ITAP 4

RVJ- draw, work by hand/develop visual language

A reflective visual journal is an indispensable tool for any artists, and illustrators especially. Our whole work is based on a visual language that is developed only with time and constant practice. A journal is the place where we can sketch, experiment, and stick down interesting things, develop ideas and take them from just a mere doodle to a semi-final stage. It is the one place where all our ideas are set down to develop, leave, and find again. While I might be absolutely stunned by a work of art, I find visual journals far more interesting because they show the process, and the ideas that have made the final outcome what it is. It is a place where we, as artists, can safely experiment to broaden our visual language and use different materials.

Drawing and working by hand is an essential part of an artist’s creative process. It gets our right brain into gear, something that in this bureaucratic world happens very rarely. In a single action it engages hand, eye, and brain. As artist and as people we are always extremely self conscious about our outcome, about producing something that is “good enough” even if it’s just on a napkin in a café. An rvj is the place to get over that self consciousness and self judgment, and be free to experiment and get used to doodling for ideas. And drawing by hand is the simplest way to get our creativeness going. It doesn’t matter if you’re no Leonardo Da Vinci, getting used to drawing by hand is a precious habit to get into.

Thinking in terms of images instead of words involves a completely different part of the brain. The right brain is the creative half, the left brain is the evaluative half. School has taught us to work with words, so that is what comes more natural to us, but it is important to teach ourselves to work visually, using images instead of text. Images can make complex ideas much simpler and comprehensible, and are far more effective than describing something in words. Commoncraft demonstrate this perfectly. Working visually does not obviously mean cutting out words completely, but integrating text with images. Words can be used to evaluate your work after having tried out different possibilities, or as an integrating part of an image. But the only way to be able to create an effective visual language is practice and being able to recognise a visual vocabulary, a set of signs that can get whatever message we need t convey across to the receiver, even if that is just us, the artists.

(well, ok, zombies might not be a complex idea, but you get the point)