Semester 1 Reflection

From September to January I have learned countless amounts of new techniques. I started the year with whatchmaDRAWit where I was given a prompt and it told me exactly what to do then to the mini sustained investigation series where everything was completely up to me. I learned how to create a stronger composition, fill the space, and make the material relate to the background. I've learned how to make the border part of the artwork without incorporating it so much it looks like a part of the work. A bif concept of the class was knowing how to create a piece of art that falls under the "design" category and when a piece of art falls under the "drawing" category. Personally I found that most of my projects this semester have been drawings because that's what I'm used to doing.

I think I have been the most successful with watercolor, specifically watercolor pencils. A lot of the time I wanted to slap on a simple, easy background and being able to scribble a bunch of different colors on a paper and then blend it with water made it a lot easier and I found I gravitated towards watercolor pencils as the year went on. Another thing I think I was really successful with is is colored pencil and felt tip pens. When I find that I want to add detail or contrast to my works I often use colored pencil. I like being able to physically hold my pencil and watch myself draw the lines. I ended up using colored pencils or felt tip pens to finish up a lot of my work. I used it a lot for last minute outlining and making the colors brighter or darker. One thing I think I struggled with was digital drawing. I tried to do a digital drawing and I had a really hard time getting the pen to connect to the tablet, and then the pen would freeze and I would get really frustrated. My Donate Life project was actually a digital drawing but it was so hard and so time consuming that I really didn't enjoy making it and I ultimately feel like I could have made something better sticking to the materials I know. Another thing that I struggled with was graphite, which to me sounds kind of dumb but I just don't like it, and every time I would go to do a project in graphite I would get halfway done and then scrap it and start over because it didn't look how I was picturing it to look.

I think my artistic goals moving forward should be to experiment with materials and mediums I haven't used before or generally don't do, one that I can think of would be collage. I never make collages because they take so much time and after a short while I fell my patience and attention span running out. Another thing I really want to work on is pushing my color. A lot of the time I stick to plain pastel looking colors because I think they look pretty when I should really be pushing those colors and making the brighter or darker and blending them. I want to really work on making my composition and material relate to each other. Experiment with objetcs or things you dont traditionally find in an art classroom or an art supplies store.