Your Visual Arts Journal should be a comprehensive document that illustrates your artistic development and research. The purpose of your VA Journal is to encourage and record personally driven research and discovery that functions interactively with independent artwork.
The current IB curriculum requests a digital submission with screens – which can cause confusion on how to approach the Visual Arts Journal. In my class, I suggest that students choose what works best for them: manual, digital or hybrid. Some of my students like to use a traditional sketchbook, while others like to save files on their computer or iPad apps. Others like to use both. YOU DO YOU. Just make sure you have a dedicated space to keep all your ideas, brainstorming, idea development, and compositional studies. Documentation of art-making process, artwork analysis, and reflections can be added more easily (and with more space and depth) digitally either on screens directly, or through digital apps like procreate.
There is no right or wrong way to create your Visual Art Journal pages. And they do not have to follow specific categories – they can be a mesh of everything and anything. The key is that they show your ideas and process visually. If you are going for that 7 – then take the time and energy to create visually stunning and technically impressive pages. (Not ALL pages have to be amazing, of course – who has the time? – but at least create enough to fill the IB requirements)
As we work, I have my students consider creating these KEY pages (either in their VA Journal or digitally):
- Initial Ideas and Intentions
- Observations, Technical or Media Experimentations
- Artist Explorations (or Critical Investigations)
- Idea Development
*Ideally, during your two-year creative journey, try to create 1-3 pages per week. To make your life easier in your final months, do your best to create a least 5 pages per artmaking project.
**It is desirable to make every page count! Use the pages to show not only your ideas but your technical art skills.
***Try not to include too many copied and pasted images as they can be easily added later digitally. Plus showing your OWN work is the goal. If you do use other artist’s images/artworks, cite ALL sources properly, including EVERY image
As you create your pages, try to include on each page:
- The date, title, and page number
- Writing in black ink
- both your own sketches AND writing
- a deep analysis of what you’re learning about (think critically. Do you agree? Disagree? How can you connect this to other things you’ve learned in the past?)
- your personal ideas about the topic
THE GOAL is that everything is CONNECTED. Research, planning, studio work, media investigations, and reflections are all part of your connected creative journey.
YOUR FINISHED ART JOURNAL CHECKLIST
- Artwork analysis and vocabulary: Respond to and analyze critically and contextually the function, meaning, and artistic qualities of past, present, and emerging art, using the specialist vocabulary of visual arts (with limited biographical information)
- Cultural Analysis: Analyze and compare art from different cultures and times, and consider it thoughtfully for its function and significance.
- Depth and breadth of research: Develop and present independent ideas. Demonstrate coherent, focused, and individual investigative strategies into visual qualities, ideas, and their contexts. Develop different approaches to your studies and fresh connections between them.
- Creative art-making process: Explore and develop ideas and techniques for studio work through integrated contextual study and first-hand observations. Produce personally relevant works of art that reveal evidence of exploration of ideas that reflect cultural and historical awareness. Present the work effectively and creatively and demonstrates critical observation, reflection, and discrimination.
- Integration between studio and investigations: Develop and maintain a close relationship between investigation and a purposeful, creative process in studio work.
- Technique: Demonstrate the development of an appropriate range of skills, techniques, and processes when making and analyzing images and artifacts. Develop and demonstrate technical competence and artistic qualities that challenge and extend personal boundaries and technical competence and self-direction.
- Source Citation: Used appropriate sources which cited properly and thoroughly throughout the VA Journal.
STRUGGLING TO GET STARTED? CONSIDER…..
RESEARCH A NEW ARTIST Pick a work of art that speaks to your heart, that you will use to influence your own studio work. Closely observe and analyze the artwork. Use Feldman’s Analysis to critique what you see (Describe, Analyze, Interpret, Judge). Re-create the image. Sketch out different views of the artwork (close-ups/fragments). Use the artist’s ideas and style and create other images. As you go, comment on all your work/observations/thoughts as you work. Some leading questions:
- How are the elements of art (EOA) and principles of design (POD) used?
- How is this artist’s style different or similar to another artist you’ve studied? Compare and contrast.
- What are the social/cultural contexts for this piece of art? (What is the artist trying to communicate about their culture or another culture? Are they reacting to an event, a social practice, history, or something else?)
- What is your personal connection to this piece?
- How will it connect to your theme, or how will you use what you’ve learned from this artist to create something new?
RESEARCH NEW MEDIA OR EXPERIMENT WITH TECHNIQUES What do you want to learn how to do? Watch Youtube or TikTok videos and follow along, or experiment on your own. As you experiment note your observations/thoughts along with your sketches. For example:
- Sculpt with clay or found objects?
- Learn to draw human faces?
- Find better techniques for watercolor?
- Crosshatch with pen and ink?
- Draw realistic hair?
DRAW FROM OBSERVATION The most important way to improve your observation skills is to draw what you see. IB DP VA loves to see observational work; particularly figure studies. You can find lots of timed life drawing videos on youtube to use for your studies. As always, as you go, note your observations/thoughts along with your sketches.
- What observation drawings would be relevant to your study? A few examples: people, faces, hands, feet, trees, cars, buildings, chairs, plants…
REFLECT ON YOUR PRACTICE
- Reflect on a piece you’ve just finished or a work in progress.
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of your piece?
- How are you using EOA and POD?
- What techniques did you use?
- How will you revise it to make it stronger?
- How is this piece connected to your theme?
- What does it reveal about your personal ideas?
- What artists/other ideas influenced this piece?
BRAINSTORM NEW WORKS
- Draw at least two sketches that show your plan for a new piece (it’s said that Leonardo DaVinci himself always started with at least three sketches for any new work of art.)
- How will it show your theme?
- What is your personal connection to this piece? How does it show your own ideas, experiences, emotions, and history?
- How will you show what you learned from other artists?
- What media will you use?
HAVE FUN! PLAY WITH YOUR ART. Doodle. Daydream! Write down questions or ideas you have. Make idea clouds. Share the beautiful or messy processes in your head that lead you to create!
