AP Studio Art
Semester 1 Reflection
In semester 1 of AP art and design, we have mainly focused on our art concentrations and art competitions. This year I decided to choose a concentration that is particularly fascinating to me, which is the beauty of birds. I have taken references and used other objects to make the drawings and painting s my own. Overall, in AP studio art I have had a positive experience. This class allows me to choose my own media and lets me experiment with material choices. I have been most successful In sticking with my concentration and not getting bored with it. In the past, I have changed my concentration throughout the year because I either got bored or my pieces didn't connect well with each other. I think I am also doing well by experimenting with material choice. Sometimes I get caught up in using the same materials and by experimenting I am showing the AP judges I am capable of developing and progressing through my projects.
I have been successful with improving my pieces from one to the next. I have been able to spend more time on some projects that I want to perfect and strengthen. Each project for my concentration had made me think about my composition and material. I also think I am good at taking peer feedback and applying that to future projects and also giving good feedback to help others on their future projects.
I struggled most with using different perspectives. I tend to draw the birds from the frontal view and from behind, but I do not draw them from an up or down angle. I also struggled with time management this semester. I wanted to make each project the best I can, so I worked past the deadline for many projects. This put me behind for future projects, while also causing me to rush sometimes on other projects that were not as important to me.
In the future, for the second semester, I want to improve all my projects because I know I can do better on each one. I want to feel happy about each project I make, which will help me succeed in this class. I want to spend longer on each project to make it the best I possibly can. I also want to switch up the composition, perspective and continue to experiment with the material choice. I really enjoy drawing and painting birds and I am excited to continue to work on my concentration and feel proud of my pieces.
“Final Reflection.”
Summarize your learning in the class. What have you been most successful with? Why? What have you struggled with? Why? What are your artistic goals for the summer/future?
AP studio art is a class structured around a sustained investigation of your choice based on your own ideas and materials specific to the AP genre you choose. This year I choose to focus specifically on the beauty of birds through 2D materials and color. I loved the concentration I chose this year because there were many different ways I could incorporate birds into my projects. I played around with materials this year and focused on the ones I love to use most. I loved seeing others' concentrations and how they developed over this course, everyone's projects were extremely different from each other. The creativity and unique ideas everyone had in their own projects, inspired me throughout my concentration, this includes media, material choice, and design. To push our creations even further and improve our pieces we used peer critiques. I have found that throughout my concentration, each piece has been improved based on things I could add in the future to connect my concentration with my question even more. This year was a little different because we mainly did our projects online, so we did not do as many critiques as we usually do.
In AP studio art, I have been most successful by using non-traditional objects within my work to show depth and experimentation. This is something I have struggled with in the past, however, my concentration made it easy to use other objects, like leaves, sticks, and wood. I think I also did a good job using class time wisely. At the beginning of the year the class was half remote and the other half in person, which made time management harder by focusing on my art at home and using class time to also do work as well. I was able to get a lot of work done in class and stay focused outside of class time as well. I believe that organization is extremely important in being a successful art student, so making sure I knew when my projects were due when I was in school and out of school was also extremely important as well.
I have struggled with most this year in advanced studio art is following my concentration. My original question was how do animals express emotion through their facial expressions? Although half way through the year, when we got that chance to change our project, I decided to change my question to how can I show facial features through the use of emphasis? These questions are similar, although completely changed my outlook on art. I started to get bored and lazy on some of my projects. This made me not enjoy art. Although after switching my project to focus on humans, I enjoyed my creations more. I was able to expand on each one of my projects with my second question, where on my first question my projects were scattered. Another struggle I ran into was how much time I put into each piece. I found myself slacking off and not creating my best work at some points of the year, this includes over quarantine. When I don’t like what I am creating it doesn’t give me motivation to create more. This is why I started to not pay attention to my work and care for it as much. This weakness is hard to overcome, as I have always been put down by my work, if I am not creating the art pieces I love.
My artistic goals for the future/summer are to continue to work on projects that interest me. I want to experiment more with acrylics, as this was the main material I used this year. I think it is important to continue to work on making art outside of school to become more experience and keep improving as an artist. This summer I plan on following along with some art classes, as I have the past couple weeks. This has helped me because I can see other techniques artists use, that I can incorporate into my artwork. I have focused on matching values and angles, which I usually struggle with in my projects. I also like to make friend ship bracelets, so I could continue to make bracelets and eventually sell them.