ITAP Lecture 1 : Reflective Visual Journal (Principle 2: Utilise your creative brain)

Principle 5.
Utilise your creative brain
I was really interested and intrigued by the lecture about brain functions. It is amazing how one part of our brain can work differently to the other. As been told on the lecture that one can let us develop creative actions, and explorations through "play and fun". The other one is the thinking and evaluating part. Using them both together as "one" can help us create an creative as well as intellectual piece.

As the image here is showing the left part of the brain is like accountancy office, which means there is a lot of evaluating, question asking and problem solving in this part, which seems to be just straightforward thinking. The colourful and joyful looking part of the brain, which is left hand side, is the experimenting part. It has been described as child at play during the lecture. We need both of those brain functions in order to be creative and realistic. The parts of the brain seem to be separate, because of the jobs they do, however they are still connected as “playful” part does its task, while the “accountancy” part will evaluate whole process of doing. Using both of the brain functions effectively will affect our creativity and improve it. I tried to apply the whole process in my journal, firstly to play with the materials and ideas I had and then I tried to think critically about it, and see whether the idea will work. Here is the page of my journal showing this method being applied:

This is the page I have used towards the ideas of my “dummy” books, which were set to do during the illustration. I decided to do a sample of a pop-up book and then see how will it work as a magazine. I have done it double spread so I had two pages which I would write little annotations in. I have used one as “yes” and the other as “no”. This helped me to visually see positives and negatives about the work.

This is another page from my journal, showing another “play time”. I was exploring different ways of spray painting and using ink, felt pens and charcoal in order to find out a title for a magazine. None of the ideas really worked, but this actually allowed me to see why they didn’t work. I also added some evaluative annotations.







I tried to apply this principle in my journal as much as I could, as it helps so explore my ideas in better depth and helps to figure out the ways things might work or might not work.

ITAP Lecture 1 : Reflective Visual Journal (Principle 1: Draw. Work by hand)

On Tuesday 27th of September I have attended an informative lecture about creation and development of Reflective Visual Journal (RVJ). We started off with a quotation of Pablo Picasso words which are quite intrigue. “I began with an idea and then it becomes something else”, this proves to us that over time, we can achieve something completely different than we originally planned to; hence we need RVJs to help us throughout the journey of developing and creating new ideas.

There were five principles during the lecture, I have pick two which mostly interested me and decided to write about them.

Principle 1: Draw. Work by hand

Before in my studies I was sure not everyone can visualise their ideas through drawing, and you have to be especially talented to do this. I learned that this is not true. Everyone can draw in a way it suits them as an individual. Replacing text by drawings is much more visually appealing and lets us explore ourselves more as text can be limited and our imagination isn’t. 

In my RVJ I have used both drawings and text to make my ideas appeal to me and others more effectively:

 

All drawings in my RVJ have and will have their purpose; they won’t be just random doodles so my Journal looks attractive. Drawing can be easier changed than a text and also imagination works on higher level if we look at the visualised idea we have created. Ever get stuck on the idea exploration, one move of the rubber and the whole image can be changed, however in text we have to read, imagine and rewrite, which can be hard, seeming as not everyone is literate. Therefore drawing and sketching the ideas out is better problem solver than describing those using words which are limited.

Using hand helps us to explore our creativity better. I am aware that now days, computers, are developed onto quite high standard, letting us change, edit or even remove things with one click of the mouse, however this is still not the same as using traditional methods. Using the computer doesn’t give you a feeling of satisfaction you get when you achieve something good, because this was done by a machine not your own hand. Computers are and always will be limited compared to what human’s imagination and brain can achieve. We cannot play with different materials while using digital methods and this makes us loose on the fun, play and exploration aspects.