WHAT

AND WHY IS VISUAL JOURALING?

Visual journaling is a process.
Visual journaling is a gathering of resource material. This visual journal is a place
where you work out your themes and ideas that are developing your artistic
process.

HOW TO
Each week, you will create a photo-collage based on a theme of your choosing, using
an element of art or a visual strategy
Each Monday, we will consider a new visual element or strategy. For example, we
may talk about background, middleground, and foreground or repetition or gaze.
Your work must incorporate that visual strategy somehow in its organization.

You MUST use some photographic material Printouts, photos from magazines or
newspaper, your own photos, etc. (I have lots of photographic material you can use
in my collage station. You are welcome to grab materials at any time.)

Your journal is a place where ideas can be kept in the written form as well as
visually, writing down and recording what you learn means that you have a book of
references available to you at any time. Supplement your photos with scribbles,
poems, haikus, prose, and songs.

Collect ideas by jotting them down come back to them at a later date when that
intuition or inspiration becomes relevant to the work at hand. Regard your journal
as your personal collection of experimentations. If you would like, keep technical
notes while you are learning about different artistic theories.


THEME/STYLE
This semester-long assignment will nurture your artistic development and help you
gain a sense of your own development and growth over time.

Patterns and relationships can reveal what is what is influencing and affecting you.
Repetition of ideas create visual themes.
The working out of a theme gives the artist as sense of completion when that
thematic response has been followed to its logical conclusion.

Self-questioning will reveal your personal style and make it interesting. Style is
revealed through artistic exploration. When you observe your own work and
working style, you gain a sense of personal style. Whatever is helping shape your
thoughts and ideas at the time is relevant and may become useful.