Keeping sketchbooks

and learning logs

Open College of the Arts

Student Support
This booklet is one of a series of guides for students studying with the OCA.

Others in the series are:

• Study skills

• Assessment and how to get qualified

• Looking at other artists

You can either download a pdf copy from our website www.oca-uk.com or ring the
office on 0800 731 2116 for a paper copy.

Cover illustration Caroline Firenza. Other images courtesy OCA students except where indicated
Keeping sketchbooks and
learning logs
This guide is essential reading for all OCA students, though you could skip the
section on sketchbooks if it is not relevant to your studies.

You may hear some tutors refer to learning logs as learning journals,
logbooks, notebooks or something similar. They all have the same
function and here they are referred to as learning logs. All OCA students
must keep learning logs and those on visual arts courses must keep
sketchbooks too. The two books have different functions. This will become
clear as you study this guide.

Sketchbook and learning log work constitute 20% of your marks for assessed work
so it is critical that you keep these elements of your study going, as well as the
main body of work coming out of your course. Even if you don’t want to be
assessed formally, your tutor will want to see how you are developing and what
your thought process is by looking at the reflections you have logged and at your
sketchbook work.

Consider using OCA’s website to keep your learning log as a ‘blog’ – the name for
an online diary. You can then create links to websites, show images as well as
writing your reflections as you study. Blogs have the advantage that your tutor can
then easily review your progress.

If you prefer to amalgamate sketchbook and learning reflections into one notebook
that’s fine, as long as you do both elements of work required.
Sketchbooks
Keeping sketchbooks
It is impossible to over-emphasise the importance of using sketchbooks as part of
your OCA learning experience. Sketchbooks will help develop your drawing skill,
and are crucial to your development as an artist. Sketchbooks are for recording
objects, places, events and everyday life and, in addition to developing your
drawing skill, working in them will develop your visual awareness and imagination.
Sketchbooks can play a variety of different roles: they can be visual diaries,
reference points, used to record travel, or be used for imaginative drawing and
doodles, or all of the above.

Types of sketchbooks
You should have some small sketchbooks, A6 or A5 or little square books. This is so
that you can always have one in your pocket or your bag. A smaller book filled
with ideas and observations is more interesting than a larger one with blank spaces.
But do have some bigger sketchbooks: A4 sketchbooks and larger. You’ll find you
use these in a different way to the smaller ones. Hardback books are strong enough
to take every day use and help contain all the bits and pieces you may put into
them. Use a rubber band to keep it together as your sketchbook begins to expand.
Make a visual diary
Think of your sketchbooks as ‘visual diaries’ and as part of a wider activity of
collecting and exploration. Try to fill at least a page a day, or at least get into the
habit of regular drawing, and always carry a sketchbook with you. Sketchbooks
should show what you have seen that has interested and intrigued you – this could
include photographs, textiles, and magazine and newspaper articles. Some
sketchbook studies will be the starting points for your work, and resources for
future reference. Make written notes in sketchbooks, perhaps, for example, a note
about texture, scale, colour, method or technique.

Don’t be precious
Sketchbooks should be essentially true visual records made up as you go along, not
compiled by sticking ‘good’ drawings in them in an effort to create a good
impression. A sketchbook will inevitably have poor drawings and paintings as well
as good ones because not everything you decide to draw will turn out to be as
good an idea as you first thought. Don’t tear out pages if something goes wrong.
You should feel unencumbered by the need to be accurate. When you are faced
with a brand new sketchbook, don’t freeze on the first page. It doesn’t have to be
clean, neat and tidy.
Work fast
Some studies in your sketchbook may have taken you several hours but others
perhaps only a few seconds. Make quick drawings and colour studies because
working at speed compels you to decide, in an instant, what is important about the
subject. Your individuality will sometimes be revealed more clearly when you are
working spontaneously in this way.

Experiment
Sketchbooks also provide an opportunity to experiment with different methods of
working. Don’t only use pencils and paints but also other drawing materials you
have. Try different colour combinations, and the effect of overlays and collage.
Using a different medium makes you look at a subject in a new way. Stick in a
photograph or photocopy or just a fragment of another image that is directly
related to research you are doing. This can trigger new ideas.

Friday, a page from the artist's sketchbook John Stanton Ward, courtesy the Bridgeman Art Library
Draw, draw, draw
Draw or paint anything you see: trees, flowers, a bicycle, a sheep, a dustbin, a cup
and saucer, the texture of old stonework, a group of figures at a bus stop, waves
breaking on a beach, shadow patterns in a sun-lit room.

• Draw something for a second or third time, perhaps in a different medium.

• Draw the same objects or figure from a different viewpoint. Draw unusual views.

• Draw the mundane: your favourite drink, your bed, your toothbrush.

• Draw people. Anyone is fair game. Draw your friends, your family, your pets.
Don’t worry if they move, you’ll get better at drawing them the more you
practice.

• Vary the size of your sketchbook work, do magnified views of things.

• Sketch details that catch your eye.

• Draw other people’s work. Go to an art gallery and sketch a picture you find
interesting. Note the colours, the composition, the style and the techniques.

• Draw a day in your life, turn it into a cartoon in windows.

• Planning the design and composition for a project in your sketchbook.

• Draw your sense of excitement, your sad feelings.

• Draw your dreams, your nightmares.

• Capture a thought or an image from your memory before it is lost.

• Make a doodle of a flower, a heart, or a squiggle.

• Use watercolours to add some colour to the stark white pages for variety. Add
colour to some drawings later on.

• Drag a light layer of acrylic paint across the page before or after drawing on it.

• Glue a background of sheet music, wrapping paper, tissue paper, sweet wrapper
or text to the page.

• Look up, look round, stay where you are, just draw!

Draw anything and everything. The more you draw the better you will be.
Make thumbnail sketches
Thumbnail sketches are quick, abbreviated drawings in any medium. It’s helpful to
draw up some boxes in your sketchbook to prepare for thumbnail work, just a few
centimetres square. Thumbnails are good memory aids and planning tools too,
excellent for gallery visits to remember key aspects of an artwork. You can also plan
compositions by trying out different versions in quick thumbnails. Use thumbnails
to plan colour schemes, just mark different combinations in each box. Don’t forget
that it is often useful to make notes alongside thumbnail sketches to help
illuminate them, especially when you look back at the work a few months later.

Practice
Use your sketchbook to try out different drawing techniques. Do negative space
exercises in your sketchbook, do a ‘blind’ contour drawing (drawing your hand (for
example) from memory without lifting your pencil from the paper). Do some 30-
second rapid sketches.

Collect and glue

Collect pictures and drawings from magazines and marketing materials that inspire
you. Photocopy photographs and drawings in library books or periodicals. Paste
these into your sketchbook. Keep things that remind you of places, people,
atmospheres and feelings: a piece of fabric, a leaf, a bus ticket, a bill. Secure them
in your sketchbook along with small sketches and notes.
Sketch and go
Create a bag full of sketching gear that is always ready for you to take out, on the
spur of the moment. Keep it small, with just the essentials in it, but make sure you
include: a sketchbook, a rubber, a drawing pen, a couple of soft pencils and a
sharpener. Add a few colouring tools if you like.

Be tidy, be messy
Some people keep very organised sketchbooks, documenting their ideas and
sketches neatly. Others are just a jumble of ideas and notes. No approach is right or
wrong, it’s just personal.

Muse
You should carry your sketchbook around with you all the time, it is your home for
personal musings. It is a refuge to draw meditatively with or without particular
purpose. It is a place for spontaneity as well as for thoughts and work that take
some considerable time.
Save old sketchbooks
Sketchbooks can jog your creativity years later and provide a record of your artistic
development. Record your thoughts about art, your work and the work of others.
Look back at old sketchbooks to spark memories, new ways of working and to see
how you have developed. Set aside time each week to examine your sketchbook.
Play with variations of things you’ve drawn or pictures you’ve pasted in from other
sources.

Look at other sketchbooks

Get glimpses of other artists’ sketchbooks to get an idea of their private thoughts,
their working methods and creative processes. Get inspired by other sketchbooks.

Leonardo da Vinci’s famous sketchbooks are filled with drawings, diagrams and
written notes of things he saw and ideas he had.

Picasso produced 178 sketchbooks in his lifetime. He used his sketchbooks to

explore themes and make compositional studies.

Henry Moore filled one of his sketchbooks with drawings of sheep that wandered
in the field just outside his studio.

A person’s first sketch or drawing often outshines attempts to refine it.

Some of your best work will be in your sketchbook.
Keeping a learning log
Your learning log is the tool you use to help you reflect on your learning and help
your tutor see how you have learned.

If you are planning to get your work assessed, it is vital that you keep a
good, thorough and comprehensive learning log. It forms 20% of your
marks and you could fail if you do not show how you arrived at your final
pieces of work by documenting the route you took to get there in your
learning log.

What is a learning log?

A learning log is a record of your own learning. It is not a formal academic piece of
work but a document that is unique to you and cannot be right or wrong. The log
helps you to record, structure, reflect upon, plan, develop and evidence your own
learning and skills development. It is not just a diary or record of ‘what you have
done’, but a record of what you have learned, tried and critically reflected upon. Its
content may be very loosely structured and only of relevance to you and your tutor.

What it looks like

The log could take a variety of forms and be any size. Bear in mind that if you
submit your work for assessment your learning log must be sent by post or courier
with your other work. An A3 or A4 sized hardbacked book is probably best.

Is there a correct way of producing a learning log?

Your learning log should be relevant to you and your studies.
Three helpful questions when you write in your log are:
• am I being honest with myself?
• is this a useful process for me?
• is this helping my own process of learning?

If the answers are ‘yes’ then your learning log is correct and right for you. If the
answers are ‘no’ then perhaps you need help, advice or guidance about your
learning log. Discuss it with your tutor.
Added extras
Your learning log can contain drawings, photocopies, postcards, press cuttings,
musical scores, and notes on visits to museums and exhibitions, readings or literary
festivals if you are studying writing, or concerts if you are studying music. It might
include your current thoughts on your subject or your enthusiasm for a particular
artist, writer or musician that you have just discovered. Just sticking a reproduction
in isn’t enough – you also need to say why it intrigues you.

Keep information from your tutor

Keep any written information you receive from your tutor in your learning log.
Students must file all their tutor reports, copies of questions they send to their
tutor and answers to these questions. That way you have a record of the dialogue
between you and your tutor. Students attending tutorials do not normally receive a
written report from their tutor until they are well into the course but OCA strongly
recommends that you make notes of comments made at tutorials.

Include details of things you have done to aid your learning.

Ask yourself questions such as:

• did it go well? Why? What did you learn?
• did it go badly? Why? What did you learn?
• how can you improve for next time?
Beginnings and endings
At the beginning of the course write in your learning log what your hopes, plans
and expectations are; when the course is completed write a brief note on what you
have achieved and how you feel your attitudes have changed.

Write about your progress too

Your learning log must contain your responses to the What have you achieved?
and check and log sections that appear at the end of every project or sets of
exercises in your course materials.

Reflect and write up your conclusions about how what you have learned is relevant
to you and how you will use the new information, knowledge, skill, or technique in
the future. This is one of the most important things to document in your learning
log. Your learning log should be a history of your progress through the course.

Show how your understanding of the subject has developed

Your learning log should show that you have an increasing grasp on the
background and history of the subject you are studying. It should show that you
have seen various artists’ works, listened to various pieces of music or read certain
writers’ work. You should be able to relate their work to your own and
demonstrate that you understand the context of their work in the history of the
subject.

Record things
Record your experiences, thoughts, feelings and reflections in your learning log:
courses you went on, exhibitions you visited, books you have read, discussions you
have had, internet sites you have looked at, television programmes you have
watched.

Don’t just record though, add your personal comments on all of these things.
Record details of problems you have encountered and solved, or not solved and
what you have learned from this.
Reflect after every learning experience
• what did I do?
• how do I think/feel about this?
• how well (or badly) did it go?
• what did I learn?
• what will I do differently next time?
• how will I do it differently next time?
• what have I achieved?
• how have I put any theory into practice?
• how does what I have been doing lead to me becoming better at a skill?
• how can I use this to plan for the future?
• how can I use this to plan new learning experiences?

Reflect now, reflect later

Personal reflection is an important part of the learning process so it is vital that you
make a habit of analysing your work and evaluating decisions every week. It is also
important for your tutor to be able to understand the processes you have been
through as you are learning. In addition to weekly reflection, ask yourself these
questions the next day or within 24-48 hours of learning something new. How you
view your learning changes over time. After a bad learning experience you may
have negative thoughts. 3-5 weeks later on you may find that you have now
overcome the negative experience and have used the learning to develop further.
Skills rarely suddenly develop or improve ‘overnight’. Gaining new knowledge and
applying it within a skills context usually takes time, effort and perseverance. A
Learning log will help you to become more aware of how you learn, what learning
tasks you enjoy and of how you think.

At first it may seem difficult to start to critically reflect upon your own
learning but over time you will find that it becomes easier. The more often
you practice the skill of self-reflection the easier it will become.
Learning how to be reflective is a useful skill
Some people will get more out of engaging in the process of producing a learning
log than other people. Research has identified that reflection can help people
change.

Changes associated with reflection

From To

Accepting Questioning

Intolerant Tolerant

Doing Thinking

Descriptive Analytical

Impulsive Diplomatic

Reserved Being more open

Unassertive Assertive

Unskilled communicators Skilled communicators

Reactive Reflective

Concrete thinking Abstract thinking

Lacking self awareness Self aware

(Adapted from C Miller, A Tomlinson, M Jones, Researching Professional Education 1994, University Of Sussex).
OCA's website www.oca-uk.com is your first stop for information about
courses, plus access to help, support, advice and tips from tutors and
other learners.

Register on the website, upload a picture if you like, and get chatting to
other students via the forum.

Find out about exhibitions and books recommended by fellow students,

discuss the state of contemporary art or the music industry, share tips on
techniques and processes, and share your thoughts on studying from
home.

Open College of the Arts

Michael Young Arts Centre

Redbrook Business Park
Wilthorpe Road
Barnsley S75 1JN

enquiries@oca-uk.com
0800 731 2116
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