• What drawing of this group was your most successful? Give at least two reasons why. 

My most successful drawing was my portrait. I feel that I was able to highlight the specific facial features that were key to the reference, this also goes for the folds in the clothes and how certain parts would be shaded more than others. The charcoal was easy to use and gave me a better value scale on how bright I could make the highlights and how dark I could make the shadows compared to the base value. 

• What part of this assessment was the most challenging? Why? 

The brainstorming of ideas was probably the most challenging. It can be easy to draw but thinking of what to draw is always what I struggle with the most. There's so many things in the world to choose from that it is almost impossible to narrow it down to the exact thing you will end up drawing. 

• What do you hope you learn in Art 2?

With my new art class I hope that I can further continue to grow my skills and learn how to harness them to the best of my ability. 

•  What is the story your artwork tells? Describe it. 

My artwork tells the story of a young girl, Uuriintuya, who is looking over the area she lives. In her timeline all nations have merged into one to focus on technology and advancing even more. However, the quickened advancements have caused the people that are not as "smart" or "intelligent" are thrown into slums since they cannot help with the technological advancements of society. 

•  How did you tell the story through the images and techniques you used? Please give two examples.

Around the image I have displayed the slums through signs and the crowded buildings. The biggest sign translates to "NEWS: Budgets have been cut across eastern hospitals", showing the disregard for people who can't help in the tech world. 

• How effective is your final drawing? Give examples that support your opinion. 

I believe that my final drawing is very effective at telling a story through the pictures, value, and text provided. It gives a visual story with the buildings being crowded together, the upsetting news, and overall dark atmosphere of the area. 

• How did you apply what you learned during this unit about color theory and colored pencil technique to your drawing? 

Throughout my drawing I have used blending skills along with unblended linework to help convey the texture and feeling of objects and people. Colors have been used in a way that represents the idea of the art piece.

• What did you represent? How did you show or symbolize it? Gave two examples. 

As I get older I begin to start missing the feeling of my childhood where I was more unaware to my surroundings and didn't have to worry about many responsibilities. The piece I decided to draw represents the idea of growing up from a childlike perspective. I have used hopscotch, a traditional childhood game, as a way to represent growing from one age to another. It gave me another way to represent when life was hard, or going to be hard - represented by cracks in the concrete or dead grass surrounding the tiles. I tried to make the piece feel more whimsical and childlike through bright colors, which are seen throughout the grass, water, sky, and bubbles. 

• Will you use colored pencils again? Why or why not? 

I will definitely be using colored pencils again, they are one of my favorite mediums. It is quite ironic to me however, that they used to be one of my least favorites because I didn't understand how colors worked or how to make them go well together. Now that I have acquired that skill it makes the medium calming and enjoyable to use.

• What artist(s) inspired you? Why? 

The artists that I kept going back to were Jason Limon and Jose Lerma. Both of them have their distinct styles that make things interesting; Limon with his surrealism and Lerma with his impasto techniques. 

• What painting mediums or techniques did you experiment with? What did you learn? Gel medium, baking soda, and pearlescent medium were available. 

My painting consists of many different mediums and techniques. The most prominent are using baking soda and a gel medium with my paint to create a more textured surface. Of the mediums available to me, those were my favorites. I learned how to properly use and combine them to make an interesting piece of art. 

• Please describe how you used what you learned by experimenting and your inspiration from the artists we learned about in your work.

Each of the different mediums are used for specific parts of the painting. Baking soda is used to create a more rough texture on the stems, leaves, and petals of flowers - along with the hair on the lady. Gel medium is used for areas of the painting depicting liquids due to its shiny and glossy finish. I took Jason Limons surrealism into my own hands, producing a piece of art that makes you feel uneasy while recognizing its message. The impasto of Jose Lerma's paintings is what inspired me to make the paint thicker and elevated off of the flat canvas. 

• Does your painting have a meaning? If so, explain it.

The message I wish to convey in my painting is taking things from their natural environments - their homes. This is represented by the flowers that home themselves inside of the woman's skull and her vine-like hair. The hand of an unknown subject has taken one of the flowers, and it begins to wilt, dying as it no longer is in the area that it is used to. The rose pricks the hand with its thorns, leaving it harmed as an act of objection towards its removal. 

•  What artist inspired you? How did you use what you learned about them from your research in this project?

The artist I took the most inspiration from was Maja Wronska. Her art focuses a lot with blending colors together and letting them bleed for a more "together" look. While she focuses on negative space as well, I wanted to include and paint all forms of nature and life in my piece - opting to not include that in mine. Besides the negative space and blending, she also makes some of her pieces fade out towards the background, ridding the area of the finer details. 

• What did you learn from experimenting with watercolor? List one thing that you learned and how you used that knowledge. Ex: "I realized that it was hard to control wet on wet at first, so I experimented with using less water. The technique worked much better for me then." 

I have used watercolor before so there weren't many new things I could learn, but I did learn how to use techniques better. With my watercolor piece in Art 1 I didn't wait for parts of the piece to dry fully, so when I went to do finer details it would bleed into other areas that it shouldn't have gone to. With my Art 2 piece I was able to instill patience into myself and wait for things to fully dry before doing details that I wanted to not bleed. 

• What techniques did you choose for your final artwork? Why did you select them? Ex: "I wanted to capture the sky in my photograph accurately, so I layered paint to show the different areas, make sure to wait for areas to dry so they would not bleed together." 

A lot of my final is using the wet on wet and bleeding technique. I used them to create the fade from the foreground to the background. When letting the colors bleed across the paper it allowed them to create their own edges that weren't as rigid as ones I would have created. For the more detailed parts near the foreground of the piece, like the reefs, I had to use wet on dry in order to get the right shapes and shadows. When the entire piece was dried I used oil pastels to highlight parts of the coral to pop out. 

• How did you interpret (explain the meaning of) the theme "character" in your work? Give three examples.

In my piece character is interpreted by my own original character, Tabris. Though it isn't just the character themself, it is also the idea. In the artwork you can see them towards the front with their wings cut off, a symbol of them trying to escape their past. At the end of the hallway you can see them again, but with their wings before they were cut. This itself helps tell their own character and how they tried to escape their past but will always come to face it again. 

• What media (art materials) did you choose? Why did you select them for this project? 

I used mixed media for my piece, combining watercolor, acrylic paint, oil pastels, and colored pencils. I wanted to show the contrast between the background and the characters, which using different textures would help me a lot. 

• How did your artwork turn out? What choices did you make that helped or hurt the final product? 

I am happy with how my artwork turned out. I was scared at first to try to incorporate so many different mediums but in the end I was able to make them go together well. I took a few risks with the oil pastels because I wasn't sure how well they would go with the rest of the materials, however I was able to incorporate them lightly and for small areas of detail and texture to draw a little attention but not too much.