Sketchbook Inquiry
Objective
Prepare for your next sustained investigation by answering what you are trying to say, and how are you going to say it.
Add the following to your sketchbook and website:
Inquiry Question: State your question as it currently stands.
Mind Map (1 pt):
- Start with your next approach to your inquiry question in the center & radiate outward (branch ideas, don’t just list them)
- Include things like emotions, symbolism, subjects, settings, design tools, materials, influences, & compositions
- Use words & symbols together
- Show connections & relationships with lines/branches
- Push for quantity so good ideas emerge
Practice (3 pts):
- Use a template to help plan the layout of your 2 pages
- Analyze & replicate artist techniques, media, or visual traits
- Build technical control through repetition & study
- Focus on clarity, precision, & consistency (understand how your tools behave)
- Revise your approach to improve control or accuracy
- Label & annotate everything
Experimentation (3 pts):
- Use a template to help plan the layout of your 2 pages
- Find new possibilities through risk & play
- Take what worked in practice & push it beyond comfort
- Combine, distort, or remix materials, techniques, or concepts
- Embrace failure & discovery
- Revise by refining what’s effective & discarding what’s not
- Label & annotate everything
4) Design (3 pts):
- Synthesize everything you’ve learned so far to create 3 carefully designed color thumbnail sketches
- Label each with your chosen composition archetypes or rules
- Explore design tools & how to create the focal point
- Show clear storytelling: how do the composition choices & design tools help communicate your idea?
- Annotate decisions: “This framing isolates the subject…”
“This color leads the eye too far away from…”