Seeing as everyones throwing advice around, I might as well too.
Me and my friend both got into art express for our works last year. I did drawing with ink and he did film (he started and finished his the weekend before).
When you think about concept it feels more comfortable to create some huge explanation in your head e.g. "I'm gonna do a work about Socialogical changes since the dawn of time which will reflect man's struggle to achieve an identity in a turbulant world." Its also comfortable to start planning it to every last stroke e.g. "four paintings, each with a different era, a figure taking up half of the canvas, light getting darker from left to right, a mole above the lip..."
but such things will hinder you greatly. Remember you don't get to submit a rationale and they may not look at your VAPD so if you have to use stupid elaborate language to sum up your concept, then how are you going to effectively do it visually? For example one of my friends wanted his concept to be about hemmingways books and how they relate to us. I only found out this right at the end tho when I saw it written on a sheet because they were just paintings of bulls. You can't have an extremely specific concept it has to relate to everyone not just you.
you do have tools to make your concept clear tho, I used reappearing images so even if the marker doesn't understand the symbolism, they can at the very least see that its there and maybe draw different meaning from it. You need to make your work open to interpretation. You can also help you're self by creating a meaninful title. E.g. I called mine "All the King's horses" relating to humpty dumpty which can draw on many ideas to a viewer.
Back to what I was saying about making it open to interpretation... my friends film he did the weekend before due date, I was helping him out and we decided it would be better just to make something that looks deep even though it has no real concept. even though this is reckless it's much better to make something with no clear cut meaning to you, as long as its gonna allow others to make meaning from it. If you want to see his film for ideas and see what I mean then go here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_vEpWh81es
You'll see its complete visual jibberish but if you want to you can sit down and come out with crazy ideas. And trust me, the markers are going to sit down and try to come up with crazy ideas.
my advice on concept is to choose something simple that can be explained in one word but also in a paragraph, e.g power. But specificly your doing power relationships in society between the crowd and figure heads of society, where the masses prop up figureheads, change them, be changed, and tear them down again.
if you simplify your concept then you should find it easier to paint because you won't be locked into one single train of thought. Your work will be much more effective if it's natural and comes from within. It should aside from your concept be primarily about how you view your world not how others do.
And don't be so reserved when it comes to your work unless you're doing something like realism. The more you go crazy and experiment, the more your work will speak.
Even if you have no skill you can do really well in the way you approach this and throw things together. If you're only good at drawing small, then draw small on a massive scale (thats what I did, I sucked at drawing anything large but my works were still massive, just made up of tiny drawings). You need to draw on your strengths and on your perceptions.
My final advice is DONT plan your work too much, because it will never come across the way you planned. Just never stop reformulating your ideas because as you progress you'll come up with better ideas and better approaches. Don't stamp on them because on your little note pad it says you're just going to use red and blue or just going to do portraits. Make it natural, make it charismatic and make sure you walk away from this thing proud of what you've done. Oh and don't do what my friend did and do it last minute. He was an idiot, thank god he's a lucky (and talented) bastard.
Hope that helps,
James
