Foundations of Art

Art Reflection- Foundations

My experience in this class had a mixture of positive and negative moments. I certainly learned many new ways to create art and use materials even though sometimes my experiences were frustrating. I like how I was pushed to make the best art possible and pushed my limits of creativity. This class certainly expanded my ways of thinking and taught me that there is always another way to look at how to solve a problem or find ways to work around it. My overall experience was enjoyable and I learned many new skills. I'm very proud of how I have progressed through this year as an artist.

Over this year you can definitely see progression in my work. At the beginning of the year, my work looked like I was limited to my own thoughts and constricted to my small thoughts of creativity. However, over the year you can see how my work increasingly gets to be overall more aesthetically pleasing. The first project of the year was a watchamadrawit. You can see how I only used colored pencils and I looked a little lost on where I was going. It was a simple drawing with not much depth or perception. However, as I go through the year you can see works such as my scratchboard and self-portrait come alive and spark areas of my artistic ability that weren't there before.

You can see many strengths and weaknesses in my work. You can see how the more structured projects came out better and more pleasing to the eye, whereas the ones with more lee-way were harder for me to develop. 2D works also seem to be much stronger than my 3d works. You can see lots of detail and focus in my 2D works and development, while my 3D works seem to have a lack of structure in some areas. Even though I am proud of all my works I am still willing to improve in these two areas and further my artistic abilities.

The most challenging project for me was the linoleum prints. These had an interesting process that used ink in a certain way and had a certain process for each part of the process. This project was most difficult because I had to keep my hands very clean so I would smudge the paper and also because the prints would consistently come out different. Each time I would try to print I would have a different error which cause me to be almost perfect with my prints when it came down to getting a solid and clean print. I also struggle to create a linoleum block that would print in an aesthetic way. I kept having errors such as not digging deep enough or having small chunks of the linoleum stick out, and this was problematic because printing became even more difficult when I had these issues.

The works I am most proud of are my self-portrait, my scratchboard, and mixed media. These all looked the most realistic to the references I used. I also felt the most motivated during these projects because I liked the materials we used much better. I felt like I had more structure to the works and that I could create something that looked much more professional compared to my other works. I liked that the materials we used were easier to maneuver, such as the charcoal, ink, graphite, and the tools used to take off the ink for the scratchboard. This could have been easier for me because I was most familiar with the tools/materials and I think this helped me focus more on the outcome of the work than the process.

Some of my goals for the future are to continue developing my 2D and 3D skills. I'd like to continue to expand my use of materials and processes. Having these different ways of creating art in my toolbox would be super helpful in many different ways. I would also like to continue expanding my creativity and idea generations. This would be helpful because I feel like I still lack some creativity and seeing ways around problems even though I have improved upon this greatly during this year. I would also like to try ceramics because I think this would help further my ability to use my hands while creating. I would love to continue my career as an art student and further my skills and abilities.