1ST SEMESTER
I took Intro to Art because I used to love art when I was younger. But as I got older I started to hate it. I took this class to find my love of art again. And I did, hopefully next year I will be taking Drawing and Painting.
I learned the most from relationships and proportions this semester. In my opinion proportions is the most important strategy in art. When I walked in on the first day I had no idea how to get proportions right. I think that is why my early pieces do not look as realistic as they could, because I didn't understand proportions yet.
I have improved so much this year. I went from drawing like a 10 year old to drawing like a high schooler. I started off drawing stereotypical shapes, I was not drawing what I really saw. But, slowly haswe practice more and more strategies, I got better. I went from drawing a very unproprtional hand to drawing a slightly more realistic, proportional hand, and I couldn't be more proud of myself. I still have a lot to improve on, but I am happy with what I have learned so far.
While this is not a great example of chiaroscuro in some places (a.k.a the tall vase, I really like how the spherical pot looks. I used chiaroscuro to make it look realistic. Chiaroscuro is a technic using light and dark shades to pull objects out of the paper (make them 3D). Although my outlines are very bad on this picture, I think the general effect of chiaroscuro was achieved here.
After drawing this we learned actual facial proportions. This made my self portraits look like an actual human being. I also learned about shading after this. So, I took a 2D alien like self portrait to a 3D human self portrait.
When I drew this self portrait I was still new to proportions, so I didn't necessarily draw my exact proportions. This is why my most recent self portrait looks more like me than my 2nd self portrait. I also learned how to control charcoal more, so my 3rd self portrait looks a lot cleaner and controlled than my previous charcoal pieces.
I would like to redo this project mostly because of the tall vase. I honestly have no idea what I was doing. I really wish I could redo the stripes in the vase to make it look realistic I would also like to go back and get rid of my outlines. When I was doing this I didn't understand what it meant by "pushing the outlines into the background", but now that I do I want to go back and fix it.
The thing I have improved most this semester is my drawing ability. I draw what I really see, I use proportions correctly, and I use shading to make my art look realistic. I have come a long way since the beginning of the year. The other area I have seen the most improvement is in my ability to control charcoal. In my first charcoal piece (my hand), I was so afraid to even touch the paper. I was not good at blending, and I definitely wasn't good at not smudging the paper. But, after using charchol in many other pieces I have learned to control it. I know how to shade, blend, and not smudge my paper. My art work went from looking messy to looking somewhat professional.
2ND SEMESTER
I had never previously worked with oil pastels before, so it was very fun to experience a new medium for the first time. I learned many new techniques to go along with the new medium. Including the new baby oil blending technique.
Working with water colors taught me more about complementary colors (colors that are on opposite sides of the color wheel). I had to be very careful of not mixing green and pink together becuase they would have made a brown poop like color. So, instead I mixed and blue-green in between the pink to help lessen the effect. Also, using the chalk pastels thaught me even more about color theory. We had to use analagos colors to help color match the items on our picture to the items in real life. So, I layered yellow under the red to make it more accurate to the vase in rel life.
I think I was able to completely master the technique of color blending with tempra paints. I was able to (mostly) seamlessly blend the colors together to create an effect that made the flower look realistic and 3D.
I was never able to master color blending with Oil Pastels. Maybe it was due to it being the first time I worked with Oil Pastels, or maybe it will just never be a medium I am able to work with well. I especially could never get water blending right with Oil Pastels (as shown on my practice sheet and my actual project).
I improved in attitude a lot this year. I remember I hated doing crosshatching because I never thought I was good at it, and I still don't fell 100% confident, but throughout this year I have learned that I need to trust in my abilities. I was very nervous at the begining of the relief print project, but I decided to embrace it and it ended up being one of my favorite projects this year. I also improved my problem soliving and design skills this semester and over the year. At the begining of the glass coaster project I had no idea what I wanted to do, and I tried out many different designs. And I still had no idea what I was doing, so I changed my head space. I decided to just pick out pieces of glass and design something from there. Then all of a sudden it all fell together and it looks amazing now and the design goes with the texture of the glass to make it look like it's underwater.
I learned that I am an artist this year. When I first started this class I didn't think I was an artist and I didn't think I could ever be an artist. But, thought the year and project after project I started to feel more confident in my work. I also learned that I prefer paint and a brush over using my hands with charcoal or oil pastels. I think this has to do with my love of makeup. But over the summer I now want to continue experimenting with tempra paint and water color.