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VCE Art Making and Exhibiting (Year 11) · Art Making Skills · 10m read

The Visual Arts Journal — Documenting Ideas and Progress

Your Visual Arts Journal is assessed alongside your artworks. It shows how you think, explore and make decisions.

Learning objective: Use a Visual Arts Journal to document research, experiments, reflections and the development of artworks.

By the end of this lesson you can:

  • I can document experiments with annotations.
  • I can include research about artists and ideas.
  • I can show how ideas develop over time.

A ship’s log. A ship’s log records where the ship went and why. Your journal records where your art went and why.

What to include

  • Brainstorms, mind maps and thumbnail sketches.
  • Material and technique tests with annotations.
  • Research on artists, artworks and exhibitions.
  • Photos of artworks in progress.
  • Reflections: what worked, what did not, what next.
  • Ideas for presentation and display.

GOOD ANNOTATION = WHAT I DID + HOW + RESULT + NEXT STEP.

Worked example (Easy)

Improve this annotation: "Lino print. Good."

  1. What and how. Lino print using V and U gouges; printed in black ink on cartridge paper.
  2. Result. Strong contrast, but fine lines broke off.
  3. Next step. Warm the lino to cut finer lines; try a second colour layer.

Answer: Describe tools and process, evaluate the result honestly, and plan the next step.

Common mistakes

  • Making the journal a scrapbook of pretty images Images without thinking show little. Fix: Annotate and reflect.
  • Filling it in at the end of term Reflections become vague. Fix: Update it during each session.

Practice questions

  1. Which is the most useful journal entry?

    1. A photo with no caption
    2. "Nice colours"
    3. A test with method, result and next step
    4. A blank page

    (1 marks)

  2. Explain why reflections should be written during, not after, the making process.

    (2 marks)

Summary

  • Journal = research + tests + reflections + development.
  • Annotate: what, how, result, next step.
  • Update every session.
  • Connect ideas across pages.

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