For my first art project, I had to think of an interesting story in my life and try to make it into a 3-D model. My story was about when I was stung by a stringer ray while surfing at the beach. Although it was a painful experience, it still made for a good story. The first couple of days of working on my project were tough for me. Nothing had turned out the way I had wanted it to and I was on a deadline to think of other ways to make my project better. I decided to get creative and started messing with the popsicle sticks until I had made decent stick people. After trying different things with my paper clips, papers, and printed photos, I came out with a great, finished project. I learned that although things may not go the way you planned, you could still make something amazing.
Our next project in art was drawing a close-to-perfect picture of our hand. At first, I wasn't even sure how I'd be able to copy a picture of my hand because, in the past, it was always hard for me to do so with my other drawings. My drawings would either turn out too big or too small to resemble the real object. Luckily, Mr. Langmack taught us how to double our measurements before starting our project. After practicing doubling measurements a few more times, I felt more confident in my ability to make a great drawing of my hand. Finally, after practicing value and shading I was ready to draw my hand. When drawing my hand, I made many mistakes and had to erase my line multiple times but I didn't let my mistakes discourage me. I continued to work past my mistakes and didn't finish my drawing until I was completely confident that it was really good.
For our third project, my class and I worked on painting landscapes. I've never really enjoyed painting because it can be hard to fix if I messed something up while painting. Luckily, Mr. Langmack guided me through the steps to painting accurate landscapes. I learned how to perfectly sketch my drawing, blend colors, and add texture to make my painting look realistic. My favorite part was finding my landscape picture. I chose a picture of one of the beaches we hiked next to in Hawaii. I also really enjoyed painting! The only thing that I struggled with was painting the area where the sea meets the rocks. Mr. Langmack helped me with painting the water over the rocks to make it look like the waves crashed over the rocks. Altogether, painting my beach landscape was a fun experience.
For this project, we had to make a clay jar. I've never really enjoyed using clay, but I felt that I did well going into this. I learned how to carve into my jar using different art tools so the jar would have a clean look to it. What was tough was making a clean cut for the lid of the jar but I managed to make a sort of nice lid. I enjoyed designing the jar and painting and blending the colors on my jar. To summarize, I enjoyed making my first clay project!
We started working with clay to make beautiful, glazed bowls for our next project. I'm not sure I've worked with glaze before so I was excited to learn how to make my clay art look more professional instead of having it look like kindergarten work. While working on my bowl, I learned how to make even patterns and how to blend my clay properly. Finally, when I finished with my bowl and was ready to glaze it, I noticed that my pattern had too many holes. It looked good, but the only problem was that it wouldn't be able to hold anything! Although the bowl had too many holes, it looked good, and I still enjoyed making it!
Making my clay whistle had to be one of my favorite art projects! I loved making something fun, loud, and cute! Although I struggled at first to make my clay whistle whistle, I finally was able to fix it with the help of some of my friends. I loved the idea of making a whale-themed whistle so I started working on the tail and water spraying out of the blow hole. I kept the shape of the whistle but decided to add more whistle holes for the whale's eyes and blow hole. My favorite part was painting and glazing my whale because I loved the colors I picked for my whistle!