Final Thoughts

Reflecting on my goals for the semester:

Over the course of the semester, I learned many things that helped me become a better artist. To start, I learned that color contrast is super important. We did lots of shading and such this semester and did lots of color blending. I noticed that on my self-portrait, half-face drawings, eyes, nose, and mouth drawings, and so on, there was an immense amount of contrast used. By using contrast, there was much more realism and detail brought to these drawings. It was also fun experimenting and learning as I used contrast and blending for all of these. I could tell that by the time I got to my self-portrait, I had improved a lot when it came to adding contrast. Furthermore, I had really no knowledge of watercolor before this class. Every time I had done watercolor in the past, my paper would always end up getting too soggy, and the colors would mix together. When we started our watercolor unit, we started off practicing with different techniques. I learned that it takes patience and time to do watercolor correctly. During our watercolor land scape, I would take lots of time using a little bit of watercolor, drying it, and then repeating this process. The techniques I learned were incredibly helpful in creating my final landscape, and really helped me capture as much detail and realism as I could. Below are the reference photos that I mentioned.

Assignment that I am most proud of:

The assignment that I am most proud of is my watercolor drawing. I never pictured myself to be "good" at watercolor, and in fact, thought the opposite. Going into this unit, I was super nervous about the outcome of what my watercolor would look like. I chose a reference photo that I knew was somewhat doable, and just did the best I could to do a light drawing of it before I started painting. I think that this assignment overall just taught me lots about how to use patterns and different techniques. I also learned about pigment, and how to use color contrast within my watercolor. I used different colors of pigment to help detail the ocean a lot more, and spent a bunch of time painting and drying, so that I could achieve the right colors. I could see my progression and improvement as I did this assignment, and even though the end result is pretty simple, I wanted to do something simple and calm, and I think that I did a good job replicating the colors from the reference image.

Looking ahead:

Looking ahead, I want to continue doing art as a hobby and past time. When I go abroad, I want to do it in my free time, and do more practice with it, because I truly think practice is what will make me a better artist in the future. Unfortunately, I do not have room in my schedule to take any more art classes senior year, but I really hope to make up for this by doing the Art Club that our school offers. I want to get watercolor paints and work with watercolor more in the future because now that I have a much better understanding of it, I will be able to get better at it. I had a bunch of fun with our class and was happy about how close we all were. I think we all helped each other become better artists, and were super helpful when it came to giving advice on how to make our art better.