1) Which project was your most successful? Describe the theme and or topic and the process you went through to complete the project. Were the choices you made regarding material, size, technique, etc. beneficial to enhancing this project. Please explain.
I think that my most successful project was my painting project where I used a surrealist feel like Salvador Dali did with many of his paintings. There were also a few pieces of his that I looked at to better understand symbolism, and though his was usually a little harder to detect I managed to use symbolism in this painting as well. Dali used his imagine to paint unreal dream-like scenes. Using that I thought up the idea of trees floating through space, to symbolize their frequent disappearance from Earth's surface through deforestation. Very rarely is the amount of trees chopped down planted back into the Earth and with this trend continuing it's possible the world could looking at a very grim and treeless environment in the future. I planned out this project with composition sketches, and both were mainly based on the placement of the trees and the colors I would use to fully make the piece appealing. The below composition sketch is the one that I used to really create my painting, though I changed the color of the Earth in the end. Changing the color from a dark brown to a lighter more vibrant yellow I think really helped to make the piece look better. This is because the piece itself is already quite dark with the tree bark, dark green leaves, and black space in the background, so using a brighter yellow gave the piece a better look where not everything was quite so dull. I also used darker shades of colors in order to add value to the trees and leaves, so that they looked just a little more realistic than they were.
2) Discuss one project where you felt you were the least successful. Explain why you felt this way. What would you do differently to change this piece? Explain.
My least successful project was definitely the sculpture I made of spaghetti and meatballs. Though I have used clay in the past I've never gotten very familiar with it and so I never have truly felt comfortable using it. The shapes I make always turn out to be lopsided or lumpy and more often than not I have to start over in an attempt to fix the mistakes in the clay. I spent much too long trying to make a good looking bowl for the spaghetti and so a lot of my time was wasted. In the end I ended up having to throw together a quick bowl of spaghetti that I wasn't at all happy with. Along with the oddly shaped bowl I didn't have a chance to make a sauce that really looked like sauce and the meatballs weren't at all textured properly, even if I managed to paint them fairly well. If I could I would change the shape of the bowl so that it wasn't so wobbly and was a real looking bowl. I would also make the noodles easier to reach within the bowl; though it ended up not mattering, the placement of the noodles made it very difficult to properly paint them. Along with that I would recreate the paint with a better texture and paint job in the sauce. There is no mixture of colors in the sauce and so it is all a solid color, instead I would have liked to have given it more value and a fade into different reddish brown colors. All in all I didn't like how the piece turned out, but with my lack of knowledge in the technique I guess it wasn't as bad as it could have been.
3) Look at your body of work over the semester and choose 2 pieces that show your growth as an artist. Discuss each piece and how you grew in the following areas: Application of materials, techniques and skills, artistic vision, use of the principles and elements, creativity, intuition and subject matter.
Both of these pieces were done in color pencil and I believe that I definitely grew as an artist during the time between the two. For the before drawing I wanted it to be simple yet pretty, and I think I did manage to do that, but it wasn't done well. There are a lot of places where the colors aren't properly blended and shadows are missing. In the second drawing I paid a lot more attention to blending colors to get my desired look and I also spent a lot of time working on the shadows withing it. My application of materials grew stronger as I learned how to blend colors together and work value properly into my drawings. With this I also learned a lot of good techniques and my overall skill in colored pencil drawings grew. For example I learned that first I should color with lighter colors because it is much easier to make a drawing darker than it is to make it lighter, something I didn't know during my first drawing. However, I do think that my creativity could have been better with the second drawing and that I did well with it in the first one. Both drawings were drawn because I like both subjects. Piano and softball are both important in my life and I think that if I continue to make art that it should be of things that I myself enjoy. This view I think has helped me develop my artistic vision to use things that I enjoy in my life in my artwork.
4) Choose 2 mini lessons that you felt were the most beneficial in your learning for that particular project. Include photos of these and explain thoroughly. Do you feel you needed more instruction for success? Explain or did you feel that the instruction given was enough to ensure success? Explain.
The two mini projects that were most beneficial to me were the colored pencil dum-dum and the practice mixed media assignment. I think I received a lot of good instruction while dealing with the colored pencil, especially on the ways to blend and shade properly. Though it could have come out a little better perhaps I was happy with the outcome of the colored pencil dum-dum drawing and how I blended the colored pencil colors to look realistic. This mini project ended up being a great help to the major project I started working on not long after. Instead of going in blind about blending colors and creating value I knew what I was doing to a certain degree. With the knowledge I gained from this mini project I was able to create a major colored pencil drawing that I was quite proud of. For the mixed media practice mini project I feel there was also sufficient instruction given. I learned how to transfer colors with tissue paper as well as how to transfer pictures onto my work. With these new techniques I was able to create a well made scene in my mini project as shown. Though simple, I think this project is my favorite one we did all year. I properly faded the black into white and created a simple yet pretty scene with the flowers and butterfly. This project was not much like what my final mixed media project was at all, but I think it still greatly helped me to make a successful piece. I used tissue paper and various layers to create a New York scene in the final, and this mini project was a great opening to that.
5) What medium was your favorite to work with? Explain.
Though not much time was spent on watercolor I think that it was my favorite medium to work with. Colors flow easily and while some mistakes can be difficult to fix it's an 'go with the flow' kind of art, and I like that. There's a bit of room for mistakes in my opinion and I really like having that kind of mentality in my artwork. Watercolors weren't something I had really thought too much about in the past, but I know now that it's something I could really enjoy if I stuck with it. There are also a lot of different ways to go about water-coloring that it's something that I could explore around in for hours. There's the classic brush and water and then there's blotting and dry brush too. With so many possibilities I don't know how I couldn't enjoy it. Along with different brush techniques there are also a lot of different textures that can be created with common household items like salt and saran wrap. Despite our short time with watercolor in class I really enjoyed it, and would love to spend more time with this medium.