ITAP Week 4 Inspiration and Understanding

Research is the collecting of data, information and facts to increase our understanding of a topic or issue. This is separated into two different types of research, primary and secondary. Primary research is when you physically go out and get the information yourself and create new information that was not there before such as questionnaires. Whereas secondary research is when you use information that someone else has gone out, collected and you have found it by either reading books or via the Internet. Another way of researching something is by doing visual research, which is creating images, diagrams, illustrations or photographs of the subject. This method of research is what I will mainly be using to gather the information I need for my online magazine along with secondary research to gather information about the history of landmarks around Birmingham. A current artist that is good at completing this type of research is Paul Davis. He is a good example of this because he goes around daily with a notebook writing down phrases, words and drawing things that give him ideas so that when he comes to make a piece of work he already has lots of different ideas that he can use to help him make his final outcome. Inspiration can be found anywhere and take any shape. Inspiration usually comes when you let your mind wonder and just observe what’s around you. Some people find that by collecting things such as other artists work, toys, comics, books etc are useful because they then have a library of things they can reference at any time also, for some people collecting things helps stimulate the brain to become more creative and help them come up with something new. Others find that making their workspace full of things that inspire them helpful. So when they are working their surrounded by posters, books, CD’s and figures that they can take elements from such as what they look like, how they were made and what there made off and use it in their own work.