Your first sketchbook of the second year should begin in the summer and you should expect to go on a journey with it. You won't know what you want to do, to begin with, and you should expect to know what you really want to do as a personal investigation project at this point. That knowledge will come best from the work that you put in this first sketchbook. This is where you will lay the groundwork and the best way to prepare for the future is to focus on doing things: drawing, painting, printing, ripping, tearing, cutting, gluing for example. Make sure that you push images through a series of media and developmental approaches. Try line drawings, pen and ink drawings, pastels, two colours, three colours, full colour. Work at different scales: quarter page, half page, full-page and double-page. Try to push the same image, or similar images, through sequences.
On the second year of your A level, you should work through and produce a series of images that run in sequences through the same image, the same visual motif and which explore media, materials, colour, mark-making and space. Your sketchbook can be neat and tidy or loose and scrappy - it doesn't matter. What matters is the energy and density of your pages. You must look as though you care about what you do and you are involved in its production...
This is the first sketchbook of the second year and shows the journey from intial starting points through:
Wide Research
Narrow Research
Exploration and experimentation of techniques, processes and media
Purposeful development - the adaptation and adoption of what ahs been identified, experimented with and selected for application to the student's own work.
This sketchbook finished before the student moves onto refinement and the final pieces of the year
Another student who worked on their Personal Investigation Project.
These two videos include all the evidence for the key assessment points and are addressed in a very personal fashion.