Foundations of Art

Welcome to the Foundations of Art page! To view pieces from this class, browse the images below and click on the project title to be brought to the full page of all works under that category. Listed beneath each category title are each of the individual pieces. To find the categories under this class, you can also go to the upper right corner (or left corner for the menu bar on a mobile phone) and select a category under Foundations of Art. Remember to read the captions about the materials, meaning, and evolution of each piece.

Enjoy!

Final Essay

Audrey Piltch

3/4 Maroon

6/8/21

I chose to enroll in Foundations of Art last year because I knew I enjoyed art, but this class gave me an entirely new perspective on the art world, as well as experience with materials and concepts I’d never used before.

Much of my weaknesses as an artist were brought to light this year, especially with the wide range of materials and techniques we used. That variety was what showed me what was easy for me, what was hard for me, but also what I enjoyed. All my pieces that were not as strong had something in common- most of them were made with a more specific prompt in mind. For example, My WhatchamaDRAWit piece was interesting and colourful, but it’s a bit busy and has a little too much going on. With that piece, the prompt was a sentence, “draw a lollipop having a conversation with a chocolate bar”. We see this trend again with my Duck Stamp piece, which was different from most other pieces, but also didn’t quite work as I’d envisioned it. This piece was also made within boundaries- I had to choose two species of ducks to include, and in addition, I had to make them scientifically accurate.

However, when I created something and then was given the chance to edit it even further, the pieces were very creative. Most of the time we called this process “extending”, as seen in the Extended Blind Contour. This work was one that started as a line drawing, but, true to the title, it was blind. I had three drawings with pen that I then had to extend. This was where my creativity, one of my strengths, came into play. I used colour in a way that brought the simple, abstract, drawings to life, and gave them dimension and depth. I used the same process with the zoomed shoe project, where my end piece, titled Lamplight in Fall, used the enlarged drawing of a shoe and my own imagination to create scenes within the lines. These were two pieces I felt were very unique and strong, and I believe that my creativity was the element that brought them that last mile to where they stand now.

I think I’ve improved greatly this year, if not in artistic talent, then in open-mindedness. In the beginning of the year, I was happy to use coloured pencils in my Beautiful Oops, or watercolours in Coloured Candy, but it was the pieces with unfamiliar components that broadened my horizons. In my Realistic Self Portrait, I used the grid method for the first time. It was a technique that I’d never tried before, but ended up giving an incredibly realistic aspect to my portrait, which I had never been able to achieve before.

I loved the realisticness it gave to my drawing, and as an artist who constantly strived for lifelike art, I was very pleased with the result. However, I knew my art tended to lean on the more representational side of things, so for my art history inspired piece, When The Mind Wanders, I purposefully chose to take inspiration from the impressionist era. This gave me a chance to loosen up, literally, as my brushstrokes were not precise and detailed. It’s not my favourite piece, but I was happy with the fact that I had experimented with technique.

The most challenging project for me was the wire sculptures. I think this is evident in my final product, a sculpture modelled after a hand soap bottle. The wire itself didn’t seem too hard to work with, but the idea of using fish-hooks to connect the wires was very difficult. I couldn’t seem to get the ends of the wire to curl around each other and stay stable and steady. All of my connections would slide or wiggle when they weren’t supposed to. However, I’m glad I tried it, and I learned that it’s not one of my strengths.

I couldn’t choose one of my pieces to call out as my favourite, but I can certainly choose a handful. Although it was at the very beginning of the year, I loved the time capsule sketch, Early Thinker’s Desk, because of the gamble I took in trying to portray the glass bottle, which ended up working in my favour. Lamplight In Fall also deserves a mention, as it showed how I had given colour and life even with harsh lines to work with, and the overall colour scheme and mood of the piece was one that matched the draft I had in my head.

The realistic self portrait, Girl With A Scarf, blew me away with it’s detail, and I was extremely glad to use and succeed with the grid technique. Although scratchboard is not my preferred medium, Have A Heart… Give One Away was one of my favourites. With inspiration drawn from a queen of hearts card and the message urging people to help others, as well as the symmetry joined by the heart in the middle, this piece was simple but impactful. S-pride-rman shows a growing trend in my work, representation, and I loved the idea of combining the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) phase I was going through and the bright colours that reminded me of the LGBTQ+ pride flag. That and the time it took to add all the layers! Audrey’s Olives was a wonderful experiment, since I’d never used sgraffito before, but I loved the end result.

In the future, I think I will keep the idea of trying new techniques and mediums, as well as trying to stretch myself to do things differently. This class has taught me that you should always try something new, because you never know what might become your favourite piece. There are many examples of this in my portfolio, and they all go to show how much I stood to gain from taking a chance and putting effort into something, even if I didn’t know how it would turn out. In the future, I hope to carry these ideas with me, as well as the skills I learned this year, from carving sgraffito to learning about art history and its impact on today’s art world. The projects in Foundations of Art reminded me how much I love to create, and the bell ringers nudged me to consider a career in the art world. I hope to continue enjoying new opportunities to make art in the future.