Visual Culture-Based Workshop: Visual Diaries

Abstract

Images have become popular via advertisements, video games, fine arts, television, series, movies and other types of images. These images that we see around us our for whole life comprise a great proportion of visual culture. With a visual culture-based workshop, the students would acquire skills to make sense of and interpret what they see with artistic and aesthetic concerns in the workshop studies. In this respect, the students created visual diaries, in which they could reflect/question the experiences they acquire about their daily lives, and with which they could express themselves. The study adopted an art-based qualitative research approach. The study had been conducted in the fall and spring semesters of 2016-2017 academic year in the art drawing workshop course. The participants of the study were comprised of 7 students. The data of this study were collected using semi-structured interviews, document review (on visual diaries) and the art works of the student1s. The data of the study were analyzed using descriptive analysis. When the findings of the study are considered, it is seen that questionings about daily life, course notes, visual and textual interpretations, sense-making processes, and expression styles (sketch, drawing etc.) about their artistic work were included in students’ visual diary experiences in the workshop course. They visually reflected many things they notice around themselves and supported this with texts.