Art 2 Final Exam
1. Reflect on what your portfolio (all work you created through semester) may not reveal about the semester. Do you think the work in your portfolio is an accurate reflection of your development in the class? How and why? DON'T FORGET TO ADD PHOTOS
2. Look at your body of work over the semester and choose 2 pieces that show your growth as an artist. Discuss each piece and how you grew in the following areas: application of materials, techniques and skills, artistic vision, use of the principles and elements, creativity, intuition and subject matter. DON'T FORGET TO ADD PHOTOS
- What I created throughout the semester doesn't really reveal as much progress as I wish I had attained especially in the water color unit. Otherwise I think that the work in my portfolio is somewhat an accurate reflection of my development in art class. The reason why I don't think I made much progress with watercolor is because the final project for that unit was more abstract and we didn't really practice the techniques Mrs. Rossi showed us. I think that If it would have been a more realistic style project It would have made me ask questions and learn about the techniques to paint with watercolor. Therefore that would have helped me improve. My problem with watercolor is that I didn't really know how to make gradients with watercolor or how to control the paint to achieve a realistic work of art. I think that my art work is somewhat an accurate reflection of my development in class because I feel like my drawing skills haven't really improved much since the very first project of the three drawings that we had to make would probably look the same if I were to draw them again. I think drawing is the basis of art no matter what medium you are using I feel like we didn't really ever practice drawing figures that we would actually use for our projects after the first pen and ink project. In that project we did learn how to depict depth and patterns but not proportions and how to use pencil or brush strokes to achieve certain subjects. In conclusion, I feel like I did develop some of the skills in art class more but also I feel like part of it was knowledge I already had based on my experience in doing projects for Art 1.
2. Look at your body of work over the semester and choose 2 pieces that show your growth as an artist. Discuss each piece and how you grew in the following areas: application of materials, techniques and skills, artistic vision, use of the principles and elements, creativity, intuition and subject matter. DON'T FORGET TO ADD PHOTOS
- Two pieces that show my growth as an artist are my self portrait project and my last artist style painting. I feel like both of these pieces were mostly successful and helped me grow in the application of materials, techniques and skills, artistic vision, use of principles and elements, creativity, intuition and subject matter. In my self portrait, where I was the subject matter, project I learned how to use prisma colored pencils and how to apply enough pressure in order to achieve value, and how to gradually decrease or increase pressure on the colored pencils when going from a lighter to darker area or vice versa. This project also helped me improve my artistic vision by forcing me to study every part of the image I was drawing and to draw everything I saw in each square in order for it to look exact or close enough to the photo. As well as attempting to make the exact colors in order to use them in my interpretation of the image. In this project I had to really work with balance and proportion to get the characteristics of my face correct and to add dimension to the drawing. I involved creativity in this project by using my own techniques in order to achieve a successful painting, such as working in a specific pattern from left to right and bottom to top to not get confused with the position of my features. The artist style painting that I made shows my growth in working with acrylic paint which I had almost no experience with as well as the techniques you use when layering paint in order to achieve texture in a painting. As well as the skills I developed to mix paint in order to achieve the bright colors and shadow colors my artist used in his paintings. My artistic vision helped me identify the sharp contrast between light and dark in Wayne Thiebaud's paintings, his use of thick paint and as I said before the bright paint. I think that the choice I made of recreating his pop art style or the subject matter I had to recreate with Arizona cans was a creative idea which is a way I have grown as an artist. In that project I had to emphasis shadows and dark colors by making them darker, as well as have realistic proportions and display a sense of unity between the cans by repeating them three times to show the pop art style of the artist.
- I think that the one project I was the least successful in was my self portrait. I do somewhat look like myself in the drawing yet I didn't draw my eyes exactly how they look, so that threw off the entire piece, which is why I feel like the drawing was not completely successful. I also feel like I could have put more pressure on the prisma colored pencils to achieve a skin color closer to the one in the image I was going off of. This would fix the issue I had with the drawing, which was that my neck looked significantly darker than my face. To fix my eyes I would have drawn the eye shape to match my eye features and a bit more open because in my drawing they look more squinted than they really are. Another issue with my eyes is that they looked a bit asymmetrical and disproportional which i also why they did not look exact. I would have also tried to do single hair strokes for the hair so that the portrait looked more realistic. Instead of just mixing the colored pencils to make a black and not adding as much detail which is what i did. In addition to that, I could have added more baby hairs that you could see in the image I was replicating. Lastly what I would have done differently would have been to add more shadows on the right side of my face to make my features more pronounced.
- My favorite medium to work with was clay because I had control over what I was doing and as long as you keep they clay moist you can fix your mistakes or alter parts of your piece while it is in the plastic stage. In contrast to acrylic paint, if you mess up while painting something or paint something else with you're hand you have to mix the color that you need to cover up that area which is extremely difficult. I also enjoyed rolling out the pieces of clay and wedging the clay when I needed to soften it. I was able to master the techniques associated with this medium by using my hands and other tools such as q-tips to obtain the desired textures I had to replicate when making my conchas. I was also able to put parts of the clay together by slipping and scoring the parts I shaped and put together. I was also able to master the techniques associated with clay by being patient when smoothing out parts of the structure with water. I often times had to start all over again when making the pinch pots which helped me master clay. I also figured out techniques from my classmates that had more experience with clay such as using newspaper under clay in you want it to maintain a dome shape or to not change form.