Lesson video

Hello, my name's Mrs. Alton.

Welcome to this lesson on Art and Design.

Today we're gonna be learning all about selecting inspirational source material.

And that's from the unit "Foundation Workshops: Selecting Primary Sources and Recording from Observations." So let's get started.

By the end of today's lesson, I hope that you can respond to different sources, and share ideas to identify themes and connections.

Let's look at some keywords for today.

Source are the materials, references, and inspirations that artists research for their work.

Themes are the specific subject, or content, that the artwork focuses on.

Respond is how you react or engage with something, forming an interpretation, or personal reaction based upon it.

The lesson today has been broken down into two parts.

The first part is selecting and presenting sources.

And the second part is responding to artists as a source of inspiration.

So let's look at part one.

Assessment One in GCSE Art focuses on how you gather sources of inspiration.

It's about how you use sources to inspire your ideas.

It's also about how you investigate and respond to exploring these sources.

So that idea responding, how do you form your own opinions based on what you found out? And that can be through sketchbooks, through your research, and through your experimentation.

It's also about demonstrating critical understanding.

And that's about thinking deeply, questioning, and reflecting on your sources of work.

Artists might get ideas for an art project by being inspired by many different sources.

Jacob here is inspired by his photography, his patterns, or patterns in nature, and going to galleries, and looking at the work of other artists.

And this allows his project to develop naturally as he gathers all of these sources to see what directions or what connections they can give him in terms of the direction of his project.

A quick true or false question.

"Artists always start with a fixed idea for their work." Is that true or false? Well done if you said false.

Can you think why? Well done if you said, like Jacob, sometimes artists gather inspiration from a wide variety of sources, and that allows their project to develop naturally as they go on, and maybe they won't have that kind of fixed idea in their mind when they start.

So in art and design, it's important to understand the difference from primary sources and secondary sources.

Primary sources are things that you study from direct experience.

So it may be things even like you might have on your desk in front of you.

Or if you were looking out the window, studying what you could see outside.

It's things that you are experiencing in front of you.

This is also including photographs that you've taken yourself.

So that could be seen as a primary source.

And primary sources allow you to make many decisions about how you represent your subject.

So it may be that you decide on the arrangement, the composition of the objects that you're recording.

Or that you consider colour, light, any of the art elements, in the way that you're representing your subjects.

And this is opposed to secondary sources, which are materials produced by somebody else.

So these might include images that you've got off the Internet, or maybe even a newspaper article, somebody else's photograph, a film, music, or any type of artwork that you're referencing.

And in your project, it's important to have a good balance of both primary sources, which show you making decisions, and secondary sources, where you're getting inspiration from other sources as well.

The same source, or sources, can inspire different ideas.

So it just depends on how the artists might interpret them.

Artists sometimes focus on a theme.

Sofia is working with a source of music.

And she wants to focus on the theme of how music makes her feel.

Like using a lyric from her favourite song.

Jacob is also looking at the source of music.

But he's gonna look at musical instruments, and focus on the theme of shape and form.

So actually recording what the instruments look like.

So here we can see that both students are starting with the same source, which is the idea of music, but they're developing that idea into particular themes that are relevant to their interests.

A true or false question.

"Using the same source material creates the same ideas and work." Is that true or false? Well done if you said false.

Personal experiences, the skills and the choices that you make in terms of technique, colour, style, and the chosen theme, can lead to very different results, even with the same inspiration or the same source material.

Studio spaces often feature walls and areas filled with sources of inspiration.

Some more sources of inspiration might include looking at other artists, designers, and craft people.

It may be things that happen in your local community, maybe like an event.

It could be music and culture, things that often will inspire us, and inspire our creativity.

Maybe a walk in your local area.

So thinking about how your environment might have an impact, or create a source of inspiration for you.

Or maybe even a conversation with a family member or friend.

And that could be something about how the history of a place affects the way that you view it or as a source of inspiration for a project.

Let's take a look at this image.

What do you notice about this artist's studio? Is it what you expect from an artist's studio? This is an example of how artist's studios can be on any size, scale, or shape.

They can even be a small corner of a room or a space.

What might the theme of these sources be in this example? You may have noticed that there's quite a few images of portraiture, so maybe that could be a theme in this artist's work.

Lucas says, "I've seen sculptures in parks made from different materials." Artists that inspire you do not have to be famous.

They can be local, or have work that's shown in your community, like these examples here.

Where have you seen artwork before? Have a think in your local area.

Is there a sculpture or a piece of art it's well known for? If you're not sure, maybe you could find out.

Artist Jade Fadojutimi views her work as personal reflections, shaped by the objects, images, writing, colours, and soundtracks that she surrounds herself with.

So in her artist studio, she has all of her personal things that really have an impact on the work, the paintings, that she creates.

These elements of her environment serve as inspiration, fueling her creativity, and sparking new ideas.

How do sources help guide the creation of artwork? Is it A, by giving artists strict rules to follow? B, by inspiring ideas, themes, and creative choices? Or C, by limiting the artist's imagination? Have a think.

Well done if you said B, by inspiring ideas, themes, and creative choices.

So over to you for our first task.

Think about what personally inspires your art.

You could write a list of places to visit to find your sources.

So maybe think about researching, is there a local exhibition you could go to? Or maybe some work that you could visit in your local community? Secondly, select and gather images.

So that might include sketches or quotes from a wide variety of sources.

In Assessment Objective One, the exam board want to see sophisticated reference to contextual sources.

So really think about all the wide variety of sources that you could reference as you collect inspiration for your project.

Pause the video here, while you collect, and think about your sources.

So at this point, you may have a collection of those quotes, pictures, images, sources of inspiration for your work.

And you may have listed things like galleries, local exhibitions, Internet research, photography, quotes from favourite books, or quotes from artists, that you can use as inspiration.

The second part of our task is creating a digital, or physical display of your chosen sources.

So for this, you could sort your images, quotes, and sketches, looking for visual connections, and reflecting on emerging themes.

You might decide to organise your work by taping images onto a wall space.

So thinking about how that might allow you to see the bigger picture, and make connections between the things that interest you, that inspire you.

You may have a visual diary, and decide to map out all these different sources, a bit like a visual mood board.

And that might help you to see common themes that start appearing.

Or maybe you enjoy working digitally.

There are so many great platforms where you can upload your sources of inspiration, and map them out to see connections.

Pause the video here while you work on presenting your sources of inspiration.

So for this activity, your work may have looked something like this.

In this illustration, we can see the sources of inspiration have been taped to a pinboard, so that the student can start to see connections in their themes.

And they've even written a few notes here, so they can start to record their ideas and how they're thinking.

Aisha says that she decided to arrange her sources on the wall, because it helped to see the bigger picture, and make connections between key ideas in her work.

In this example, Izzy said, "I chose sources to collage in my visual diary.

It gave me opportunity to explore themes of texture and shape." So she's really thinking about these key ideas that keep coming up for her when she looks at different sources of inspiration.

And in this example, Lucas says, "The digital display helped me organise my sources into categories, and allowed me to easily note down my ideas," as he went along.

Let's look at the second learning cycle for this lesson.

Responding to artists as a source of inspiration.

So artists, craft people and designers can be sources of inspiration in many different ways.

It might be the themes that they look at might be a real inspiration to us.

Maybe the concepts which are about their underlying ideas to their work or the philosophy explored in the artworks.

Or maybe it's about the techniques they use or the materials an artist use that really inspires us in our own practise.

Often when students need to find a reference point, it's really hard to find an artist that meets all of our needs in terms of where we would like to take our own project.

And often we don't actually need to do that.

You can find an artist whose maybe theme inspires you.

You might find another artist whose concept inspires you.

And another one where you're just interested in the techniques.

So it's often really difficult to find all three in one artist's reference point.

So thinking about with an open mind, if you were to visit a gallery, for instance, seeing where you're drawn to, and then seeing why are you actually inspired by that source material, and picking out smaller parts of it.

So you might find it more effective just to find one artist who inspires your theme.

One who inspires your concept.

And one who inspires your techniques and use of materials.

And Alex here is talking about that approach, with looking at the theme.

His theme is machines.

Finding another artist that looks at the concept of movement and another who uses this idea of biro, which is where he wants to take his work.

Let's look at a true or false question.

"A source can include work by local artist, designers and craft people." Is that true or false? Well done if you said true.

Local art often reflects unique cultural, social, or personal themes that can influence creative expression.

If we're thinking about this idea of direct experience, looking locally at what we know, and what we have experience of, can be a real source of inspiration in our projects.

How does Assessment Objective One help you develop your own ideas and final pieces? And remember, the assessment objectives mirror how a real artist, designer, or craft person would go about a project.

So this idea of collecting sources.

How would that help you develop these unique ideas? Laura says that she thinks it helps you think more deeply about your work, and allows you to develop original ideas, as well as connecting with the work of others.

And Andeep comments that expressing your own opinions can help understand others' perspective, and really make work more meaningful.

Is the idea of why do we look at these other artist, craft people, and designers, and really thinking about not working in your own bubble.

Why is it important to look outside of your own work? Responding to your sources through critical understanding can be presented and shared in different ways.

Such as a discussion or conversation, sketching, modelling and exploring media, and photography.

Doesn't always have to be writing.

In fact, it doesn't have to be writing at all.

It can be very simple note-taking in terms of the written element of how you respond to the artists that you're looking at.

Let's have a quick check for understanding.

"Which of the following best describes how to use critical understanding when responding to an artist's work?" Is it A, exploring the artist's personal life, their history, and age? Is it B, exploring the number of artworks produced, titles and price? Or is it C, exploring the artist's themes, concepts, and techniques? Well done if you said C.

Exploring the artist's themes, concepts and techniques is much more important than finding out facts of their personal life or their history or age, or how many works they produced.

So really looking about what it is about their work that can really inspire your own practise.

Contemporary art can be an inspirational visual source.

Artists use different styles and materials, from painting to photography.

Some examples of contemporary art include, "Solitude," by Firyal Al-Adhamy.

"Juncture," by Jenny Saville.

"Snow," by Hurvin Anderson.

"Dalston Anatomy," by Lorenzo Vitturi.

"I Still Face You," by Njideka Akunyili Crosby.

"The Boy That Carries Me," by Ernesto Neto.

"Invisibility Cloak," by Enam Gbewonyo.

"Cabal," by Nadim Chaudry.

"Precious Rogue," by Jessie Makinson.

"Becoming Wind," by Sir John Akomfrah.

So over to you for our second task.

Discuss and share your critical understanding about a piece or pieces of contemporary art.

So thinking about some questions to get your discussion going.

Once you've selected your work that you wanna talk about, start with thinking how you might describe your artwork.

And how does it make you feel, and why? Look at the techniques and materials the artist has used.

How do they affect the overall feeling of the artwork? You could start to then look at the visual elements.

So looking at the colours, the shapes, and lines of the artwork.

And whether they have an effect on that idea of mood or the message of the work.

Again, does the work tell a story, or a kind of narrative about something? And that might reflect on things, like a political or a social issue.

Or maybe it's just about the work itself.

All of your opinions here are valid.

We all bring our own experiences when we look at a piece of artwork.

And that's one of the beauties of studying art and design.

Pause the video here, while you discuss artists as a source of inspiration.

So how did you find that? I hope you found some really interesting contemporary art to have a discussion about.

Jun says, "We looked at 'Juncture' by Jenny Saville.

It's a painting of a large, close-up body with twisted forms. The way skin is painted in pinks and yellows makes the body look raw, like it's alive." And Sam says, "The way the artist has shown the body makes it feel kind of vulnerable.

I think the work is about how we see our bodies, especially the parts we don't usually show or talk about." So here we can see the students really starting to form their own opinions about the work, its processes, and its meaning.

Now, onto the second part of this task, recording your response.

For this, you could use bullet points, maybe sketches, or key words to organise these thoughts clearly.

You might choose to document your insights directly if you've already started a digital page, for instance.

You could start to intersperse some of these key points within the images that you've been looking at.

If you've worked on a board, for instance, you might wanna use sticky notes and you could start to pin up some of your ideas and thoughts about the work that you've been looking at.

Or maybe if you've been working in a visual diary, you could think about adding some annotations around your selected artwork.

So you might want to print it off, stick it in, and then maybe think about how you might create the writing as part of the presentation of your page.

And you can do things like pull out key words within a piece of writing, using a different colour, or maybe using capitals, so you can start to pull the viewer into these important aspects of the work that you've discovered.

Maybe it's the work that you've looked at inspires some initial photography, and that can also be a way of responding, showing that you've understood something about the work that you've looked at, and that source has given you some kind of inspiration.

It may be that you are maybe interested in working with textiles, and from the bullet points that you've identified, you could even take a couple of those key words and think about putting them into stitch in your works.

We're thinking about these drawing ideas in with different techniques and materials as well.

There are so many ways that you can take the information and present it with originality in any way that suits your way of working.

Pause the video here while you take time to document your response.

How did you find that? I'm sure you found some really original ways to record your responses.

Let's take a look at what your work may have looked like.

This example, we can see, is a digital one.

And the student has started to map all their different sources, intermingled with some examples of how their ideas are starting to form.

Again, this visual diary, we can see there are spaces where the students started explaining and annotating their ideas.

And in a visual form, in the sketchbook, we can see here how that might look.

Again, in another book example, we can see this idea of a response, how they started to create their own ideas based on the artists that they've looked at.

Lastly, it's about reflecting on how you've responded to the source, and how that connects to your work.

So for this, you could reflect on how the artist's themes inspire and develop your personal work.

You might want to analyse how their concept relates to your own ideas, and your own messages.

You could use their approach to inspire new directions in your thinking.

Well, you could think about how their techniques can be adapted to your creative process.

And maybe plan to experiment with incorporating similar techniques into your own work.

Pause the video here while you reflect on how your response connects to your work.

So let's take a look at what you might have discussed.

Izzy noticed that the artist she looked at used colour and repeating patterns, and it gave her lots of inspiration as she's really interested in architecture and patterns on buildings.

And Aisha comments that has Izzy thought about researching how patterns are used in building facades, like religious buildings and their cultural significance? So really discussing your ideas with somebody else can give you lots of new avenues for direction, and spark ideas.

Let's look at the summary for today's lesson.

Artists respond to a variety of sources, which can be found in multiple places to inspire and inform their ideas.

Ideas and concepts can be mapped visually by collecting art pieces, photograph, quotes, and patterns, which can spark creativity, and keep new ideas at the forefront.

Artists document in different ways when responding to sources, using different methods to map thoughts and concepts visually.

As ideas develop, recurring and emerging themes are identified and explored.

Thank you for learning with me today.

I hope you enjoyed the lesson, and hope to see you soon.