Final Reflection

When I first signed up for this art class, I was a bit hesitant as to if I was going to be able to produce work that I was proud of. Looking back, I understand why I felt this way, as I hadn’t taken an art class in a while and wasn’t confident with my skills. I remember the first day wondering what my last day of class would be like, and if I would feel more confident as time went on and I got more practice. I indeed do feel more confident with my skills now, as I have had the training and techniques to use when constructing what I’m working on. Of course, the first sketches I did I wasn’t very happy with. It’s not that I was disappointed with them, but I knew that they definitely weren’t the best drawings ever. When I compare my last piece, with my first sketch, I can clearly see the improvement and I think it is cool to step back for a second and reflect on how far I’ve come as an artist, which is very exciting and it makes me feel proud.

The most challenging project I had this year had to be the realistic self-portrait. A big thing was just simply getting over the stigma that comes with self-portraits. But looking back now, it is one of the projects I am most proud of. I remember doing the portrait in the car ride up to New York and it taking me seven hours there, and the seven back! I realized that the time put into projects certainly reflects on the outcome of it. A piece that I am proud of as well is my final one, the reaction to COVID-19. I think the project idea was perfect for what’s happing now, and it gave an opportunity for students to express themselves in the sense of what is happening around them, as well as within them. For my art project, I began with a simple portrait of a girl and began to write how I felt and how I knew my friends felt as well during quarantine and made sure to express what aspects like conversations with my friends on the paper as well. I am proud of it because one, I like the way it looks visually, but, two, I really liked how the message came across and how just from a glance, or even reading a few bold words, the viewer can feel what the message was strongly implying.

Of course, with success had to come failure during some points. Art projects were definitely challenging for me as I made sure to experiment with different techniques and approaches before turning my final project in that I was proud and content with. I had challenges such as art pieces not coming out how I envisioned them or wanted them to look like, or I wasn’t satisfied with a certain section of, for example, a drawing. Throughout my work, my strengths, and weaknesses are illustrated, as I have work from the beginning where I hadn’t developed certain techniques for example, or I hadn’t experimented with certain materials. I found strengths as well as challenged with various materials–and with some materials, I found both. For example, charcoal–although it looked scary at first, ended up being one of the most satisfying and fun material to work with, even though it also brought challenged to the table. This means, that sometimes certain ideas didn’t come out exactly as I had planned prior to the completion of my work. But as I continued working, I realized that ideas coming out not exactly how you planned, not only shows the beauty of the art itself, but how special it can turn out even when you had not planned on it–and I think that is a big thing that I learned in this class.