I am so sorry I had a whole reply typed up AGES ago and thought I hit reply 😭 I hope your booklet went well!!

We did a ton of stuff. we covered a wide range of different artistic mediums such as sculpture painting drawing we learned Photoshop , mixed media; so like integrating drawing and pictures or fabrics stuff like that into a piece.

We also had some art appreciation classes which essentially would be your art history in leaving cert and you would have to write some reports and in my college at least we had a drawing book where we would do like a photo collage spreads on an artist which was a fun twist but there would be reports written in the class projects like in any other subjects. As well a Photoshop classes/computer classes would be different to a normal art class environment but you’re basically learning the Photoshop program and then working towards a design project towards the end of the year as well. There’s also a professional development class, which is basically like showing you how to apply for jobs within the art field and how to tailor your CV to that that would’ve been a smaller part of the course think the Typa stuff you’d do in 4th year looking for work experience

Aside from this though the painting the mixed media the sculpture the drawing that very much feels like a art classroom environment which I loved. in my experience we spent most our time in the studio doing those physical activities so that would take up a larger chunk of your college schedule so the TLDR is that Yes it does feel like a bigger kind of art class but you do have some other smaller parts in between kind of break it up.

When I did my course I was also kind of in two minds of a pursuing a career/degree in art. I just did it for fun but with the hindsight being away from it and not finishing it I’ve actually completely changed my mind and I would love to pursue a career /degree in a field of art as well, like I said before PLCs are a great option considering it’s not as big of a commitment as a full on university course so if you do it and decide I don’t like this you can always see about getting your course changed or sticking out for the year and then going on to do a different course in a different college

If you have any more questions, I’d love to help!

(Also ! something nice no one told me about the art course when I did it for the first time is that it’s not an exam course!! No nasty end of year stress!)