Studio Art II

Although I am definitely not the best at drawing or painting, I do enjoy it. It is a calming experience that invokes a different type of learning compared to the standard academics. Art doesn’t give off the impression of being academically challenging or even related to the “real world”. Most people see it as a hobby without even considering how much of an impact it can have. It is a form of expression that exceeds one’s expectations. Much of the primary sources from history are artworks. Propaganda and influential art pieces convey powerful messages to support or criticize an idea.

While I took this class, it wasn’t a normal Studio Art class. Due to various COVID quarantines, we weren’t able to complete all of the projects. We started with the flat assignment in which we had to create an image that represented Fountain Valley. The catch was that we could only use two tones for each subject. That meant we had to understand where the shadows and highlights were. For me, this assignment was very difficult as we were supposed to create a simple art piece to convey such a huge community. This goes to show that no matter how simple the artwork is, there might be an enormous amount of meaning behind it. On the other hand, it also showed how people can view things in a “black and white” view, the two tones showed this. I think this simplified view helps people briefly understand the topic with the extreme views but you also need the mid-tones so that you get all sides. All of its is sort of a metaphor to life and global issues. The very last project we did was the “Red Project”. We were given a very vague prompt; basically, what do you think of when you think of the color red? It is such an open-ended question that I was perplexed at what I would do. Finally, I came to the conclusion that red is a significant part of Chinese culture. Red represents luck and fortune, which differs from a lot of other associations with red (e.g., blood or death). I took this representation of red to illustrate my connection to my Chinese culture. To do so, I created two images both in traditional Chinese ink landscape painting style. One image depicted Chinese landscapes and the other depicted the Colorado prairie. I never thought that one word would be able to describe my struggles as an Asian-American, which demonstrated how powerful artwork can be in fostering global awareness.