Exploring and drawing your theme / Exciting sketchbook

Objective

To draw, invent, draw, experiment, draw, enjoy and draw
To attempt new ways of exploring, recording your ideas and starting points
To liven up a drab sketchbook
To build up AO2 Creative Making and AO3 Reflective Recording

Task

Cover the next few pages in your sketchbook with drawings of your theme. You should just look at your chosen brainstorm and draw all the elements of that. Be inventive as well as skillful. Use the visual research that you have already gathered.

Look at the slides above for ideas.
To get the best results, you will possibly make some drawing that you don't like... push on a fill you page, paint on them, collage and work on top... there is only one rule... don't give up and rip ages out. Just keep going

You will be graded on

Your pages should be brimming with interesting drawings, marks, mediums, and ideas.

Deadline

Deadline: Thursday 14 Feb

Artist Investigation - Independent Study

Artist investigation.

From looking at your most interesting brainstorm, you should now be able to find a practitioner that you find stimulating and that relates in some way.

Please utilise the books in my room and choose an artist that has a body of work and some articles or interviews about them. 

Read around, take notes and think about the artist before you begin any writing. Read interviews, ask me for articles or related artists, styles, and movements that might be relevant. Ask pertinent questions related to the work. 

Tasks:

1

Complete the 'Artist investigation' sheet. It's HERE. This should focus your research. Please ask me for help if you are struggling to find information or you need assistance with how to word a feeling you have. 

It looks at your personal response, the artists' approach, method, intention, context, invites you to compare and contrast and gets you making by using their style or interpreting their ideas. 

2

Take an artefact belonging to the artist. 

• Describe the feeling that the artefact is communicating. What is its personality?
• What is the audience immediately getting?
• Which elements of the design relate to the band or music? 
• Is this Pragmatic or Poetic?

Discuss the choice of:

• Iconography (what is included and why?)
• Colour scheme
• Line, shape, texture, tone, space, and form.
• Rendering approach (what is it made from and why?)
• Typographic personality
• Composition (busy, sparse, ordered etc)
• Any other observations?

Deadline: Thursday 14 Feb

Practitioners that have worked with the same theme - Classwork

Aim
Attempt to broaden your understanding of other approaches and practitioners.

Task 

Find practitioners that have worked with the same theme.
Examples to look at: art, music, film, pop culture, fashion, advertising… 

Find at least 10. Approx 7 artists/illustrators and 3 from other forms.

E.g. Cai 💖has chosen 'Subcultures' as a theme. His pages will feature Malcolm Mclaren and Vivienne Westwood (owners of the SEX shop in London, the work of Jamie Reid and Malcolm Garret (Illustrators around the punk and new wave era) alongside Aiyush Pachnanda, photographer. He might also include images of Kubrick's Clockwork Orange together with Trainspotting. He will include written information about all of the above rather than leave them lonely on the page with out context.

At least 1/3 of your page space should be given up to your hand. This doesn't necessarily mean copying. You could emulate or draw from the edges. Have a think, surprise yourself and be playful and creative. 

Annotation should include 1. Your intention. 2. Any observations about the images that spring to mind and 3. An evaluation of the task.

Artists listed by Theme or Subject links are HERE. I didn't make the list, it's one I pinched from the web... so it might be awful. But it can be used to start you off. I would much rather if you find your own. Maybe search the Tate of MOMA.

Deadline: Wed 23rd Jan

Investigating using Photography - Independent study

Investigating using Photography

Using your camera, go out and take pictures related to your 3 starting points.

Use your brainstorms for help, but also just go out and shoot.

Do!! Go with your camera, even if you have no ideas. Ideas will just jump out at you. Trust the universe... or just hard graft.

Don't!! Sit at home wondering what the heck to take pics of. Then wander about the house on the day before the deadline taking boring images with your phone.

Please don't hold back! Variety and a creative, inventive, playful mind will produce the best results.

As with the brainstorms, don't engage your 'critical faculty' yet! Any idea is ok and could possibly make for a really interesting, potential start to your research.

At least 30 images. Presented in your sketchbook with annotation.

Annotation should include 1. Your intention. 2. Any observations about the images that spring to mind and 3. An evaluation of the task.

Deadline: Wed 23rd January.