metals 322 mark rooker

sketchbooks

To help you develop and articulate your ideas, you will prepare a sketchbook for each project. This will be a packet of materials presenting your methodology work sheet, preparatory sketches, and finished drawings and models.

1) The methodology work sheet

1) Preparatory sketches:

Preparatory sketches and drawings are as important to student growth and development as any final project. These reveal the breadth and scope of the total project development effortÑa mark of creative energies and artistic development. Save all visual studies conceived during the project. Visual studies include such things as writings, sketches and drawings; whatever you generate as you develop your ideas.

a) Preparatory sketches are quick rough visual studies that aid you in developing your idea. The emphasis in these should be primarily on exploring a number of different ideas; generating as many as possible.

2) finished drawings, and models:

b) After quickly generating a variety of ideas,the one or two best of the prep sketches are defined further through finished drawings. Through these, the details of form and concept are developed and presented. These should communicate how the piece is to be constructed, what materials are to be used, the scale, shape textures, and colors used, etc.

c) From these finished drawings three dimensional scale models can be made from paper, wood, and cardboard. These help to visualize how the object will be made, how it will work with the body, and give you a "dry run" with the project to work out construction details. Since wood and paper are so much easier to work with than metal, these accurate models more than repay the time invested in them.

2) Research:

Good visual research during the development of a project idea is as important as good preparatory studies. As visual artists, we are all constantly and automatically adding to our visual vocabularies, and these naturally inform our work. However, as art students with goal-oriented projects, this process needs to be much more disciplined and deliberate. Furthermore, in order to communicate our ideas and influences to other students, the research we do needs to be documented in some way. This documentation can be through photographs, sketches, photocopies, clippings, written descriptions, etc., and should be secured in the sketchbook.

Your sketchbooks will be evaluated by the following criteria:

1) Quality and quantity of sketches

2) Quality and quantity of drawings and models

3) Use of methodology handout