Foundations of Art

This year I took the class Foundations of Art, in this class we worked with all sorts of mediums and did many projects. When I signed up for this class I didn’t think it’d be as work-intensive as it was, I was used to the way they taught art in 8th grade. I struggled with art this year because I didn’t have much experience, For every project I had made previously the teacher walked us through exactly how we were supposed to do it. I had to form a lot of independence as an artist this year. I liked this class even though at times the work could be overwhelming. I struggled a lot because I wasn’t great with certain things and that became quite discouraging. Even though I struggled, overall I had a positive experience. I grew a lot as an artist this year, you can see from my first piece the WhatchamaDRAWit, and my last piece of the year, even though they’re very different mediums you can still tell the sculpture is much better. I think that post scratchboard my work truly improved and I started to like my work much more.

I think you can tell that I got better at art throughout the year because I got so behind a few times so a lot of my older pieces were pretty rushed because a deadline was more important than quality. I started to take more time on my work at any cost around the time of the Artist Inspired project, from then on I would spend hours on most of my pieces and I tried to make them good enough that I’d be proud of them. I got better as a student because closer to the end of the year I started turning things in more on time, not everything but my final sculpture was perfectly on time. I also improved in the way that my actual art got better though we did start to move away from painting and drawing I was just better at other things. I think my work that isn’t painting or drawings is much more creative and more like something I’d enjoy looking at. I also improved as a student because I stopped hating everything I made, I know a lot of people are hard on themselves but for a while, I hated everything I made. I think you know there’s a lot of growth when you’re able to start appreciating your work, it’s important to like what you create. Some weaknesses that you can see through my work are I’m not great with watercolors, I think they’re super fun but I tend to use too much water and not the right paper. Another evident weakness is making things look 3D, when we did the colored candy project I received the worst grade I had ever gotten from a finished piece, I just wasn’t able to grasp how to make everything look 3D. You can also see how much I struggled with anything that needed to look realistic, even though I followed the gridding technique I still wasn’t able to make everything look realistic. I also struggled with making textures, especially when doing realistic pieces. Even though these are all important my biggest weakness is my tendency to procrastinate, this causes me to rush certain pieces or just not finish them at all. I had very few projects done in time for this class. One strength I think you can see is my color pallets, I almost always have colors that look good together, it’s rare for a color to look obtuse or out of place. Another strength would be towards the end of the year we had almost complete creative freedom and I like a lot of the ideas that I came up with, I don’t love the way everything was executed but I do think I can be creative.

For me, I had a few most challenging projects, as far as drawing goes I struggled a lot with the colored candy piece, the self-portrait, and mixed media drawing they were all hard for me. I couldn’t make the candy 3D, I just didn’t understand how. For the self-portrait, I never actually finished it but it didn’t look like me at all. For the mixed media drawing charcoal was hard for me, I wasn’t able to draw clouds very well and the shoes look terrible in my opinion. As far as painting goes the most challenging project was the color design piece because of how many colors I had to mix, it was very time-consuming for the small amount of paint that I needed. Scratchboard was also super difficult for me, I wasn’t able to make gray tones and I just didn’t understand how to make it look realistic. I had a lot of trouble with the wire sculpture as well, not only did I not finish it but the fish hooks would always look weird or they just wouldn’t work. However, even though all of those were very tricky and frustrating the most challenging project was the assemblage sculpture, not because I couldn’t do it or I didn’t know how to but it was because it took so long. I’m not a patient person and I spent hour upon hours on this project, there were also so many obstacles that I had to overcome to be semi-happy with my final piece, though I was proud of it there were many things I didn’t like. I know that it was the most challenging project I had to do all year but it’s also the project I’m most proud of. I dedicated so much time to making that project as close to perfect as I could get. I was so motivated to have my final project be amazing and something that I could be truly proud of and I am. I know that I can take on such a huge project and get it done on time. That shows how much I’ve changed, I never would’ve taken on a project this big at the beginning of the year but I knew what I wanted to do and I stick to it.

I don’t plan on continuing to do much art outside of school, maybe I’ll work with wire to make some rings but other than that I probably won’t be painting or drawing much outside of school and certainly not making a sculpture that took days to finish. Even though I don’t plan on doing much outside of school I do plan on taking some more art classes in the future. I know I don’t want to take 2D design but I might consider 3D design because I think I’d like it a lot more. I’d also like to take ceramics, I like working with clay and that’s something we didn’t get to do this year. I’m currently taking photography so I might take photography 2 in the future but as of right now I’m glad to be wrapping up foundations of art. I don’t plan on becoming super serious with art so that’s why I probably won’t be practicing outside of school. Whenever I occasionally decide to do art I do hope it helps me improve and become a better artist. I think I’d do art more and enjoy it more if I really liked everything I created but I am very hard on myself, I’m also a beginner so I don’t have really good techniques yet.

In the end, it’s bittersweet knowing that this class is over, I’m happy because I won’t have any homework but I’m sad because I’ll have even less motivation to create. I think I’ve developed a lot as an artist and I’ve started to figure out what I like to do in art. I think a factor of me not doing great in art this year is I don’t have any friends in my class, I’m a pretty outgoing person and I like to talk to people. I’m also mildly competitive so having someone who I’m friends with and does their work motivates me to do mine because I want to be as good as them. I liked a lot of pieces about this class, I didn’t like the at-home learning as much because a lot of the time I just wouldn’t do my work. If I were able to re-do the whole school year I think I’d still take this class, I enjoyed it for the most part even though I hit a lot of bumps along the way. Well, this is the last thing I’ll ever have to do for art and it’ll actually be on time, I hope to keep some creativity even if I decide to stop doing art.