Advanced Studio Art

Reflection

This year my ability to create art improved greatly. I think my art shows this improvement through the use of new materials and skills and the improvement of old skills and the improved use of familiar materials. I think that my work shows improvement through my use of new materials. Before this year I had never used chalk pastels, oil pastels, or sharpies to create art. This year I stepped out of my comfort zone and used these new mediums. I was more confident with my ability to create art and use these new materials to do so. These new materials also help show how I had improved my ability to create value when using color. I began choosing different and more interesting colors to create value other than just black and white. This switch led to much more interesting and realistic pieces compared to my previous work. I didn’t only use new mediums this year however, I did use some familiar ways of creating art such as graphite pencil and printmaking. These two skills also improved this year. The piece where it is the shoulder of a shirt and it says “I Voted” was done in graphite and is shaded much better than any piece I did last year that was done in graphite. My printmaking skills also improved this year. Even in the span from our Composite Image assignment to the first Scholastics assignment, after the One Earth assignment. These two projects, the Composite Image, and the Civic engagement, show improvement in my grasp of the process of printmaking. The Civic Engagement piece was the first time I tried to use different colors of ink in one print and the print itself is much bigger than the Composite Image print.

While I did improve this year, it was not without some struggle. The thing I struggled with most this year was coming up with ideas that fit specific criteria. For the majority of the art contests we entered this year, the sponsors of the contest had a set of criteria that they wanted to be met. These restrictions led to me feeling a little confined with my ideas. I could have an idea for a great project, but it might not meet one of the areas that the sponsor wanted in the piece and I would have to scrap the idea. These restrictions led to me compromising the quality of my art to meet the guidelines. I think my competition designs are some of the weakest examples of the art that I made this year.

I am the proudest of the three pieces in my concentration that I did in chalk pastel and the blind contour of the school. I like the school bus because it has the abstract quality that you get with blind contour, but it is still recognizable as a school bus. It combined those two aspects of blind contour well. I also like how I left the ground blank and added a scene to it by coloring from the horizon line up. I think this created an interesting scene for the bus and made the piece more interesting as a whole. The three chalk pastel pieces I think are my favorite pieces that I made this year. I like the composition and subject of each of them, but I like them so much because they were the first pieces that I made using chalk pastel. They were the first pieces using this new material and I love how they turned out in the end. I wasn’t sure how this new medium would work out and I am the proudest of these works because they were a success using these new materials.

I think my work has a direct relationship to how I function as a learner. In art, I love mediums and projects that are more smudgy and gestural with few specific and essential details. I’m more concerned with the big overall colors and values when I’m creating art and this translates into my learning as well. I am not very good at remembering and prioritizing details when I’m learning, just like in my art. When I’m trying to learn something new I try and find the big picture and remember that sequence and don’t stress the details although sometimes It might be a good idea to take note of the details because they may be essential. One of my strengths as a learner and an artist is that I can find and remember the big picture, but one of my weaknesses is paying attention to the details.