AP Art and Design

Semester 1 Reflection

This semester I have been most successful with coming up with creative ideas for the pieces in my sustained investigation. I think this because for each piece I have created a unique scene to draw like the skeletons on a train or the snake in the spaghetti. When I was thinking of ideas to follow my sustained investigation, I always started with a subject that I wanted to draw (like a frog) and then built the idea around that subject. I think doing that helped the final product turn out better because I had more fun with the drawings.

One thing that I struggled with was figuring out how to use materials to emphasize my inquiry question. I wanted to use different materials on the subject that was meant to be out of place to create more contrast, but in some of the pieces where I did this, the subject didn’t end up standing out as much as I had hoped. An example of this is in the piece titled Spots where I used ink on the dog and colored pencil on everything else. The difference isn’t that visible because it’s just thin lines and it’s the same colors as the cows.

An artistic goal I have for the second semester is to continue to experiment with combining different materials. An idea I have for how to do that would be to incorporate pieces of a magazine or newspaper into a drawing.

Final Reflection

I think that the thing that I have been most successful with in this class has been using my creativity to create unique images and expanding the subjects that I draw. This is because my inquiry question could be put into a variety of contexts so I was able to come up with a new situation for each piece while still basing it around the feeling of being out of place. I had fun creating all of these pieces because for each one I started with whatever I felt like drawing and then based the rest of the scene around that. For example, I felt like drawing frogs so I drew a few of them and then added the fairy in front of them as the one who is out of place.

Something I struggled with was continuing to come up with ideas towards the end of my sustained investigation because I had used up my favorite ideas in the beginning of the year. I also think that SI 9, 11, 13, and 15 are not as strong because I was trying to use different materials and I think the environments look a little too dull compared to the other pieces.

My artistic goals for the summer are to make more art for fun because I was pretty busy with school this year and almost all of the art I made was for school. However, I liked the structure of following a sustained investigation because it gave me a starting point when thinking of ideas for new pieces which I struggle with when making art for fun. I usually just draw in my sketchbook, so I would like to make more finished pieces over the summer. My goals for the future are to continue to enjoy studying and creating art at college and then hopefully have an art related career.