
“I can find out what NATA A1 asks by studying past papers and sample questions.”
There are no official past papers or sample questions. COA publishes none, and preserves the exam record for only ninety days after results.
Every 'NATA sample paper' in circulation is reconstructed by a coaching institute from candidate recollection — sometimes years old, filtered through memory, and describing an exam that has since changed format. Studying them tells you what someone thinks they remember, and can actively mislead by anchoring you to a prompt style that no longer applies. The official description of A1 is five words long, and that is genuinely all anyone knows.
Depending on how long you have
Foundation
Understand the skill. Months out, or starting from zero.
Build the habit that makes the prompt irrelevant: compose something in colour every week, from anything — a photograph, a memory, a word. You are not building a portfolio, you are building the reflex that lets you start confidently on a prompt you have never seen. Keep everything, and look back after three months; the change will surprise you.
Drill
The practice protocol. What to repeat, how often, how to score it.
Have someone else supply your prompts, and make them absurdly varied. If every prompt you practise is a streetscape, you have quietly decided what A1 will ask. The whole point is that you do not know — so train the range, and treat any prompt that throws you as a gift, because it found a gap while it was still cheap.
Exam-Day
What to actually do under the constraint — 108 seconds, no instruments, one pass.
Read the brief twice before you touch a pencil. Whatever it asks, it is a composition question in colour — so decide the arrangement before the palette, and do not let an unfamiliar prompt convince you that you are unprepared. You are prepared for the skill; the prompt was never knowable.
Try it
Fifteen minutes. The aim is to prove to yourself that the prompt does not matter.
- 01Open any book to a random page and take the first concrete noun you see. That is your prompt.
- 02Compose it on paper in dry colour, under a 25-minute timer, with no instruments.
- 03Do not judge the result. Ask instead: did the unfamiliar prompt stop you starting, and for how long?
- 04Repeat weekly with a new random noun. The number you want falling is the hesitation, not the ugliness.
- 05After a month, notice that no prompt frightens you any more. That is the entire preparation for A1.
The short version
The official brief for A1 is five words: Composition and Colour, 25 Marks. There are no official past papers and there are unlikely ever to be, since the examination record is kept for only ninety days (§12.0). What is known is enough: dry media, no instruments, on paper, roughly thirty minutes, and composition named before colour. Rehearse the capability under varied prompts rather than hunting for the prompt, because the prompt is not knowable and the capability is.
Next: why composition is decided before you pick up a single colour — and how to see it.
Questions people actually ask
- What does NATA A1 ask?
- Officially, all that is published is the title and the marks: A1 - Composition and Colour - 25 Marks. No sample prompt, format or marking criteria is released, and no official past papers exist. What is known is the medium (dry colours), the tools (no instruments, scale under 15 cm), and that it is one of three questions in a 90-minute offline Part A.
- Are there official NATA sample papers for the drawing test?
- No. COA publishes no mock test or sample paper of any kind, and §12.0 of the brochure preserves the examination record for only 90 days after results — so official papers are unlikely ever to be released. Everything in circulation is a coaching reconstruction from candidate recollection.
- Can I use watercolour or poster paint in NATA A1?
- No. The permitted materials list names dry colours specifically — pencils, crayons, pastels. Wet media are not on the list. If your A1 practice has been in watercolour, you have been practising in a medium you will not be allowed to use.