This document provides guidance for students on developing a commonplace book over the summer as part of a Drawing Methodologies course. Students are instructed to create their own traditional book format commonplace book to bring together thoughts, ideas, drawings, and objects of interest in an analytical, diary-style format. The goal is for students to develop their unique aesthetic perspective and voice as an illustrator. Students are provided questions to ask themselves to aid discovery and analysis of what they observe. Upon returning, instructors expect to see students' commonplace books demonstrating a professional, meticulous categorization of their work, research, and observations.

1. * The Commonplace Book*
Introduction to Year 2
‘Drawing Methodologies 2: Personal Identity’
Summer Briefing
Amelia Johnstone MA RCA
Year 2 BA (Hons) Illustration CSAD

2. • In this module you begin to establish your
individual ‘voice and stance’ in your creative
work. This ‘voice’ will speak about what you are
interested in, and how you best communicate this
interest.
• In order to establish this unique ‘voice and
stance’, you will explore individual working
methods and areas of negotiated personal research
in order to identify and develop a personal visual
identity and establish your pursuit for content,
with a corresponding visual language. This
‘voice’, or ‘personal identity’ forms the basis of
future modules in the latter half of year 2 in
which you will apply your own visual language to a
range of applications and scenarios within your
discipline
• This module will provide you with an opportunity
to stand alone as a creative practitioner within
the course, to define you as a unique individual
with your own ideas, tools and viewpoint which you
will use to make imagery without following any
prescribed working methods, or responding to
predetermined themes.

3. * What is drawing methodologies?
* What is research?
* What is visual research?
* How do I research effectively?
* What is my question?
* What is my aim?
* Does research have a preconceived outcome?
* How should research be
presented/formulated/assessed/used?

4. * Sara fanelli *
Artist/Illustrator/Typographer

6. „The title of this book, „Sometimes I Think ,
Sometimes I Am‟, promises much, and in its
ambiguities captures the work‟s elusive, riddling
pleasures, poised between wryness and high spirits
. It has been borrowed by the artist from Paul
Valery who was himself echoing a famous statement
about consciousness and existence. There are many
more thoughtful, apt, and loved quotations here,
and so there is really no need for somebody else
to add anymore words to the images. Still , (I) am
very happy to come out for a moment or two from
the enchanted ring of listeners and readers and
offer by way of thanks – a few thoughts about Sara
Fanelli‟s work.‟
From the introduction to „Sometimes I Think, Sometimes I Am‟
Marina Warner 2007

9. Louise Bourgois

14. ‘The gates of hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labor [sic] lies.’
Virgil

15. * {Find ways of categorising and dividing information
i.e. heaven and hell, light and dark, red, blue,
magenta, cerise, days, hours minutes, a b c…d e f g (if
you are perhaps collecting letters or by letter)}

18. „The collection here has a feel of a notebook, an album, a
scrap book, a treasure drawer, an old shoe box filled
with much loved items. It resembles a so called
‘commonplace book’ in which children and adults used to
keep quotations and adages and cuttings and mementoes;
originally, when someone like the great scholar Erasmus
was urging people to keep such records of their thoughts
and readings and experiences, the objective was
improvement… but gradually „Commonplace books‟ became
stores of memories and pleasures, and turned into
idiosyncratic personal hoards of private – even secret –
instants of recognition and delight.‟
From the introduction to „Sometimes I Think, Sometimes I Am‟
Marina Warner 2007

19. Commonplace" is a translation of the Latin term locus
communis (from Greek tópos koinós, see literary topos)
which means "a theme or argument of general
application", such as a statement of proverbial wisdom.
In this original sense, commonplace books were
collections of such sayings, such as John Milton's
commonplace book. Scholars have expanded this usage to
include any manuscript that collects material along a
common theme by an individual.Such books were
essentially scrapbooks filled with items of every kind:
medical recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables of
weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas.
Commonplaces were used by readers, writers, students,
and scholars as an aid for remembering useful concepts
or facts they had learned. Each commonplace book was
unique to its creator's particular interests.
(Wikipedia)

28. „Collecting is not about what you collect as
much as it is about who you are.
Possession somehow connotes transference
of the object‟s virtues to its owner.
Collections are about recollection.
Collections exclude the world and are
symbolic of it. Writing about why one
collects what one collects is a bit like
self-psychoanalysis; its hard to be
objective.‟
In Flagrante Collecto
(Caught in the act of collecting)
Marilynn Gelfman Karp (Abrams, New York 2006)

29. „The pursuit (of collecting) is ambiguous
because in the first place it does not
necessarily serve any rational purpose.‟
From Introduction to Creators Collectors and Connoisseurs
Sir Herbert Read
(Thames and Hudson London 1967)

30. „ the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, in an essay
called „Playing with Dolls‟, describes
play as a process of animation: “really,
we invented the doll,” he writes, “a doll
was so abysmally devoid of phantasy that
our imagination became inexhaustible in
dealing with it”. Playing breathes life
into playthings; it animates them. The
effect is a kind of magic, when things
come to life, or take on the life of the
person they represent. Drawings that do
this have power, the power to charm‟
From the introduction to 5. The Absurd
Marina Warner 2007

31. From „The Wizard of Oz‟ Graham Rawle

33. „To the man in the street, who, I am sorry
to say,
Ins a keen observer of life,
The word “intellectual” suggests straight
away
A man who‟s untrue to his wife‟
W.H. Auden

34. * {Live the fantasy, become the artist. Make your
own rules}

38. „Special powers of synaesthesia are not
really necessary to feel that music
changes colour when it changes key or that
moods are tinged grey or golden or that
anger flames red and irritability sort of
brown; the blue‟s singer‟s voice tenses to
the edges of lament and turns deep purple
on the low notes; military marches match
the bright brass and scarlet of Hussars‟
and guards‟ splendour, and drab and dismal
states come in the livery of dull days.
Black and white is the natural habitat of
the documentary dealing with harsh
realities. Monotony is monochrome.‟
From the introduction to 3. Colour
Marina Warner 2007

40. „The impact of colours escapes words: they
are artists raw materials which work only
in themselves, and each new state of
colour, like the fresh retelling of a
story, has to be experienced in itself and
nothing can substitute for its material
presence: light in action on the stuff of
our world. Stuff of our world.‟
From the introduction to 3.Colour
Marina Warner 2007

42. „The monster does not need the hero. It is
the hero that needs him for his very
existence.
When hero confronts the monster, he has yet
neither power nor knowledge, the monster
is his secret father who will invest him
with a power and knowledge that can belong
to one man only,
and that only the monster can give.‟
Roberto Calasso

50. „As I was walking up the stair
I met a man who wasn‟t there,
He wasn‟t there again today,
I do wish he would go away‟
Anon

53. *Making your own cages
restrictions and rules,
taming the tiger!*

54. * Miscellaneous Collections *
{finding an aesthetic through
possible content.}

91. * Graham Rawle *
Illustrator/Collage Artist/Writer

107. * Summer Brief *
Drawing methodologies 2
The Common place book
Over the summer I would like you to make your own common
place book in a traditional book format.
This Commonplace book is to enable you to bring together
your thoughts ideas drawings and things which you notice
in an analytical, diary/sketchbook type fashion, but
most importantly, as a library for your ideas.
It is to develop your aesthetic and your stance to help
you find your unique voice as an illustrator. It is not
about you but of you, it is at this point that your work
needs to begin to speak ventrilloquillistically, on its
own. This book will be a resource for your narrative
projects and drawing projects next term

108. * Questions to ask your self:
• What am I looking at and why?
• What is interesting to me about it, what do I see when I
look at this thing/these things?
• Where will I find what I am looking for, do I need to
make a journey, to go somewhere new, to put myself in a
strange situation, to wear something different?
• How am I going to record this information, am I going to
film it, draw it, write it? How can I make the thing
more intriguing?
• If I am collecting objects what am I collecting them
in, are they in a format, photographs filed in date
order? Are they 3D objects or replicas kept in
boxes, cabinets, envelopes? Do I need to make a vessel
to collect the objects in, can I find one that is
appropriate, what is appropriate?
By asking these questions you will begin to
discover, do not just think of a thing and collect
it, analyse, absorb and exchange information this
way it will grow into something else, not just
remain a collection of things. The things may not
be tangible, they may not even be in existence
yet…

109. What I would like to see when you return:
• A commonplace book: Which starts with an I
will and I will not manifesto
• It will be compiled of your thoughts
ideas, drawings, collections, observations
photographs theories quotations etc,
designed in a PROFESSIONAL, METICULOUS,
CATAGORICAL FASHION.
• Back up work, research and working
sketchbooks to support this.

110. „Enthusiasts of unloved things – items
without significant or established
collectorship – share the potent belief
that most of the world is blind to their
singular perception. It doesn‟t matter.
They may be correct and, in the end, their
collections may redeem them from their
socially flawed posture. We live and
yearn.‟
In Flagrante Collecto
(Caught in the act of collecting)
Marilynn Gelfman Karp (Abrams, New York 2006)

111. „…a reality was not given to us and there is
none, but we ourselves have to create one,
if we want to exist: and it will not be
the same one forever, but will
continuously undergo infinite changes.‟
Luigi Pirandello