WRITTEN REFLECTION:

I had a lot of fun this semester. I was glad that in this class, unlike Foundations, there was more freedom in what sort of content we created, which allowed me to use my own style a bit more. Art has also been a pretty relaxed class for me, and without the stress of having to remember formulas and stuff, it's something that I look forward to and it's a good way for me to de-stress.

The project that I struggled the most with was probably either the Stars & Stripes one, or the Find Your Voice one. For the Stars & Stripes, I was just uninspired and couldn't think of a way to make it look interesting, so for that one my issue mostly stemmed from lack of ideas. As for the linoleum prints, they were very time-consuming, and it was difficult to work with such large prints in such a crowded classroom. In the end, I had to stay after school to finish them, but I am pretty happy with the final result, so I think the extra time was worth it.

The project that I liked the most were Beautiful Oops, the circle project, and (surprisingly) the Duck Stamp project. For the Beautiful Oops, I like it because it makes us think about how to fix our mistakes, which is something that I often have trouble doing—when I mess up, I feel the urge to start all over, which is something that I need to work on. This project helped me to do it, and I like that everyone who does it has such a different interpretation of their ink splotch, so it always turns out a wide variety of ideas. In addition, I liked the outcome of my piece for this project, so that probably is why I liked it a bit more.

For the circle project, I liked that it was so open-ended. Since the only stipulation was that we had to use circles, there were a lot of things we could do, which I liked. I'm also proud of myself for making a series for this project, since sometimes I have trouble creating one work for a project, but in this one I managed to turn out three.

And, finally, the Duck Stamp. At first, I was dreading this, because I was sure that any attempt to draw a duck on my part was just going to turn out to be a failure. Surprisingly, though, it wasn't that bad. Once I laid down the foundations and sketched everything out, all I had to do was paint, and it turned out to be pretty fun. Even though I spent a lot more time on this than I would've liked to, I think that extra time shows in the piece. And, while I know that I won't win the competition, I'm glad for the experience either way.

Throughout the course of this class, I've learned that there are many ways that I can incorporate my own art style into different assignments. A lot of the time I find myself wanting to not go with my style for projects because I don't think it will work, but I've learned that that's not the case. For instance, in the Post-Election Response, I initially wanted to go with a more realistic sort of style, but I decided against it (because I'm bad at realistic pieces). Despite this, my piece still turned out okay, so I'm glad with my decision.

In the end, I had fun this semester, and even though I'm sad that this class is over, I'm excited for 3D art, too.