Pre-Course Study Diary

11/05/19 20:22
Just finished watching three videos examples of ‘mark making’ videos with Jane Lazenby at https://www.oca-student.com/course-area/drawing?taxonomy_vocabulary_9_tid=&page=2. I feel very excited to begin manipulating materials and investigating the properties of different mediums in a way that I haven’t thought about or given a great deal of thought to in previous mark making sessions. I especially enjoyed watching the water-soluble inks bleed when water was added ; I wondered what might happen if I tried to make the my indian ink bleed with other types of liquids, such as: soap, melting ice, washing-up liquid, shaving foam etc.; an experiment to be booked in the diary.

Printed out “Draw, Draw, Draw” from oca-student.com to stick in my sketch book to prompt creativity
https://www.oca-student.com/keeping-sketchbooks/draw-draw-draw

12/05/19 09:00
Spending some time looking through “Introducing Learning Logs” via oca-student.com The OCA encourages me to record my experiences, thoughts, feelings, reflect on my learning activities such as courses I attended, exhibitions visited, books read, discussions had, internet sites browsed, TV programmed watched etc. Although this list has been provided for guidance by the OCA, I feel it is by no means exhaustive. It is also strongly recommended to add personal and reflective comments about the experiences and how they may help with my studies. I truly feel this is accurate. For example, if a scientist didn’t have a hypothesis, how would she know what she was aiming to achieve during her experiment? And if by not experimenting, how would she see what other outcomes were possible? And if no reviewing of the experiment happened, how would the scientist know what was(n’t) successful and how/why it happened? Although science and art can be related, I believe in my ‘experiments’, I will have the opportunity to be a little more carefree and expressive to just ‘see what happens!’.
Reflection is important to me, not just at the end of the project, but as an ongoing piece throughout the development of my work. When looking back at the Learning Log, I will be able to see what problems I encountered and how I overcame them with adapting my techniques. It’s also important to me to keep track of where my studies took me; which websites/artists/practitioners/photographs/prints/documents gave me the inspiration for my next stage of development, not only for reference but also an evidential pathway of my understanding developing as the work progresses.

10:22
Watched “Using a Learning Log for Reflection” with Eileen Adams at https://vimeo.com/25136607. Eileen states “some people never learn from experience” and I couldn’t agree more. However, I also feel it depends on the circumstances as to how I react to a ‘learning opportunity’. I think this is something that will personally challenge me and I will have to be aware of not feeling deflated or upset when an experiment or piece of work didn’t turn out the way it ‘should have’. As my tutor Simon has stated in his email “be open-minded… don’t be afraid of making mistakes and also correcting them” It also implies that a period of learning is taking place, not only when the work is developing, but also within the reflection period immediately afterwards. From previous experience, I have learnt that for me, the most successful reflection analysis happens when the experience is still fresh in my memory, although most of the factual reflection happens a little while after when my writing is not so emotive if the project didn’t go well. So for me, successful reflection happens twice; immediately and a period of at least 24 hours after.

13/05/19 06:00
An Introduction Into Studying in HE
I’ve set up a page dedicated to my studies in this course; please see the page titled as above.

I explored the websites bridgemaneducation.com and artuk.org and found them to be a complete treasure trove; I have bookmarked these websites for future research studies as this wealth of information is overwhelming for me right now.