Sketchbook writing, who’s it for?

I’ve been tutoring an A-Level student for the past few days and the main area we worked on was sketchbook writing, particularly reflective writing and evaluation. He’s a very articulate student who speaks well about his own practice as well as other’s, however the writing stumps him.

This problem isn’t isolated to this student, or A-Level students in general. We can all relate to the block that occurs when you have to translate thoughts into writing, particularly if it’s not your strong suit. I have plenty of half-baked blog posts I’ve yet to finish, using ideas that seemed so strong and meaningful in my mind but then manifested as knotted and fragmented thoughts. That’s the blessing and curse of writing; it forces you to order and reorder your thinking, and in the process it exposes the gaps, holes and overlooked parts, requiring you to thoroughly unpick what you want to say and why. Like everything, writing requires focus and purpose, and this I feel is the root of the problem.

But before I delve into that, I’d like to determine why writing about art is useful. (I’m talking mainly about writing in sketchbooks or equivalent as opposed to an academic paper or essay, but there are crossovers.) Art is a slippery subject, forever moving its boundaries, evolving its function and widening its interpretation. Questions like; ‘what is art? How do you determine the value of an artwork? What makes an artwork good?’ no longer have definitive answers. When there aren’t limits it’s overwhelming and impossible to decide on a course of action, so you have to create your own boundaries and guidelines. Writing is a way of exploring potential answers, complexities and subjectivity of the discipline. Through writing you can focus your interests and research and then begin to unpick your own answers to the big questions and the paradigms which you work under. This can come full circle as art writing can fuel the evolution of art and allow it to develop and morph, as discussed in Art as a Form of Knowledge and as a Creative Process, by Paolo Legrenzi and Alessandra Jacomuzzi:

“…consider art as a cognitive (thought) process bound by constraints. The history of art evolves by progressively breaking down constraints, so that works of art can be created that flout proceeding rules.”

Writing about your own work has a similar importance, summed up beautifully in the blurb for The MIT Press’ Writing Art:

“Writings by artists convey a specific type of knowledge or way of thinking about artistic practice that the writings of academic and professional observers do not. It is not just a matter of artists’ texts filling discursive gaps between critical writing and artistic production; it is also a question of texts by artists creating intellectual, political, and cultural possibilities that would not otherwise exist. The books in this series remind us that art’s manifestations and meanings are rendered more complex when artists’ voices are heard, and when artists engage in direct debate and dialogue with each other, the public, and scholars.”

In order to make meaningful work you have to make a lot of decisions based on your own opinions and thoughts, and writing focuses your investigations and allows you to articulate and document your progress towards your answers. To pull this back to A-Level, the AQA assessment objectives definitely align with this and help to prioritise a focused exploration of art, so where does the problem lie?

We sometimes fall into the trap of treating all writing as evidence for a grade. When we read a student’s writing we tend to have the marking scheme in mind, and so we align all of their sketchbook writing with this, and the better it fits the more successful the writing is. Students then determine the purpose is to communicate to an unknown entity (the moderator) their eligibility for a grade. It’s akin to CV cover letters or reports; the writing provides a brief description and explanation to fulfil the criteria, with evidence to back up or validate what’s been written. It’s linear, concise and contains only what is necessary. In brief, the writing is seen to benefit someone else and not the student, the opposite of sketchbook writing.

An art practice is messy, both literally and metaphorically. Ideas collide with materials with varying success; new ideas emerge and take priority or fall by the wayside; ideas warp during their manifestation and take on new meanings when presented. It’s hardly a linear and organised process, so why should the writing be? Sketchbook writing should happen alongside practical experimentation, as it will inform the lines of enquiry and focus the artist to explore specific questions and ideas. An art practice develops the artist’s own visual language, and the writing is an extension of this, so it should follow that the writing compliments the artist’s way of working. Personal writing could take the form of a mind map, a pile of post-it notes, a journal or a murder mystery style noticeboard with scrawled notes and string. It takes a while to find a method that fits, and it may be that different ones are used depending on the reason or function of the writing.

I believe A-Level students should be taught to write for personal development first and then how to transform this into writing for the marker. I took this approach with my student, beginning with a sheet of notes that were separate from their sketchbook so they wouldn’t be concerned about the presentation or structure. We talked and wrote notes based on what we discussed, as their strength lies in verbal communication. We then went through various methods of writing that helped connect the ideas, including mind maps, flow charts and a hybrid of Pictionary and bullet points. It took a few translations before we got to a point where it morphed into more formal and cohesive writing that suited the sketchbook. (In hindsight, examples of artist’s sketchbooks would be useful at this point, for instance Grayson Perry’s: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/feb/19/inside-grayson-perrys-sketchbook). Finally, after a lot of shuffling and reordering, questions and answers we narrowed it down to a cohesive and clear piece of sketchbook writing for the benefit of the marker. I felt like it was a success, as the process fed into the development of their work and the final text will help to clearly communicate his thoughts to the marker. We also determined a good, immediate method for recording thoughts when making would be via Dictaphone, which could then be used in writing.

It felt like a good day’s work when the student was writing the final draft, which included what they thought the distinction between art and photography was, they began thinking of other questions they needed to explore, and scrawled them on a piece of paper for later consideration.