Writing About Inspiration and Influences - TCE Visual Art (Tasmania)
“Produce short written responses on inspiration and influences that connect your research to your own artmaking decisions.”
You need to write a short, focused response that explains your inspiration and influences and connects them directly to your own artmaking decisions, analysing what you took from a source and how it shaped your work, rather than just describing the artist or listing names.
What this dot point is asking
Module 2 includes a written work requirement: short written responses on inspiration and influences. This is a distinct task from the visual diary annotations and from the longer reflective writing of Module 3. It is a concise, structured piece in which you explain what has inspired and influenced your developing work and, crucially, how. The course pairs the practical investigation with this writing so you can articulate the thinking behind your making, and doing it well is partly a matter of knowing what the task is actually asking for.
The single most important principle is the link. A response on influences is not a research report about an artist; it is an account of the relationship between that artist and your own work. The structure that always works is influence, analysis, application. Identify the influence specifically. Analyse what is significant about it, the particular strategy, device or idea you are responding to. Then state the application: how that has shaped a decision in your own artmaking. The third step is where the marks live, and it is the step weak responses omit entirely.
Be specific about the influence rather than general. Naming an artist and giving a potted biography is description and adds little. Instead, isolate the precise thing you are drawing on. It is far stronger to write that you were influenced by an artist's use of a single saturated accent in an otherwise neutral palette than to write that you were influenced by their use of colour, because the specific observation can be analysed and then applied, whereas the vague one cannot. Specificity in the influence makes a genuine link possible.
Analyse the influence, do not just admire it. The course rewards understanding, so explain why the strategy you have identified works and what it achieves. If you are influenced by an artist's layering of transparent media to suggest memory, analyse how transparency produces that sense of time and partial recall. This analytical layer shows you understand the influence well enough to use it deliberately, and it is the bridge between the source and your application. Without it, the link is asserted rather than reasoned.
Then make the application concrete and visible. Point to the actual decision in your work that the influence shaped: the device you adapted, how you changed it for your own subject, and what it now does in your piece. The strongest applications show transformation, not transplant. Saying you adopted layering but applied it to your own imagery and palette demonstrates that the influence was metabolised into your developing aesthetic rather than copied. This connects the written task directly to your personal visual aesthetic and to the artworks that may feed your Module 3 body of work.
Keep the writing focused and disciplined, because it is a short response. That means choosing a small number of genuine influences and treating each properly rather than scattering a long list of names with no analysis. Two or three influences explored with real influence, analysis, application depth will always outperform a roll-call. Use correct art-specific terminology, the elements and principles, technical and contextual vocabulary, because precise language signals genuine understanding and is part of what is assessed.
Treat the response as evidence, not decoration. Because it documents the reasoning behind your making, it is the written counterpart to the practical investigation in your diary, and it should be honest. If an influence led you somewhere and you then changed direction, that is worth saying, because it shows real decision-making. The task is ultimately a record of how research drove your practice, which is the heart of Module 2.
Structure every point as influence (the specific thing you drew on), analysis (why it works and what it achieves), and application (the actual decision it shaped in your work). The application step is where the marks are, and it is the step weak responses leave out.
A response that recounts an artist's life and career but never connects them to a decision in your own work has missed the task. The subject is the relationship between the influence and your making, so every paragraph should end by pointing at something you actually did differently because of it.
The short response on inspiration and influences is your chance to prove that your research did real work, so anchor every influence to a specific, analysed, applied decision and let the writing show the thinking behind the making.
Step 1: Name the influence specifically
Isolate the exact device or strategy, not the artist in general: "I was influenced by the way this artist cropped figures hard at the frame edge", rather than "I was influenced by their compositions."
Step 2: Analyse why it works
Explain the effect of that device: "cropping at the edge makes the figure feel caught mid-action and extends the scene beyond the frame, so the viewer senses a world continuing outside the picture."
Step 3: Apply it to a decision in your work, transformed
State the concrete, adapted decision: "so I cropped my own portrait subject at the shoulders and chin, but combined it with my faded palette, so the cropping now suggests a half-remembered face rather than dynamic action." The transformation shows the influence was metabolised, not copied.
Exam-style questions
Questions in the style of TASC exam questions on this dot point, each with a worked answer. They are written by ExamExplained unless tagged "Past paper"; the year shows the paper a question is modelled on.
Practice8 marksWrite a short response explaining how an artist has influenced your developing work. Identify the influence specifically, analyse what is significant about it, and explain how it shaped a decision in your own artmaking.Show worked answer →
Use influence, analysis, application. Influence: isolate the precise thing you drew on, "the artist's use of a single saturated red accent in an otherwise neutral palette", not a vague "use of colour" or a biography. Analysis: explain why it works, "the lone accent forces the eye to one point, making an otherwise calm image feel urgent." Application: state the concrete decision it shaped, "so in my own piece I kept the palette grey and placed a single red mark at the focal point, adapting it to my subject of loss."
The application step is where the marks are. The strongest responses show transformation, not transplant, the influence adapted to your own imagery and palette.
A biography with no link to your work is the capped error.
Practice6 marksExplain why specificity matters when writing about an influence, and why two or three influences treated in depth outperform a long list of names.Show worked answer →
Explain that a specific influence (a single saturated accent, a way of cropping, a layering of transparent media) can be analysed and then applied, whereas a vague one ("their use of colour") cannot, so specificity is what makes a genuine link possible.
Depth over breadth: two or three influences explored with full influence-analysis-application depth show real understanding and metabolised research, while a roll-call of names with no analysis shows none. The short response rewards disciplined focus.
Marks reward the reasoning about specificity enabling the link, plus the case for depth over a list. Scattering names is the capped error.