Foundations of Art

Art Reflection 2019

My art class this year was a really good experience for me, I had a lot of fun and learned a lot this year. I feel that my art skills have been greatly improved since when I came into art at the start of the year. I have always enjoyed art and I still enjoy it even though I don’t like how time-consuming it is, even though this can be a problem for me, the products of this year have been very rewarding. I think the main couple of things that I have taken away from this year have been that my skills as an artist have improved greatly, I have been introduced to new forms of art that have widened my view of me as an artist. Some of the styles that we used throughout the year were completely foreign to me and it has made me appreciate my work in art. Another thing that I enjoyed this year was the challenge, some of the projects were very challenging for me and I struggled with them but that made it so much more rewarding when I could come out with a final project that I was proud of as well as knowing I worked hard on it. I knew my skill sets in art and I am very proud to now know that they have improved greatly no that I have a wider range of skill I art to produce more effective forms of artwork.

One of the main things that I have taken away from this year has been the satisfaction of completing a project that I knew I worked hard on and did my best. Many of the projects this year were very time consuming and it was satisfying when I could complete them. I am also very happy with how a lot of my projects came out because of the new styles and formats that we learned this year that has improved my skills in art. An example of this is my final project at the end of the year. Even though it was a simpler drawing that I made according to the period of time I had to work on it, reflecting on some older artwork, this piece was much more detailed and represented the dimensions of the subject to make the simple pencil drawn and colored drawing look more realistic than any of my other pieces of artwork. One main skill that has stood out to me, even though it is not the most complex that I have learned, has been shadowing. Shadowing for me is now something that I use in most of my drawings currently and helps me make my simple pencil sketches just that little bit more realistic and detailed and help me become a more successful artist.

Another big thing for me this year in art class was the challenge, many of the projects that I undertook were time-consuming and required hard work, some I never finished but for the most part I worked hard to complete them and the satisfaction that came with a well done completed piece of art was very rewarding for me and gave me a new aspect on art, an how much I enjoyed it. An example of this was the Charcoal and Ink drawing, I spent hours on that and many late nights working to make it really good, and at the end, it is my favorite piece of art that I have ever made and that feeling of making something really good, in my standards, was super satisfying for me and motivated me to do well on my other art projects as well as non-art related work, in other classes as well as sports and at home because of the satisfaction that that work gave me. I think the hard work and challenge in art class was also rewarding in the sense that is improved my work ethic skills in and out of the classroom. At the start of the year, I was neglecting to work on my artwork outside of school and was rushing and turning in work that wasn’t my best but as the year progressed I think that I got better at using my time, especially in the classroom, productively to get work done. Obviously, these skills still need improving but this class has attributed to being a major step to developing a strong work ethic.

Overall this year in art has been a huge success in my mind, my grades could have been improved but I learned many new skills and developed many of the skill that I already possessed and I think that these will help me be a better artist as I continue to work on improving my art skill in the future. This year in Foundations of Art with Mrs. Medsker has inspired me to continue with art even though I did struggle through parts of the year. I don’t plan on taking art my sophomore year so I can get some required credits out of the way but with a more open schedule my junior year, I plan to come back to art to learn more. Thank you, Mrs. Medsker, for a great year and introduction to some more complex styles of art and I hope to be back in your class sometime in the future.