The Art and Science of Observation

My Dad, Chris Wood Chris is a professional artist; new studio at Hot Walls He runs experimental drawing classes every week many years of experience in both 2d and 3d art unusual in his ability across many artistic media: painting drawing printmaking sculpture digital media; iPad addict! Uses it endlessly to try new techniques and keep himself up to date and relevant using a multiplicity of sources

Artistic ability Survey think about artistic ability for a moment to what extent do you agree/disagree with the following statements 3 strongly agree 2 agree 1 disagree 0 strongly disagree

1. Artistic ability is something people are born with that can’t be changed

2. No matter how good at drawing you are, you can always be better

3. You can always substantially change how good at drawing you are

4. Some people are artistic and good at drawing, some aren’t; there is not much that can be done about that

5. Artistic talent can be learned by anyone

6. Only a few people will be truly good at art – you have to be “born with it”

7. All human beings can learn to draw

8. You can learn new techniques, but you can’t really change your basic ability

9. Drawing is effortless for truly artistic people

Scoring On questions 1, 4, 6, 8, 9 you need to reverse the scores you have given yourself before you add up your total so… if you scored 3, then give yourself 0 if you scored 2 give yourself 1 if you scored 1 give yourself 2 if you gave yourself 0, give yourself 3 Add these scores to the scores for the other questions (2, 3, 5, 7)

If you scored 0-7 you have a fixed mind set on artistic ability 7-14 you have a fixed mind set on artistic ability with some growth ideas 15-21 you have a growth mind set on artistic ability with some fixed ideas 21-27 you have a growth mind set on artistic ability

My Still Life You are going to create a still life picture of the items in front of you You have 5 minutes to create your picture Now write for 1 minute about how you felt while you were doing the task and what you were thinking about You now have another 5 minutes, you must draw with you unfavoured hand You now have 5 minutes more but you must not look at the paper as you draw

What was the point of the drawing activity? Taking you out of your comfort zone? IB is likely to take you out of your comfort zone – you certainly won’t always succeed first time Getting you to do “something different” Recognising how experimenting and trying different ways of doing something can jolt you out of old habits and old anxieties Learning to focus on the process and actually having as go Just “having a go” instead of worrying about the final outcome is an essential way of making progress in your academic studies Drawing was a metaphor for studying at Sixth Form and Beyond and for studying psychology in particular!

Fixed and Growth Mindset The questionnaire was adapted from work by American psychologist Carol Dweck who has written extensively on fixed and growth mind-set Watch the as she speaks about fixed and growth mind-set regarding academic ability intelligence and “the power of yet”

Fixed and Growth Mindset Fixed mind set thinkers sometimes find it really hard to bounce back from what they perceive as academic failings, e.g. getting a low mark its important to understand that ability can change with practice

Why is this important right now? Mind-set can affect your academic studies fixed mind set thinkers sometimes find it really hard to bounce back from what they perceive as academic failings, e.g. getting a low mark its important to understand that ability can change with practice Your induction assignment is about a study which shows that the brain actually undergoes structural changes the more you practice a certain skills (neuroplasticity); the study is about observational drawing but the same is true of practising your academic skills

What was your mind set score? Create a tally chart (frequency table) to show how many pupils fell into each category This type of data, where you count how many people fall into different categories is called NOMINAL DATA Descriptive statistics allow us to summarise data; here we could: calculate ratios, percentages, state the mode and/or draw a pie chart

Your scores We could also put all of your scores in order and rank them You now have a rank position within the group with regard to your mind-set on artistic ability This is called ORDINAL DATA Descriptive statistics could include: calculating the median and the range drawing a box and whisker plots

Qualitative data You have also collected some qualitative data (in words) about how if felt while you were doing the drawings This can be analysed by looking for themes in what you have said You could turn the qual into quan by adding up how many times each themes was mentioned

Carol Dweck: The Power of Yet The mind-set scores for this activity show whether people think artistic ability is innate and unchanging or that it can change with practice Did people’s mind-set seem to consistently affect their experiences of the session? My dad has an “extreme growth” mind-set when it comes to artistic ability - why do think this might be? How do you think having a growth mind-set affects your engagement with a task? How do you think it affects a person’s perseverance in the face of a challenge? How might this have affected your recall of the objects? Look back at the questions that were asked in the artistic mind- set questionnaire do you wish to discuss any of them?

The good news psychologists now question old theories that led us to believe that intelligence is fixed Now they believe that the brain is like a muscle that develops with use research suggests that artistic ability is certainly not fixed Chris is right, artistic technical skills AND creativity can grow with practice

Marian Diamond and the Brain

Learning artistic skills alters the brain There is a massive literature on how hours spent engaged in many activities from juggling to meditation actually changes the structure and function of your brain, allowing you to do things that you could not do before supporting the idea that we can get better at anything we turn our mind to artistic ability and intelligence therefore may not be fixed after all Certainly believing that they are won’t help you to improve ! The induction assignment article discusses how the structure of the brain actually changes with the amount of time spent engaged in observational drawing

The bigger picture you tried out three different ways to observe/study the objects it might have felt tough; when things feel difficult, this is because you are on the brink of discovery crossing new frontiers in your skills and in your understanding When things feel tough; feel excited, this is a sure fire clue that your brain is working! When things are easy or you feel very little, it may be a sign that you are coasting, you could… end up drifting off course lose precious practice time miss the chance to make the most of opportunities available at any one point in time.

Academic ability and Sixth Form There are a multiplicity of different ways to create drawings and to study trying new things can help us to achieve different (and therefore, potentially better) outcomes. pupils often say they are studying hard but their outcomes don’t change? Why? The drawing exercise has hopefully underlined the importance of giving new things a go. Don’t get stuck in a study habit that doesn’t work for you! reading up neuroplasticity will hopefully help you realise that the more time invested in something, the more connections are made in the brain and the more readily certain outcomes can be achieved; same is true in your academic studies.

What does it mean “to study” (think; to study an object, a person, an academic subject? How do people study things? Why do they study things in a certain way? How does this affect their conclusions? How do we judge whether we have been successful in our “study” of people or of buildings? Can we change the way we study? Can we improve our outcomes by changing the way we do things? Why might people be reluctant to change the way they study?