Art 3 Reflection

This year has been fairly challenging, as I tried a lot of new media and types of art that I never thought I would do. Between the sculpture unit and the abstract paintings at the end of the year, I had a lot of new art experiences and learned a lot about the importance of process and making the best of the process rather than just focusing on the final product. The sculpture unit was my least favorite project we did this year as well as the most challenging, but it was also the one that taught me the most. I had never whittled, casted, or worked with power tools before this project, and in addition to teaching new techniques, it also helped me see that I am more capable of solving problems than I believe. I struggled a lot with that project; I had a very clear image in my head of what I wanted to make, and I just couldn’t make it happen. But, this project taught me about resilience and the importance of continuing to create and change, even when the project isn’t working exactly as imagined. The abstract painting also taught me a lot, and really forced me to go outside of my comfort zone. I learned just how difficult it is to paint non-objectively, especially when the painting still needs to look interesting and have points to focus on. This project helped me grow to really focus on the process, and it helped me learn how to be okay with messing up and adjusting. 

I believe that my biggest area of improvement has been with all things realism. Between our still life oil paintings and the artist copy and self portrait projects from the beginning of the year, I think that my ability to replicate objects and people from real life has really grown. Looking specifically at the self portrait from the Art Inventory from the very beginning of the class, that drawing looks extremely cartoony and not at all like me. If I were to compare it to my actual self portrait, the amount of detail and attention to proportion would have greatly changed, showing the physical improvement of my skills. Going along with creating realistic work, I think that my ability to really see what I’m basing the work off of has also improved. For the still life painting, I did not look at pictures and really only painted with the objects in front of me. I feel that I have really improved in drawing and painting what I am actually seeing, rather than drawing symbols or making up information that might better fit the idea of the object that I have. I am really happy that I’ve improved these skills this year, as working with realism, especially with painting or drawing, is what I hope to focus on as I continue art. 

One area that I would like to continue to work on is abstraction. I really enjoyed making the painting, in fact it was one of my favorite projects of the year and is definitely something I would like to explore further. However, there were many elements that I think could use refinement and would help to make this piece and future pieces better. I believe that my use of color was interesting, and I think that was the one thing about my piece that worked really well. One thing that I would like to really focus on improving is my ability to let go while making an abstract piece; even though I was painting non-objectively, my strokes and movements were still very controlled, and I think that is something that I could change to better reflect how I feel and how I want the piece to work. I believe that in addition to letting go more, I want to be able to create more focal points within an abstract piece to have more interest and contrast. Working with abstraction is something that I would like to pursue in the future, as it was so much fun and I think it would be cool to incorporate it into some of my realistic paintings, and I think that continuing to practice will help me grow.

Looking to next year, I would love to have my work focus on realism, especially with acrylic paint or drawing. I really enjoyed making the realistic acrylic painting for the mixed media project last year, and think it would be great to have that in some of my future works. I also really loved making the self portrait this year with the graphite and charcoal, and I think doing something similar in the future would be great. I believe that the fantastic four and the play pages have taught me that I love to draw or paint anything relating to music; whether it’s drawing musicians or creating work relating to my favorite songs and lyrics, that is what I always have the best time making, and I definitely want to pursue that next year. I believe that the combination of knowing the kind of media I like and what kind of topics and subjects I enjoy will make it much easier for me to figure out what I will make in the future.