Sketchbooks

Sketchbooks

Do you ever doodle while you’re on the phone, while lesson planning, or in a meeting ?

Thinking books

Idea books

Journals

Diaries Painting is another way

of keeping a diary. -Pablo Picasso

Sketchbooks have differing names, forms, and purposes...

Christian Slade, Illustrator

I have been addicted to sketchbooks my whole life.  In the early years, the books held drawings of favorite cartoon characters from TV, cartoons, and toys.  I decided to hold off on drawing from my imagination and focus heavily on life drawing. I always keep one sketchbook that I consider the "formal" one.  I also keep many cheap spiral bound pads around and fill them with ideas and random phone doodles. 

Simon Unwin, Architect

I carry my sketchbook everywhere. I often try to draw the plan and section of a building I am visiting, just so that I understand it better and get to know how it works.

Laura Trinkle - Mulcahy, Scientist For a scientist, it is very important to keep some form of a lab notebook.  When I am writing a paper discussing lab results, I inevitably have forgotten the important details, and my lab notebook becomes a lifesaver.  I fill in the date every morning and then jot down details about experiments that I carry out that day.  I also paste in the results if I have them, such as printouts, graphs, and pictures. 

Artists of differing nationalities and backgrounds

Christine Castro Hughes, Artist, Filipino My journals are a record of my life, but by no means a complete one.  Once in a while, I make a masterpiece, but usually I just make a mess.  I keep my journals to remind myself what is good and beautiful in the world. Blank pages definitely can be intimidating to me.  The best first pages are the ones where I don't think too much, where I just have fun.

Rama Hughes, Artist American Even if you don't like the physical results, drawing slows you down and helps you appreciate things that you would never notice otherwise.   I pride myself on really looking at things. I really study faces and details.

Mattias Adolfsson, ArtistSwedish

For me, the web is like a substitute for people flipping through my book.  I try to update my blog daily so I have to produce at least one spread each day. My sketchbooks are my playground. I tend to draw from my imagination rather than reality.

Sophie MerrillPrimary school teacher I encourage the children to change the pages in their sketchbooks by adding images, brown paper, tissue paper or string, or folding or ripping their pages.  I do this as many children can feel daunted by being presented with a blank piece of white paper. More often than not it also stops children constantly requesting a rubber or thinking they can't draw.

Sketchbooks in the Primary

Sophie Merrill Primary school teacher It is always important that while children are doing this, they are noting in their books what they are trying to create, what materials they used and how, and whether they think what they have done is effective. This strongly develops the children's evaluation skills, which transfer across all subjects. 

The school’s programme of inquiry provides a relevant and authentic context for students to create and respond to arts. Wherever possible, arts should be taught through the units of inquiry and should support students’ inquiries.

Regardless of whether arts are being taught within or outside the programme of inquiry, it is believed that purposeful inquiry is the best way to learn. The starting point should always be students’ prior experiences and current understanding. When teachers plan learning experiences that enable students to develop artistically, students are able to make connections, apply their learning, and transfer their conceptual understanding to new situations.

The term “Visual Arts” is used to describe practices that have been more traditionally described in education as “Art, Craft and Design”. It is important that students are exposed to a broad range of experiences that illustrate the field of visual arts, including architecture, bookmaking, ceramics, collage, costume design, drawing, graphic design, film, illustration, industrial design, installation, jewellery, land art, mask making, metalwork, painting, papermaking, performance art, photography, printmaking, sculpture, set design, textiles and woodwork.

Students will begin to appreciate the depth and breadth of the field by experiencing visual arts created by diverse artists, locally and globally, now and in the past, by women and men, and by people of different backgrounds. In visual arts, the role of the sketchbook is integral to this process. The sketchbook provides a space for students to take ownership of their learning, to creatively explore personal interests and to develop their own style. The PYP recognizes the range of forms a sketchbook may take, reaching beyond the physical book to possibly include new media, sound and film.

-Thinking Skills and Integration

- Differing Forms and Mixed Media

-Varying formats of Sketchbooks, an integral part of the Visual Arts programme

From the Arts Scope and Sequence

Form- Size, binding, cover, pages, premade or classmade

Ownership - Where kept, when used, rules, control

Permanance - Removable pages? Ripping out, covering up, adding pages, rules

Time span - When and for how long?  

Integration - What other subjects can be explored visually? Which Units of Inquiry?

Take a minute to think (and sketch...)

ISL Primary Arts Sketchbook Guidelines - agreed upon August 2011Students will keep a sketchbook

used for exploration of visual arts content, with possible relevant integration into other subject areas.

Students should use this sketchbook for a period of at least 6 weeks(but sketchbooks can of course be used all year.)

ISL Primary Arts Sketchbook Guidelines – agreed upon August 2011

The sketchbook should also contain at least one exploration of a “responding” learning outcome.

For Example...Taken from the Learning Continuum for Responding

(A learner may exhibit a range of learning outcomes from various phases at any one time.)

Phase 2 Learning Outcomes

Learners:• enjoy experiencing artworks

• show curiosity and ask questions about artworks

• describe what they notice about an artwork

• identify the materials and processes used in the creation of an artwork

• analyse the relationships within an artwork and construct meanings

• communicate their initial responses to an artwork in visual, oral or physical modes

• make personal connections to artworks

• express opinions about an artwork

• create artwork in response to a variety of stimuli.

Let’s try a sample...

Sample pages and PDF notes from our Art textbooks are available in: Primary General/Primary Curriculum Binder/Section 7 Arts