Part A · 80 marks · on paper
Score your own drawing
You cannot mock a drawing. There is no multiple-choice form of “compose a page in colour”, and any tool that claims to auto-grade your Part A is lying about the one half of NATA judged by a person. So the honest instrument is a rubric — rate your own work against what an examiner looks for, and find your weakest criterion before the exam does.
Where these criteria come from
COA publishes no marking scheme for Part A — no criteria, no weightings, no sample answers — and under §12.0 the examination record is kept for only 90 days. The criteria and weights below are ours, synthesised from the official question titles, the permitted-materials list and the teaching in this course. They are a defensible model of what drawing assessment rewards, not a leaked rubric. Treat the numbers as a self-check, never a predicted mark.
One rule runs through all three questions: composition is where the marks are, and where they are most reliably lost — not colour handling, not rendering polish. Each rubric weights the arrangement hardest for exactly that reason.
A1 · Composition & Colour
25 marks“Composition and Colour — 25 Marks”
A1 · Self-assess
Score your own composition & colour
Twenty-five marks in dry colour, on paper, no instruments. The title names composition before colour, and so does the marking in practice: a beautifully coloured page with a weak arrangement scores below a plainly coloured page that is well composed. Score the arrangement hardest.
Self-check (0/5 rated)
Rate each criterion above
0/25
self-estimate only
This is a self-check, not a grade. Part A is judged by a person looking at your work, and no rubric can predict the real mark. The number is here to find your weakest criterion before the exam does — nothing more.
A2 · Sketching & Composition, Black and White
25 marks“Sketching and Composition in Black and White — 25 Marks”
A2 · Self-assess
Score your own sketching & composition, black and white
Twenty-five marks of line and tone with no colour to hide behind. The examiner sees your drawing decisions naked — value structure, perspective, and composition — so this rubric weights the things colour usually distracts from.
Self-check (0/5 rated)
Rate each criterion above
0/25
self-estimate only
This is a self-check, not a grade. Part A is judged by a person looking at your work, and no rubric can predict the real mark. The number is here to find your weakest criterion before the exam does — nothing more.
A3 · The 3D Composition
30 marks“3D composition from a supplied kit — 30 Marks”
A3 · Self-assess
Score your own the 3d composition
The highest-value single question on the paper, and the one nobody can rehearse as an artefact — the kit is issued at the centre under a code you cannot know in advance. So you rehearse the capability: making an interesting, stable, well-composed 3D arrangement from primitive volumes, fast. Photograph your practice builds in three views and score the photographs, because that is what the examiner sees.
Self-check (0/5 rated)
Rate each criterion above
0/30
self-estimate only
This is a self-check, not a grade. Part A is judged by a person looking at your work, and no rubric can predict the real mark. The number is here to find your weakest criterion before the exam does — nothing more.