End of Term Reflection

I think that this term has gone really well, I believe that during this term I have learned many art skills and made immense progress in my art which was my overall goal. During this term, the big thing that I learned was how to paint and control a paint brush and as an artist that helped me grow. In my growth, I also learned how to speed up the drawing portion of my art by paying less attention to detail and focusing on the big picture. What surprised me during this term was how easy it was to paint if you focus and don't get frustrated over little mistakes, because they can be fixed. My biggest successes so far has been constructing a painting and one of the biggest challenges have been completing projects, I always start pretty well but then I run out of momentum. The advice I would give myself about the class for the start of the next term would be to manage my time more effectively and complete work. The things I need to work on as I grow as an artist are to focus less on detail and always consider the big picture and to also push through every project by pacing myself.

Heores

The kind of stories that i found when I looked up hero on the reputable online newspapers were stories about people committing heroic acts and deeds in their community and in the world. I think that the people in these articles are heroes. Being hero is someone who commits a heroic act on several occasions or goes out of his or her way to do something that has a big impact on the lives of others.

This image was made by an artist who works for Marvel Comics, and the artist is for America and this picture was made in 2005.

Mid- term Reflection

I think that at the half way point in my intermediate drawing and painting term my work has developed in some areas. In terms of what I have made I don't think that anything has changed drastically, because of the fact that I take a long amount of time on my work I feel that when completed the quality of my end product will not change. In terms of process I think that I have grown greatly; throughout last year I rarely used my sketchbook to brainstorm or sketch out ideas but this year have really utilized my sketchbook during project planning. I have also begun to utilize people's feedback when doing my project and incorporated their ideas in my art. My blogging hasn't been up to date because of technical problems but I feel that I use my blog as much as I did last year. In terms of engagement I believe that I am engaged most of the times except for during work time when I tend to get distracted.

What if we used up all of our natural resources to thepoint where there are none left and we had to abandon our planet?

Distance

What if.....? Idea and Feedback

The concept behind my What if ......? project was to try and replicate a scene from the movie I am Legend so that I could convey the message of what if we used up our resources to the point that there was none left and we had to abandon our planet? The feedback that I got from my group was that it was a good idea and that if I had any trouble drawing all of the cars that I should incorporate some kind of a collage but I didn't do that because it was a pencil drawing.

Text as a Visual Medium

The concept behind my text project was to try and convey the idea of distance from nature through my art and I planned on using some of the text techniques that we were shown in class such as proportion and shading. The feedback that I got from my group was that I should continue with that idea because the idea that I planned on using prior to my new idea didn't send the message I was trying to send.

Text as a Visual Medium

The concept of my text piece is to show my distance from nature by incorporated words and pictures and creating distance. The feedback and suggestions that I got from my group was that I should draw nature from a window view to display my distance from nature and that my old idea made my picture seem as if I wanted the world to end and I hated life which is understandable considering the fact that the word despise and the world on fire somewhat sends that message. They also said that instead of the word despise I should use the word distance which was a great suggestion.

The first thing that went through my head when I heard the directions was the thought of disbelief it took me about a minute until I was able to accept the idea of drawing without being able to see what I'm doing. The blindfold helped a lot while I was trying to picture a place because being the kind of artist I am where I need to focus on details, the fact that I was blindfolded helped me cope with the lack of detail. When I started my drawing I started off by drawing the big items in my picture and then when I completed that I went back to add details like people and other small objects. Drawing while blindfolded started to get easy as time went on and I got the hang of things. The drawing that I made blindfolded actually came out fairly well considering the fact that I couldn't see what I was drawing and my picture is very similar to the drawings I used to make as a preschooler.

Observation vs. Imagination

In the first drawing which was drawing from observation I tried as much as possible to really concentrate on the object that I was observing and I tried to be as accurate as possible when I was drawing from observation and include a lot of detail. In the second drawing which was from our imagination I tried to be as creative as possible when I was choosing the scene I was going to place my items in and then once I chose my scene I then began to add detail. From my point of view the second drawing was much harder than the first because drawing from observation is pretty easy for me but when it came to finding a scene to place my items it became pretty difficult because for the second drawing I really had to put a lot of thought into my decision.

Northern Lights

My goal was to use light and dark to help capture the beauty of the northern lights over rocky mountains. I arrived at this idea when I saw a couple of pictures and I liked the use of light and dark in the portraits so I wanted to make something like what I saw in the pictures.I used the pencils and erasers to create different shades, color different objects and create streaks in the sky. From this experience the different powers of a simple pencil and how much pencils and erasers mean to a picture or portrait.

Self Portrait as a Panther with a Mic and Speakers

My clay sculpture is a panther with a microphone and speaker in the background. I chose a panther as the animal that best represented my personality because I felt that the panther best described me as a person when I walk into a room. The panther is strong, a leader, quick, independent, and assertive. I also decided to make a microphone stand because at times I can be outspoken and quiet so by adding the microphone stand and speakers to an animal who serves as a leader helped to add a conceptional aspect to the sculpture. I had a little trouble making the sculptures because working with clay isn't wasn't easy at it seemed but in the end I was able to get my point across and complete my sculpture. I used one of our tools to make fur for my animal to help add texture to my sculpture.

Me-Scape:A Reductive Block Print

For the printmaking project that we did towards the end of the term, I decided to make a beach scene in Hawaii. I decided to make a colorful scene of a beach with sand, trees, boats, clouds and other fun things that could be found on a beach. This project was really hard because it was very difficult to get everything in the right place and once you made a mistake it was almost impossible to fix. Even with the help of a my teacher who happens to be really good at this it was still very hard to complete this project. In the end I felt that the print making project was very challenging and even though it didn't come out the way I would have wanted it to I still managed to finish.If I could do this project over again I would be more precise when printing.

Reflecting at the end of the course

My story as an artist this year began when I transferred out of chorus to join this art principles class. I came into art principles this year as an artist with natural skills but with very poor knowledge of different techniques, styles, and principles that are associated with art. From the start I found it hard to abandon my bad habits, change my style and develop new techniques that would help me progress as an artist. I was very stubborn to dropping my bad habits and beleived that my style of work was better. But as I went on through the year I started to pick up new skills, and change my bad habits for the better which was evident in my work. Although the one habit I wasn't able to drop is my obsession in detail, which throughout the year had a crucial effect on my time management. I took a lot of very important skills and concepts from art this year and I believe that I will use what I learned again next year in future art classes.

Light in Art

In the art world, Light is a key component in creating a work of art. Although in everyday life some form of light it always around; sometimes in some places more than others. The utilization of light in art and life can symbolize many things. Light can be used to convey emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger etc to an audience. You can also use light to emphasize on certain things and you can use it to try and display the state of things. For instance one situation that I had where I experienced some form of light was in a Theater/ School play. Throughout the play the crew used lighting to direct the play and at a certain part in the play the stage went dark and a spotlight appeared on the main character and even though the other actors were on the stage the audiences attention was one the character with the spot light on them which helped emphasize the character and take away any distractions. Another situation where I experiences the utilization of light was when I was in an Art gallery the artist was trying to emphasize a character in the frame so he made the things around the character in the frame dark and mad ethe character very bright so that it would be able to catch ones attention. So in totality I feel that artist use light to emphasize on what they want the audience to notice.

I am an Artist, a Student, and an Athlete

I believe that the strength of my art is the self portrait that I drew and other drawing aspects. The parts of my story that came out in this non-traditional self portrait was who I am when I walk into a room. Instead of drawing I used words and pictures, and made a collage to help display my story.

The picture that I enjoyed the most was Age Old Hymns. I felt that this drawing was the most interesting and intriguing picture among them all. I really like this drawing by Alexander DeMaria because I think that it is really cool how he incorporated different things that he is fond of drawing and merged the into one portrait. I also really like his use of color/paint; he used guash on the mans face and really made it stand out. I also really admire the amount of detail he puts into his drawings and his effort to try and make them as realistic as possible.

Reflecting on self portrait project

I shared my self portrait with the group and I explained to them the purpose and my plans for my self portrait. They liked the self portrait of myself but since that was all that was there they weren't able to do a lot of critiquing on my work. But they did give me good feedback on my intentions for the final project.They told me that my work up to this point was good. I need to develope my ideas and put them onto my project to make it original because without my ideas it is just a portrait of myself.