AP Studio Art

Semester 1 Reflection

This semester has been one of exploration. I have used many new materials to create my art and have varying degrees of success with them. I have had the most success with trying ink and spray paint. My sixth sustained investigation was when I tried both of these new materials and that project is one of my favorites that I have made this year. I like it because it has multiple layers of shapes and colors. I kept adding to the background and I like the final result. Although not a new material to me, I have had success with chalk pastels. For my first Scholastics piece, I used chalk pastels and I really like the final product. Another piece I like was my playing card print. I think I had so much success creating these pieces is because I spent much more time on them. I committed to adding to them and spent much more time creating them than my other pieces.

Not all the new processes I tried were successful. My foray into woodburning was not a complete disaster, but the project it yielded was not my favorite. The final product did not resemble my reference and was overly general looking and pretty boring. This was a somewhat new process and I didn’t really explore the best way to use the wood burner to best create my final image. I have struggled to come up with ideas for my sustained investigation because it is so broad. I think I need to narrow the subject down as well as a material use focus question.

My goals for the second semester are to create more portraits. Some of my favorite pieces from the first semester were portraits and I enjoy making semi-weird looking portraits. I also want to start connecting my focus question to the subjects of my art and not just my materials. I also want to keep making prints. I really like the process of making prints and I like the final product of a print as well.

Final Reflection

The second semester was further time of artistic exploration for me. While I experimented with materials in the first semester, I began to experiment with different styles and looks of my art. I tried to move outside of what I usually end up creating. I think I was successful in changing the style of most of the portraits I did. I started with more complex realistic portraits and slowly simplified them to change my ways of doing portraits. I think why I was successful in changing my portrait style is because I really focused on simplifying my portraits. I didn’t try to blend values, I began using some outlines, and I didn't focus on making the people look realistic. This forced me to make them less complex and almost more stylized or cartoon-like.

I struggled to find things to make art of. I did a lot of self portraits because I didn’t have any other people to do portraits of. And beyond portrait subjects, I also struggled to come up with ideas for projects like the Doodle for Google and other competitions. I could usually come up with a slogan (if the competition called for one and sometimes even if it didn’t), but I couldn’t always come up with some artwork to go along with it.

My artistic goals for the summer and future are to simply continue making art. I want to keep making things even if I’m not in a dedicated art class. I would like to try some new materials like spray paint and printing on fabric, but no matter what materials I end up using I would like to continue making art. Another goal of mine is to try and work big. I want to try to make some larger art.