Advanced Art & Design

Semester 1 Refection

I am enjoying this class so far. I like the freedom that the sustained investigation gives with subject and material. I've been more or less successful with creating art that depicts my inquiry question. It has been a struggle for me to finish a project in the given amount of time and I often have to take several sustained investigation to finish one piece. My artwork is usually really detailed and I like my work to look like I put a lot of time into it which is why it takes so long for me to complete a piece. my goals for the next semester are to keep on top of my deadlines and make sure that I find myself in the same situations I got into this semester. I also think I will entirely change my inquiry question to something that I will not get bored of very easily. I don't know what that is going to be but I will figure it out. I am going to try and do more art with colored pencils because I discovered that I really like working with them.

Final Portfolio Reflection

When I look back at my portfolio and see the work it did at the beginning of the year and the end of the year I see obvious improvement. My work in the beginning of the year was poor in composition and technique. The works just don't look like they were created by me. But, as the year got going, I started to improve. I experimented with different materials and my last few works show a lot of thought and effort put in behind them. I was more comfortable with my art and knew what materials would work best for my ideas. My work progressively becomes more complex, detailed, and the materials used varies.

My work shows many of my strengths and weaknesses. Take my colored pencil drawing of the man for example. It is one of my most detailed and realistic works (realism and detail are my strengths) but it takes up several investigations and still isn't finished. Working at a slow pace is my weakness and it often takes me quite a long time to finish a piece

Getting work done was also the most challenging part of this class for me. I struggled to meet the deadline and often missed it entirely. A lot of it remains incomplete. It can take me up to 60 hours to finish a project and so far I haven't found a way to speed up the process.

I am most proud of my experimentation with new and different materials because that's not something I've done a lot. I quite enjoyed it and I produces some really good pieces because I experimented. I did several sgraffito clay tiles because I enjoyed the first one and realized I was really good at it. That also lead me to try out scratchboard for the second time on my last one. I also tried to use things other than acrylic paint so I used micron pens and colored pencils which I realized I really liked using.

My artistic goals for the summer are using a variety of materials to create my artwork. I want to keep experimenting with new things. I also want to finish my uncompleted works for next year's class. Most of them are definitely worth completing and I am looking forward to getting back into them.