Foundations of Art

Foundations of art was always a class I knew I was going to take. Freshman year my schedule was full but this year I made sure that I was taking this class. This is because I want to continue to take art classes throughout my years in high school and foundations is not only what's required in order to move forward, but what's necessary. I went into this class knowing I was going to learn the fundamentals of art, what I did not know is that I was also going to learn a lot about myself in the process.

My work illustrates my strengths as a learner through my realistic self-portrait and mixed media drawing of my cat. Those two works were made with the gridding method which is when you take your reference photo and drawing paper and mark it up into many proportional square inch sections. The gridding method allows you to focus on one section of your reference photo at a time and enables you to focus on every detail. Arguably, my mixed media and realistic self-portrait are my best pieces of artwork this year, which demonstrates how using the gridding technique is one of my strengths. As a learner, this reveals a strong ability to demonstrate synthesis of materials, processes, and ideas because of how I was able to understand and apply the gridding method. This also exhibits a strong ability to learn how to draw intricate details and incorporate an advanced level of technicality into my artwork. My work illustrates my weakness as a learner through more technical pieces like the pure contour and linear perspective drawings. These two pieces focus on perspective, something which I struggled with as a learner. For the linear perspective drawing, our assignment was to draw one hallway in the school using 1 point perspective. To create an accurate visual of the hallway we used vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines that connected to a distance point. The distance point is the location where every line ultimately connects which is what creates the illusion of perspective. I struggled to work with the distance points and only using straight proportional lines which shows that one of my weaknesses as a learner is understanding and applying mathematical concepts to art. This weakness also manifested itself in my pure contour where I was supposed to draw my shoe from three different angles. I struggled to show depth without any shading or intricate details, something in which I excel more than with perspective. My work shows major improvement if you compare both of my self-portraits. At the beginning of the year, we drew time capsules to compare to our artwork at the end of the year to see improvement. If you compare my time capsule self-portrait to my newer self-portrait it speaks for itself. In my time capsule, the proportions were way off, there were no intricate details, and it barely looked realistic or even like a face. My newer self-portrait was selected to be displayed in the Freeport High School Visual Art Exhibition held at the Freeport Community Library. I improved not only technically but at including an engaging element to my art through visual qualities and making my piece original, imaginative, and inventive.

The most challenging project for me this year was the wire sculpture. For this project, we had to create a life-sized 3D sculpture of an object out of 18 gauge annealed wire using only fish hook connections. I struggled with this project because of the physical element. I've never worked with wire before, so going into this project I didn't realize how physically taxing it would be. To create a sturdy model my fish hook connects had to be very tight and have no extra wire pieces sticking out. To make these strong fish hook connections I had to squeeze needle nose pliers really hard over and over which is something I was not good at. No matter how hard I would squeeze, my fishhook connections would still be loose which affected the entire sculpture's sturdiness. In that aspect, this project was also the most frustrating one. This project made me more aware of how things in life that I didn't think much of are art. For instance, architecture with complex designs I always thought of as just stuff but now I understand that even though it's more physical than painting or drawing, it's still very much art. This project also helped me with my hand-eye coordination and focus more on the presentation aspect of creating art. This is because I didn't just have to take a photo of my image like normally, I had to design and create a 3D model and figure out how to pose and capture it accurately in a photo. The project I am most proud of is my mixed media drawing of my cat, Micheal. This is because it is the most realistic and technical piece I have ever made. Also, this piece is the biggest drawing I have ever done and I put more time into it than I have any other piece. Creating this piece was important to me because I love my cat and I love my dad and I wanted to give my dad a nice drawing of my cat. I am also very proud of this work because we were using charcoal and ink, two materials that I had never used before. For this project, I did the most experimenting and revising I've ever done and I am very proud of how it turned out. My mixed media drawing uses texture to display my cat Micheal in a soft and peaceful manner. For example, the shading and highlights in the neck area show that Micheal has his neck scrunched up, not in a stressed tensed way, but in a relaxed and serene demeanor. For these reasons, I am most proud of my mixed media drawing because it not only displays my best technical skills but portrays a clear tone and emotion.

My artistic goals for the future are to continue taking art classes throughout high school so that ultimately I can take AP art and design senior year. To reach this goal, next year I am going to take both 2D and 3D design. I would also like to take ceramics but I don't have room in my schedule, however, if something opens up I will be taking it. For the summer, one of my goals is to keep a sketchbook with me at all times and draw moments in my summer. I did this last year and just kept a small little notebook with me at all times and would just do little sketches of things I wanted to remember. At the end of the summer, it was so cool to flip through this notebook and see my memories as sketches and it was kind of like a scrapbook. This summer I would like to do that again. My final art goal is to continue to progress in technical skills and understanding of art ideas and processes. Along with this, I would like to widen my art vocabulary to expand my knowledge of art elements and principles and learn to better apply them to my work.

In conclusion, in foundations of art, I not only learned technical skills like shading, highlighting, etc. but I also learned the importance of analyzing, selecting, curating, and presenting artwork. Despite my weaknesses and frustrations, I progressed a lot over the course of the year and learned to incorporate tone and emotion into my art. This summer and for the rest of my high school career, I will continue to do art and take art classes, using all the skills and knowledge I learned in foundations of art.