Art Final Exam

When looking at my art throughout the semester, I have found out a lot more about myself as an artist through this class. It helped me identify my strengths and areas for improvement. I think that, looking at my interest in drawing and comparing it to my mixed media project, I have found that I do enjoy drawing. Still, I struggle with sketching, and I found more joy in my mixed media assignment because I can give myself a general idea and build off of it based on what I think it needs. I do like how my interest in drawing looks, but I was getting frustrated because I wanted it to look realistic, but I couldn't get the shading.

When I look at the application of materials, I think I've improved because I felt more bound to pencil and paper at the beginning of this class. As time went on, I felt more freedom and was able to find out how to be able to add more materials strategically. I've also noticed my creativity flows more freely than before, and I can come up with ideas a lot quicker than before. That seems to fall under my application of materials and artistic vision because I am more creative with my materials, and I'm also able to see what I want in my head and transfer it to a physical piece of art. 

The project I think I did the worst on was the watercolor landscape. I say that because I found the watercolor difficult to use and unpredictable. It also requires a lot of patience, which I don't exactly have, and there were a few occasions where I didn't wait for the paint to fully dry, and it bled. It also looks plain boring, but at the same time, it looks crowded. I feel like the mountains look bare, along with the hills. I wish that I had more time to add more detail throughout the piece. I think that the bushes and the purple patch look muddy and indistinguishable, and I wish I had waited for all the layers to dry before painting over anything again. 

There are a lot of things I would have done differently, including overall just slowing down and taking my time and waiting for things to fully dry. There are many spots where I got impatient and didn't wait for the paint to dry before adding more paint, and it ended up smearing and bleeding into each other. I also wish that I had put more small details into it. For example, I wish I had taken more time to focus on the mountains because they look very bare and out of place. I also would have added some sort of shading because I was also rushing for time and didn't have time. Lastly, I would have added more trees because there are only two, and the grass hills look very bare, and the lack of other trees makes the two I have look out of place.

My favorite medium to work with was one that we didn't directly use in the class, and it was the medium I used for my independent project and the mixed media project. Yarn was my favorite because I used crocheting for those two projects, and I loved it. I loved how they turned out, I loved the actual process, I loved the whole thing. The reason why I loved working with yarn so much is that I was already familiar with it, and the end product always feels so rewarding, seeing that you've made a physical creation you can hold out of just string. There are also so many different kinds of it and types, so you can get different effects from different types.

I think that the sketchbook drawing that helped me the most was the blind contour. As much as I hated doing it and hated how it turned out, I think it was very helpful in getting me to look at the smaller details in something I'm drawing. I don't think that the arrangement drawing was really helpful because I was overwhelmed by how much there was in front of me. I just thought there were way too many small details, and I couldn't see most of them well enough to get them down. However, I thought that the blind contouring of my classmates was helpful because you look at people all day, but never really process all of the small things that go into someone to make them look human. I thought that this was completely pointless at first, but when we got to the portraits, I found myself looking at parts of the picture I never really processed before.