Lecture 1 - RVJ

The principles I have chosen to look at are the skills of drawing by hand and practising the skills of each side of your brain. I feel that when using the learning journal it is important to practise drawing by hand as it gives a more physical and personal aspect to it. This principle again makes the physical connection between you and your work; therefore it uses your right side of your brain, which is your creative side. The use of physical of mark making shows an experimental side of working out a final piece instead of using generic idea making tools like a spider-diagram. Being more experimental with the way you think and putting those ideas into the learning journal will change and give you the confidence to quickly get those ideas out of the your head, and then allow you to experiment further than you initial thoughts. I find that I have this problem when I use my sketchbook as I worry about what the outcome will look like instead of being concerned about what the actual drawing is, its ideas and how to develop this further. Using this principle allows you to describe and show yours ideas whether you are a skilled drawer or not this process allows you to clearly and simply show your thoughts and design process. Leonardo DaVinci used this process to show the development of his subject matter and solve its problems. Keri Smith uses this idea of letting yourself go when developing your ideas in the early stages of your work. Keri Smith is an illustrator, whose book “How to be an Explorer of the World” shows her free and creative style, yet still remains to have a running theme of certain use of colour and collage. It is important to have a theme in the sketchbook to keep everything linked together, so it flows well, shows your creativity but is not just a bunch of messy or unorganised thoughts. In her journal she uses simple straightforward sentences, underlines the key words and then illustrates these ideas further using playful illustration and small diagrams showing her personality. Her book “wreck this journal” also explores the ideas of people allowing themselves to be messy and experimental whether they want to be or not by following the instructions left for the reader in the book, this again shows society’s way of trying to always aim for perfection and not letting themselves go. These characteristics are typical of the right side of the brain, which is creative, playful and experimental; everything a visual learning journal should be. Another artist that uses a learning journal/sketchbook to help process their ideas is Henry Moore who sketched out possible design ideas for the shape of his next sculpture, these ideas may not necessarily mean much to anyone else but him. From this he is able to physically feel what they could possibly look and feel like if they were to be made, by going through this process it is essential to feel what the ideas are going to be like to ensure that the right outcome is going to happen and solve any possible problems when it comes to making. However for process of making a learning journal both sides of the brain will be greatly needed as you will need the creative side to produce successful ideas for example to get successful ideas you need organisation to record them, and allow you choose which ones will be successful, this will be done by using the left side of your brain.