Foundations of Art Everett Sawyer

Reflection

Throughout the whole year, other students and I have worked on improving our art skills by doing more than just "painting." We have also created sculptures and used different materials to explore a wider spectrum of art. This class taught me a lot more about how to use certain materials and how to make my work turn out better.

This year I have had many ups compared to downs. This year has changed how I do art and how I take in, and think about art. I believe this was affected through the many projects we did, and the mid-term where we learned a lot about an artist and their work. This affected me greatly, and has made me want to take AP Art History, and learn as much as I can about artists, and their work. I believe that my work has been pretty constant and I have not missed an assignment this year -- even though I have done a few projects the night before which I am not as proud of. I should have taken the year slower and not stressed myself out all the time with work.

I think that improvement has been huge for me this year. I have changed so much as an artist and gained many new skills. I worked very hard this year to keep my grade above a 90 and tried hard on all projects. I think if you were to compare my work from Freeport Middle School and the end of the year now, you would almost not be able to tell that the art from eighth grade was mine. I have gained more control and technique when painting, and I have gotten better at not rushing and taking my time on my art, which is something that I feel I just started doing this year. The work that has shown the most improvement has been my painting. My painting has only gotten better as the year has gone on, from my work with the Beautiful Oops, to the final project.

My favorite and least favorite works happened on totally different parts of the year. My favorite work was my Assemblage project, and my least favorite was the Charcoal and Ink. The Assemblage project, I think, was the best because I spent the most time on it and it meant something more personal to me because those are all tags from trips that my family has taken and some of them are from us going to California and others just going up to North Haven. Almost all of them bring back memories or stories that my Dad has told me when he has gone traveling. It is also just my favorite because it came out strong with the composition being birds because of flight and airline tickets.

My least favorite project was the Ink and Charcoal mainly because I rushed it and I picked a hard image. I think several things went wrong. First, I had chosen a harsh picture of tree roots. Second, I had never worked with ink and charcoal, which added to the fact that this project was going to be hard. I thought my skills were better than they were, and in the end, it came to bite me. I think if I had chosen a different image and taken my time, the whole project would have gone better, and I would have been able to make the image look like I had tried. However, that is not what happened, and my finished product was this charcoal and ink mess. But all mistakes lead to improvement, and I know in the future that I should think about what I am doing more first before jumping straight into it.

This year has changed my view of art and my process of doing it. I have made many projects this year that I would never have thought I could have made in the past. This has really boosted my confidence with art and how I do it. Which has improved how I do in other classes because I have become more creative and learned to take more risks and choices that I don’t think I would have if I did not take this class.

The old process of me doing art was complete as fast as possible and make something that looked good but did not have any meaning behind it. But that changed this year almost all my art I try and have some meaning behind making it from having some materials that I use or by making the art into something that is personal to me in someway this has been seen through many of my works like the Beautiful Oops which is of a bear in a wildfire. This work means something to me because when we were in California the previous summer, wildfires were happening and the drought was still affecting the state.

As a learner, the thinking part was way stronger for me than the actual skill part because compared to other people in the class, I am not as skilled in control and technique. But I feel that this does not take away from my ideas that I come up with that I think are very strong. This is seen in tons of my projects almost all of them the Leaf Project is one where I hid messages in my work and my blind contour which I turned into islands with bridges and towns on them.

But a weakness I think is staying organized and not trying many things at once, which has happened to me several times this year. One that always makes me think about this is Ink and Charcoal drawing. Which I guess I thought was going to be a walk in the park, but it was not, and I over thought the whole thing and did not come up with a plan, and this leads me not to be organized and then lead me to create a poor image of roots. But this is something I can certainly improve upon and feel that I have throughout the year.

This year has been tremendous, and has made me love art so much more. It helped me want to improve in art as well as take more and learn more about the culture around it. Most of all I realize how much art has taught me to think ahead on projects of all shapes and sizes in order to get a better outcome than just rushing in.