Maintaining fertile ground for the work
Chris Aldrich points to this syllabus for creating a commonplace book.
At the art academy our art history teacher made us keep a journal for notes on things seen, done, experienced and to reflect on them. Making a start with formulating an opinion, taking a position. Felt awkward at first but turned out to be a very valuable exercise.
Today there's a vibrant niche of digital note taking tools that want to help in creating connected notes. Chris again, with a good overview of what's happening in this space.
All of which can help with getting a grip on your personal knowledge mastery (pkm).
What I'm interested in is doing this with visual artefacts as source material. What does visual pkm look like? Journaling, scrapbooking, collecting and the like. The most obvious tool is the sketchbook. How does a sketchbook work?