4. Reflective Visual Journal, RVJ

The RVJ is where most of my ideas are going to take shape and evolve into finished pieces. It's a representation of my journey throughout my projects and will show my development of ideas and outcomes. I've found that the best way to develop ideas is to use both my experimental side of my brain and my analytical, as seen below.

The top half of the picture is my playful experimental work, while the bottom half is showing how I used the paint splashes to improve my final piece, I wouldn't have been able to get a result like that without experimenting. This is a development process that requires me to constantly switch to either side of my brain while working. By experimenting and visually thinking with quick drawings and then evaluating and noting down ways to improve my experimentation, I'm in a cycle that will always bring me the best results I can achieve. I know from past experiences that ideas don't come to me while I'm sitting down and over thinking about my subject, they come during the process of "physical thinking" and "analytical thinking".

It is a must for me to reflect on every bit of my work in my RVJ, it is the only way I can independently refine my work. Without critical analysis I won't get my best results, I need to ask myself if my work can look and work better to produce a better outcome. In my eyes there's no such thing as perfect, but by taking steps forward and improving outcomes, I can get as close to perfect as I possibly can.

In picture above are scans and photos taken from an old project I did that shows clear iteration. Each panel is a different outcome. In the first one you can see a quick sketch I did from a photo, the second you can see I decided to use watercolour which I think worked, however I felt that the monochromatic colour did not, so for my final I used full colour and watercolour on an A1 sheet of paper. I found that this way of working is the best way to perfect my final outcome.