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.
The first assignment we did was to draw a bunch of things (a landscape, an animal, a street in perspective, and a hand drawing) and I feel this cat came out the best. I found two images of a cat, one to draw the head and the other to try and get the right angle and shape for the body. There's a lack of balance in the detail of this piece and I definitely need to add more detail. To add texture to the back of the seat I shaded in diamonds with protruding bits to make it seem concave, but it ended up looking more like the cat has dark stars around its head. I made pretty good use of value while drawing its head. The second I have here is a mask drawn with prismacolor colored pencils. The project was to draw something in nature very close up and while I didn't stick with the theme very closely, it might be my favorite piece. Using black paper in the background made it easier to work with the prismacolors because of the contrast in colors. I chose a more simple layout and took my own reference photos, which made this a lot better to create than the other. I used brown, white, yellow, and silver colored pencils for this which go really well together in my eyes, and I spent most of my time blending which added a lot of value and texture to my piece. It's more unified in detail and the angle is more balanced/realistic. I think I pulled off showing the perspective of the side view of the mask really well. What helped a lot is that I learned a bunch of shading and blending tips 'n tricks in between the creation of these pieces and knew how to have the mask turn out the way I wanted.
Choose 2 mini lessons that you felt were the most beneficial in your learning for that particular project. Include photos of these and explain thoroughly. Do you feel you needed more instruction for success? Explain or did you feel that the instruction given was enough to ensure success? Explain. (if you do not have a photo for this just answer the question without one)
I was not the best at perspective and pen and ink (I had never really used pen and ink for a project), but learning multiple perspectives and doing the pen and ink value charts and techniques helped me. The first image is a road and cul-de-sac in one point perspective. With this I got to learn how to draw letters and circles in perspective, as well as inclined spaces like the sidewalk, which helped a lot with drawing the stairs in the final project. The second is the corner of the art room in one point perspective and I learnt more how to draw the convex square-shaped portion of the wall (which was actually really hard for me to figure out) and add other detailing. The third shows the pen and ink value charts and techniques and the exercises helped a ton. They showed me spacing lines to be neat would make hatching look so much better and reintroduced me to shading objects like cones and spheres which I had not done in a while. What I wish I did in my final piece is showed more value and constructed a few spaces better (like the stairs and the walls). All in all I think the instruction given was enough to lead to success but more practice with pen and ink on my part would have ensured it.
Look over the blogs of other students in our class. Choose a piece of artwork from one of your classmates that you feel is an exemplary showcase of what the project was to depict. Think about how the artist used the medium, utilized the elements of art and design principles, was original with their ideas and went beyond their comfort zone or the realm of the requirements. Make sure you have the image of their artwork along with their name (first name only) posted with this response.
Noah's shoe in the close-up objects in prismacolor project was really well made. The goal of the project was to zoom in on an object and show texture and what really impresses me are the stitches and crease in his shoe, which were emphasized using white. He displayed balance by making the view show almost even amounts of detailed and more plain texture. He displays rhythm with the angles of the seams and latticing on the side of the shoe. There's a large variety of texture and he created it using different values and gradients. The viewpoint makes this piece interesting and the fact that it's blurrier towards the left where the shoe would be closer to you is awesome because that's how I would see the shoe in person if I were to look at it from that angle. It's also interesting how he used a warm, reddish color palette throughout his piece because it adds a sense of unity. The requirements of this project were to replicate texture in prismacolor and he did that well.
Which project was your most successful? Describe the theme and or topic and the process you went through to complete the project. Were the choices you made regarding material, size, technique, etc beneficial to enhancing this project. Please explain.