Foundations Final Reflection

At the beginning of freshman year, I thought art class would be unnecessary and incredibly boring. I honestly wanted to just get it out of the way so that I wouldn’t have to take it in the future. Little did I know, I was completely wrong. This year of art has taught me so many new aspects of design and style, two things I see and interact with every day. I have learned to be patient, neat, and determined. If you look at the first drawing from this year and compare it to my self-portrait or mixed media, the difference is hard to believe. I never thought I would ever be able to create actual art, but this class taught me that art can be and is anything. Art is my favorite class that I took this year, and almost every day, I am in the art room for more than 2 hours.

When I first walked into Mrs. Medsker’s art room I was overwhelmed with confusion and amazement. All around the room, there were supplies galore. Paint brushes, graphite, charcoal, ink, and even more! That was the moment when I realized foundations of art would no the anything like I expected it to be. Our first project was called WhatchamaDRAWit, we were given a funny and random prompt to draw. When I look back at my drawing and reflect, I am able to point out all the things I could improve on and fix. I would not be able to do this before I took foundations of art. I have noticed that throughout my projects, I was becoming more aware of certain things like composition and balance. I understood that in order for a piece to not be boring or uninteresting, the composition should be intriguing. I feel confident enough to start a piece or project with little instruction or planning because I now know that art allows for mistakes. Those mistakes can become part of the picture or even add character. For example, my beautiful oops artwork shows that splotches of ink can turn into a unique galaxy setting.

I found that when we did peer critique forms while in the process of making our projects that they helped me make my pieces stronger. Each review gave me a sense of what I was doing well on and what I could change in order to have a higher quality piece of art. When Mrs. Medsker introduced the class to the grid method; created by Leonardo Da Vinci, I hated it. I thought it was the most unnecessary process, but as we did more and more projects that involved this method l learned that it was actually very helpful. I figured out that the reason why I originally thought I would dread art class was due to my experiences in middle school. I do not recall doing a single project I liked in middle school, and this year I was introduced to a whole different side of art that was new to me. Art became a ray of joy throughout my week and I began to notice things in my world that I was able to connect with what I was learning.

As a new artist, I can gladly say that I am very happy that I took this class. I was inspired by it to take an A.P Art History course and a ceramics class next year! The astounding amount of growth I have gone through with things as simple as drawing a dog is mind-boggling to me. Although I would not consider myself engrossed in art 24/7, I am able to see how art relates to the real world and how we are surrounded by it everywhere. Foundations of Art has taught me that some of the ugliest and random things can actually be beautiful and full of meaning. Take Marcel Duchamp for example. Duchamp used a urinal as a way to forever change the course of art. FOA has given me the hope that I will be able to accomplish something as huge as this. I am very grateful to have taken this class freshman year because it opened my eyes to what other types of art classes I will be able to take in the future.