Exploring Sketchbooks/Animating the Archives — Thoughts

I wanted to watch this Inspirational piece this week because I very much agree that art is a big inspiration for Photography as it can help you expand your ideas and think differently about how we see the world and the way we might frame and image or even the way we portray the subject.

I picked more quotes out of this piece than I normally do as I agree with what they are saying and the way they talk about the sketchbooks is pretty much hitting the nail on the head. The people describe the sketchbooks as “little creative spaces” where you are “allowed to make mistakes in a sketchbook”, “a place where mistakes are encouraged.” By having a sketchbook you are able to experiment and try new things which is the best way to learn and then you will grow and become a better artist. This crosses over with Photography as well as the more we create, work, the more we learn, the more we create our own style and the better artist we become.

One of the people on the talk talked about how by having a sketchbook can help “organise my mind through the processes.” What I think she is talking about is the processes of creating and expanding the ideas that we can have and the idea can begin as just a thought or even jotting down something that we have seen or that we have heard and then beginning that “process” and turning that one line into a fully fledged idea.

Being able to use other peoples sketchbooks, especially established artists is very important to new artists as they are beginning so they can learn how the process is done by others that have been able to establish themselves and can take ideas of the process from them. As they begin they will learn a way that works best for them by using techniques that others know. “Being able to see established artists sketchbooks and seeing how they got to a final piece, thats really valuable, especially to someone who is learning to make art.” I think that photographers could learn something from these sketchbooks. I think that we could learn about how we could show a story in a new way. Obviously there are limits to what we can go to as an image that was drawn could be unattainable to show through taking an image but there may be a hidden message or a way that a drawing is framed that we could take and use in our work. Even the process that is used to creating ideas could be used.

One more quote that I picked up from this short video is, “Art education is about giving someone some resources and some skills and teaching them these, then they can develop more and more and more and then make it more and more personal.” This can relate to photography as well and all art. This is because the in photography we can be given the base tools of learning how the camera is controlled and the different settings, the different compositional techniques and maybe a trick or two with the equipment, then we can begin to develop more and more and more. We can begin to create our own techniques and styles and make something of our own. Then maybe become established at some stage to then have new creatives and artists use our tools and techniques to begin the cycle again.