My day job seems to be taking up far too many hours at the moment and although I'm still just managing to squeeze the minimum eight hours work on the course in each week I'm finding it incredibly difficult to keep a sense of continuity going. Also, having read a number of forum posts relating to sketchbooks, logs and assessment presentation, I realised I had to get to grips -earlier rather than later- with a system of cross-referencing which works for me and will hopefully make sense to tutor and assessment board alike.
As my previous experience has been with various NVQ related courses, I'm used to having to relate evidence to a particular point on the evidence matrix, so earlier this week I worked through the entire first assignment and mapped it out as a series of exercises (I defined 31 including the research points and the check & log stages) before reaching the final assessed project. This works for me as I now have a definite structure to record where I have got to on the course, and whether I have sufficient supporting evidence for each stage. I choose to aim for a minimum of three pieces which support each stage, and each will be numbered and cross-referenced to my breakdown of the learning objectives.
What has already become clear is that I have not yet got into the habit of a) keeping a sketchbook regularly (I haven't up to now used one more than occasionally- I only produced six in 2 years of A level- and not many more in the 20 yrs+ since) and b) while I am producing finished studies I'm not writing down what my thoughts and feelings are to the extent that I probably should- not entirely sure how I would do this...
There are also a few other points on the forums that I have rather strong feelings about. I have never used a sketchbook as other than a collection of drawings/paintings. It would not occur to me to stick pictures and postcards into it as I am not a scrapbooker- my postcards are kept in a bundle in a filing box, and pictures I like are either saved online or ripped from magazines and eventually collected into a folder, with a few getting mislaid along the way. Drawings on loose bits of paper stay loose- if I work on pastel paper, for instance, I pull the selected piece from the pad and it stays loose. Think I'm going to have to organise a ringbinder for those.
I'm also against using one sketchbook for everything, I prefer to keep one per theme, so at the present moment I have one solely for Geevor Mine, one for Assignment 1 stuff (it has a few random pages in the front as I already had it) one for still life work (its a square format and I like working with squares), one for landscapes and one for life drawing. I do have a pocket size one which occasionally I have opportunity to use at work- I carry a small item with me in case I get a spare half hour, such as a broken shell or pine cone, together with a pencil and drawing pen.
I select up to 2 sketchbooks to take out with me (weight factor) depending where I'm going and also usually have a folder with some coloured pastel paper with me. I'm conscious of the fact that if I have to send a book for assessment I will not have it for a fair while and that is a very alien concept to me, even though I am now photographing each page as it comes about.
The biggest struggle I have is drawing "lots of 5cm squares" and filling them in with whatever is asked. The squares are not the problem- I usually dry up on ideas by #3! (Maybe I should try circles?) I do know that I need to do some back-tracking here and get them pesky squares filled in!
Anyway I'm counting down next week till I have a week off so hopefully I will get the creative flow going and do some serious catch-up on coursework...
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