Question 1.
Select two pieces of art that you have created in Art 3 this semester that show your growth as an artist. Describe how you created the pieces, where your struggled, what you learned during it's creation, and how it has changes how you will approach art projects in the future.
Piece 1
How?: For this first piece I used standard crayola colored pencils, and a graphite pencil. For this project we were given a sheet of paper with questions. We were to fill them out and hand them back into the teacher. The questions were basically just personality questions that would describe who we are as a person. The teacher took up the papers the re-passed them out, but no one got their own paper. We were to create an art piece based off of the information that stuck out to us on the paper we received. The information that caught my attention on the paper I got was how they said they liked drawing realistically, but they didn't have the patients for it, and as a joke they said Fire Types (Pokemon) made them weak. Because the apparent struggles of this person cought my eye, I decided to make a piece where they were overcoming those struggles. I drew a Water Type Pokemon (water over fire) out of color pencils that was drawing a realistic picture of an old mans face. The Pokemon was saying "Yay! Now I can draw realistically.
Struggles?: Some of the struggle I had were being able to read what the person wrote(messy handwriting), not really having a lot to go off of, and motivation to actually draw it. At the same time as this I found out that my math teacher from the previous semester had died randomly. In her memory I drew a realistic portrait of her at her in her wedding dress and sent it to her husband as a gift. I was spending all my time on the portrait so I didn't have time to complete this project.
Learned: That to do well I really need to want to make what I'm creating. I didn't really want to do the actual assigned art piece and it came out pretty bad compared to the project that I really cared about, where it came out amazing and ended up in the year (with a little help from Mr. Sands, who's son is in yearbook)
How I'll Change: I really feel like if I'm going to pursue a project I have to want to do it not just agree to doing it. I really like drawing pencil portraits or anything with pencil, because I just see things in colors and shapes so I can see an object for how it really looks not for how I think it looks. I need to use my strong points to make my art better while i work on my weak points.
Piece 2
How?: For the second piece I chose my mechanical bugs project. The directions for this project were to create a project that had a naturally made object or organism made out of something mechanical. For mine I chose bugs, because I thought it would look cool. This was the first time I used prismacolor colored pencils, so it took me a while to figure out how to blend them. I worked on a lot of drafts that were originally going to be my final, but ended up not looking right. For the bugs, I found reference pictures for each of them. I rubbed graphite on the opposite side of the picture and placed it graphite first on another paper. Next traced over the main lines so they were transferred from the top picture to the bottom one. After getting the general shape of the bug I looked up different mechanical objects to match the different body parts. I then replaced each body part one by one with a mechanical object.
Struggles?: I struggled a lot with the layout and making the pencils stand out against the black background. I also struggled with time, because friends who don't know how to paint and really need help are tempting to go help :). The layout was really hard for me, because I had a hard time proportioning the bugs to a specific size so they could all fit on the page and not look crowded. Making the pencils stand out was hard, because I didn't want to layer to much and mess the picture up.
Learned: With this project I learned how to blend Prismacolor colored pencils and that I'm actually really go at making steam-punk art.
How I'll Change: I really want to focus on learning how to blend different colors and which colors will make others stand out to be more visible. Also I should focus on how I want my picture to look, before I start making it, because without doing that there was a lot of erasing
Question 2
What are your artistic strengths? What are your artistic weaknesses? What can you do to improve your art as you move forward?
Strengths: My main strength in art is being able to see things the way they are. When I see objects that I'm going to draw I see shapes and colors so I draw what I see. Most people only draw things as they think it looks they have a distorted picture in their mind and go off of that and not the original object. Another strength of mine is being able to focus on detail. I really like to make my pieces look as realistically as possible by adding as much detail as I can.
Weaknesses: My artistic weaknesses are procrastinating my projects, blending prismacolors, and drawing unrealistic pictures. With the unrealistic drawing, cartoon people and animals to be more specific, I have trouble with the proportion. Cartoon proportion tends to be more distorted than realistic proportion which is hard for me to put onto paper.
How to Improve: To improve My cartooning skills I'm going to work on it over the summer. Because there are many different features to mix and match on a character I'm going to learn how to draw the different features in the right distorted proportion.
Question 3
Select a piece from the semester that you struggled with (either in terms of motivation or technique). Describe why you don't think the piece works, what you think your specific struggle was, and how you overcame it. Then, tell me how you would change things if you were to be given the same assignment again.
(Bug Picture From Q1)
Why & What?: I really struggled with this piece, because the technique and the medium were both new to me. I had a really hard time with the blending of the colored pencils I used except on the fly. The fly was really the only bug that really turned out neat and fully blended. For the rest of them I either had a hard time blending or didn't have enough time to finish blending.
What I Would Change: I really need to use my time wisely, because i found myself rushing in the end and it didn't turn out as well as it could have.
Question 4
Select your favorite piece created in Art 3. Describe how you created it, why it is your favorite, and what you think this piece says about you as an artist. Why do you think this piece is better then the rest of your work? What makes it "good"?
Why is it Favored & What Does it Say?: I believe this is my favorite project out of the whole year, because It's the one I worked on the most. I really like the detail that I put into the scales and the different colors I used to make the the contrast between the the eye and the orange-yellow in the scales really makes it stand out. I love how realistic I got in the eye. The whole layout and how the focal point was in the center, but a little off to the side really makes in unique. For me as an artist it shows that I really enjoy adding detail, but also that it does take me a little longer to make a little longer to finish when working with a new medium.
Why is it Better?: It is definitely better than any other of my works, because it really came together nicely. I spent the most time on this piece and I really built an emotional attachment to it. I really used and took my time and made sure I got every color and contrast detail correct.
What Makes it "Good": What really makes it "good" it the way the colors blend so well and how much it looks like the original. It really worked out how I wanted it and it was pretty easy to cover something up if I messed up. The contrast between the yellow of the scales and the black, as well as the different blues and reflections in the eye really makes it look as real as the photo. I really love how it came out its definitely the best out of all my works this semester and the best painting I've ever done.
