Wide Research

On this page:

The timeline and the mood board should be built up in time: it takes several goes to complete them.

Think of the way you go about this like building a house in layers:

The foundations
Then the ground floor
The second floor and then the roof
Finally, fitting all the windows and doors and electrics after the main parts have been built

The timeline should be made as:

background;
years on the line;
art movements;
artists' names and dates that you are interested in or who you have covered in your work and assignments.
Then you should add some drawings of their work
Finally, complete things with some notes on what techniques and ideas they have that are an influence and impact on your work.
The Mind Map should be carried out all over and then built up as your project progresses:
DEVELOPED IN THREE LEVELS WITH A PROGRESSION OF THOUGHT
Decorated and visual with a background;
written mind map with links between text;
drawing in response to the artists;
abstract examples of techniques;
inserts with more information;
later developments with other artists;
And more writing, more drawing and painting.
In the end, it should be like a pile of things in layers which can be looked through like pulling out a drawer in a cupboard and working down through the history of what you have put in there

The timeline

The mind map should be a double-page item, much like what we did in the first year but focused on the particular time of your project.

You should have surrounding art movements, artists and the decades.

You should add to this over time. For example, if I mentioned a couple of artists to you in class, it is important to make sure that they are put on the timeline, even if you are only putting in their name as small text, written down.

You might say this artist that I mention to you, and ask you to look at, is not of interest to you ultimately but, what is important, is that you include it in your timeline as it is evidence of wider awareness.

Many other candidates in other centres do not have such a good resource of art history to call on.
Showing that you have looked at these artists adds more to the contextual meaning and understanding of your work.

For artists that you are looking at in more detail and find more important, you will want to add to your timeline transcriptions and responses as well as bigger names and detailed notes.

For example, you have looked at Emil Nolde, so you might have a small transcription of one of his pictures - this could be in colour or in black and, you could also have some written thoughts on why you like him or why you find his techniques interesting and useful for your project.

Underneath the numbers, you could add the movement ‘Expressionism’, as Emil Nolde was associated with Die Brucke and expressionism.

As ever, with Fine Art, it is important to make sure that presentation values are high.

You could use the model that we used last year which was to use a masking tape line for the number band and then keep the page in different colours but you could do other types of design and other kinds of layout come out to make your work really stand out and look the part.

See a video example of a timeline and how to improve it

Click here for:

Video 1 Timeline layout
Numbers
Artists
Movements
Video 2 Hand-drawn responses

MORE HELP: Interactive mind maps

Use the Quick mind maps and In depth mind maps to help you find out the artists and movements

2. The Mind Map

Examples of genres

3 The mind map as progression

The key idea of the mind map is that you can show your progression in thought, whether that is visually through drawing and painting or in ideas through writing

3.1 Video example: Recommended

Here is the video link for the Mind Maps and initial drawings video. https://youtu.be/vilR6Bp-d9o

I have added some more illustrations using mind mapping software so that you can see more clearly what I am talking about when I say that mind maps should:

Be all about you and your work
Show three levels of thought as a progression
Balance the needs to show your early steps in written and visual language.
Help you to create a structure that helps you explain to the moderator where you are starting from, and what your concerns, issues and interest might be

https://youtu.be/vilR6Bp-d9o

3.2 What comes next?

To stay on track and keep to the schedule, you will need to get your mind map and your initial drawings done during this half term.

After this, we will move on to Narrow Research. This will be carried out through artist pages. You will need a minimum of two artists and you will need to compare them later. I will create some materials to help you with the comparison pages.

Your artist pages will need to include:

A transcription
An original response rephrasing the image in your style using the techniques, that you have identified from the artist's work.
An analysis and abstract of parts of one of the pictures that you have transcribed showing how the techniques have been used by the artist to create effects
Some annotation of your interest and process so far

3.3 More help

You can find more help with this very useful, written and illustrated guide that I have made on all of the parts of the project. This gives you lots of explanations, examples and illustrations to help you understand each aspect as we go through the project.

4 Elements you can add to your mind map

4.1 Techniques:

This should have some actual techniques on it.
If you are looking at artists who use thick paint (impasto), then you should have some thick paint on there.
If you're looking out underpainting and colours over the top, then you should have some swatches of colour over other colours so you can see the effects.
If you're interested in collage, then you should have some collage elements in there as well.
You can add to this over time, but you should make a start now.
As with all of these things it is better to do “little and often” rather than try to hit it in one big go at the end when you are pushed and stretched.

4.2 Artists:

Here, you should again, have the artists that interest you as you work through your project.
You can layer these.
You might start off with one or two artists, and then mid project, add some more.
At the end you might add in others.
You can put in more transcriptions, and responses to their work here. You can also cite the specific techniques that they use.
These should in some way relate to the techniques section.
You can draw links and lines across.

4.3 Content:

this is what is of interest to you in your project:

What is your project about?
What is the theme?
How are you going to represent it?
How have you adopted and adapted the techniques that you have researched in artists to express this thing?
Why are you interested in this particular subject area?
Why do you think the artists that you have looked at are more interesting than others?
Why do they work well for your theme?
How are you going to develop their ideas to make your own?

Try to answer as many of these questions as possible. Remember, as ever, answering ‘why’ and ‘how’ is more important than just what.

As well as this, you can produce coloured versions or visual language versions of your answers as much as written ones.

4.4 Development:

In this part of the mood board, you should include visual language which shows your development.

It shows the stages of your progress through the project.

It shows what you have done at different points in terms of the materials and in terms of the images.

You can annotate this as well, and you can say where you going and why, where you have been and what you made of that.

Remember, it's important that you maintain a ratio of 75% visual language to 25% writing at any point in your sketchbook. So make your mood board / your mind map mostly visual language.

If you work through this bit by bit, you should have plenty of evidence for their first assessment which has to be conducted at half term. This will help you achieve a good grade for that assessment.

It's important not to feel overwhelmed by this.

When you look at a lot of writing like this it can feel as though there is a lot to be done.
But, if you look at this bit by bit.
You will see that there is actually not very much there to do and that you know how to do it all.

5 Important points to remember

Make it look good:

Remember, it is important to try to design and present your work in a visually engaging fashion.
You are not merely a humanities or science student, you are a Fine Artist.
Visual design is something you understand and something that is important to you. You need to express that in your work.

Think about the meaning of the work that you look at:

How did the artist present the ideas?
You might like the art but you might not like the way they present their ideas.

Give evidence of your thoughts:

Remember, many of them come from earlier times when people thought differently.
We might find their ideas today uncomfortable or unacceptable.
You can cite this because you need to show that you are aware of it.

Like the art, not the artist

It is perfectly acceptable to like the work of an artist, and also despise the way they present their vision of the world:

For example, Caravaggio stabbed someone to death over a game of tennis.
Gustav Klimt was very accomplished in drawing and in painting but his views on sexuality and his relationship to women are at best questionable and at worst offensive if not bordering on abusive.
Both painted great paintings but they are not someone that you would want to spend much time with.

Ask yourself some questions:

Similarly, many of the artists of the past had deplorable views on race, ( Emil Nolde was an ardent Nazi) or of the role of women in life and in society.
Does that show in their work?
What do you think?
Can you like an artwork whilst disagreeing with its representation of an ideology (point of view, argument, world view)?
You need to provide evidence of everything of which you are aware.

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