Foundations of Art

Art Reflection - Foundations

To say the year was unexpected is a huge understatement. Unexpected doesn't hold enough meaning to describe Foundations of Art. I expected art to be a cake walk. I was very wrong. Even though sometimes I got frustrated, I learned a lot. I was hoping for it to better me as an artist, and it did, just not in scratch boards or collagraphs. Foundations of Art taught me perseverance, some mental toughness, and what I'm already good at artistically. Even though I don't feel that I did particularly well on any of the actual projects, I did manage to take away some little skills from each one that I feel improved my own style of art.

I feel that I have progressed a lot artistically this school year. If you look at my first piece of highschool art, you'll notice it resembles a cartoon drawn on a napkin at lunch time. In contrast, if you look at the Covid Response project you can see the difference. The Covid project is shaded well, has more solid colors, and looks a lot more interesting visually. Since I was allowed a lot of freedom in how I made the Covid Response I was able to use my own skill and style to create a better looking piece of art that felt much more personal to me. The WhatchamaDRAWit plane resembles my old style, a cartoony-type doodle, and the Covid Response shows what I can do now. The first thing I learned about myself in Foundations of Art what style I'm best at.

This class has been both difficult and interesting. The hardest part of this year has been the past few weeks. Admittedly, I should have chosen to have live classes. Foundations of Art taught me that I don't do well when it comes to homeschooling, but instead, do much better when I'm in school learning in person from teachers; it's a lot harder to miss something when the teacher is talking directly to you. At home you can misread, forget, or get distracted and tangled up in something else. At school it's easier to pay attention primarily bcause there is someone talking to you directly and walking you through each step. Another difficulty of E-learning for me is that once I sign in for school my brain tells me I'm done, when in reality I still need to sign in for art. Consequently, the second thing I learned from art this year is to always check your email.

Of all the assignments from Foundations of Art this year, by far my favorite was the Covid Response. I enjoyed this one so much because I had so much freedom with it. I was able to do the art my way to fully express how I feel about the state of the world right now. I was able to use my cartoonish style of art to do my absolute best work. I also had access to some Copic markers this time around, which helped tremendously. The solid colors, the tip shape of the markers, and their ability to blend well, really added some pop to my drawing. After I combined it with Crayola felt-tipped markers and a bit of pencil shading, it ending up looking really cool. Some of these skills felt much harder for me earlier in the year I was able to use the shading from the pencils to make the virus look menacing and evil. The third thing I learned from Foundations of Art was perseverance. I learned that If I push through the stuff that I don't necessarily like as much, I end up learning the skills I need to produce something really cool. In my case, this was the Covid Response picture.

Overall, I found art class somewhat dissappointing this year. Although I really love to do artwork, I learned that I don't particularly love formal classroom-based art instruction. For me, putting expectations on my art largely takes the fun out of it. When I look at my art as a whole this year I see that I did make some progress, which means I definitely learned something. I do feel as though I am even more confident in my own personal style and I have enjoyed experimenting with some new materials such as Copic markers and higher quality pencils. Even though I won't be taking art again next year, I am glad that I had this experience. Each piece I created over the past few months has a different story behind it that I will enjoy looking back on. I also look forward to continuing to create the art that I love to add to this collection.