Art 2 Final Portfolio

Most Successful Project

My most successful project was my "Up Close and Personal" ballet shoes.  I chose the ballet shoes because I love to dance and I thought that this would be cool to do "up close" since I love to dance anyways.  I went through a lot of layering different colors over another to get to the final product.  It was definitely time consuming to keep going over it multiple times, but in order to get the different shades, tones and highlights in the picture, it had to be done in order to look the way I wanted it to.  I'm glad that I chose to use the colored pencil medium because I really enjoying working with colored pencils.  You can layer different colors on top of each other pretty easily and it's pretty easy to blend the colors as well.  I think that the size that I chose to do this drawing was a good size because it wasn't too small to fit in any details in the shading or highlighting, but it wasn't so big that it was overwhelming either.  I really had to make sure that my blending looked right because making shadows transition into different highlights so quickly is difficult, and it's easy to make mistakes when you are trying to capture that.  My favorite part of this drawing that I think was the most beneficial to the whole thing was the way that I blended and did the transitions from light to dark in the shoe on the right.  It is the part of the drawing that captures the persons' attention and I think that was my strongest point in the whole drawing.  It completes the picture.  Without it done right, the drawing would look more bland and it wouldn't stand out at all.  This drawing was my favorite project because I think that the techniques that I used, such as hatching and crosshatching were pretty strong and really showed who I am as an artist.  

Least Successful Project

This project was the "Scientific" project with the pencil medium.  I feel that if I had to pick my least successful piece, this would be it because this was our first project.  I feel like this was my least successful because I hadn't really had any prior technique to shading or any other techniques such as hatching, crosshatching and shading, so I feel that this definitely wasn't my strongest piece.  I could have done the shading more smoothly and done a cleaner transition.  I feel like the concept was good and it was out of the box, but I could have been more original with the picture on the film role.  I also forgot to add some value to the pictures on the tape because I was more focused on the detail of the pictures I had to keep redrawing.  I'm not a fan of pencil drawing or charcoal anyways, so it was hard for me to shine through in this and give this piece the values that it needed.  If I could redo this piece, I would make my shading a whole lot cleaner and I would make the values more extreme.  I would also add some highlights and some shadows to the tape instead of focusing so much on the pictures that were on it.  I know that I could have done a whole lot better had I paid more attention to the little things and not just paid attention to completing the project on time.  

Two Pieces That Show My Growth As an Artist

Over the semester, I definitely grew as an artist and I feel like it shows.  In my "Sticky Situation" piece, I grew in my application of watercolors by a lot.  When we had first practiced it, I was no good.  I got too dark too fast and I just couldn't get the hang of it, but I decided to do my piece in watercolor instead of acrylic so that I could take a risk at trying something new.  I made some mistakes definitely, but they were good learning experiences for me.  I feel like I grew in the use of values in my paint; my favorite bottle is the orange and the purple one because you can see how I progressed from going too dark too fast, to where I was able to control the colors to my liking.  I also got better at showing highlights in the paint and choosing good spots to put them.  My artistic vision got better because I could tell where I should place the bottles to have the best effect on the eyes to make it appealing.  I used the two-thirds rule as my guide so that everything wasn't so structured and center.  I got better at using the elements of design in this painting by using alternating rhythm to make it appealing to the eye.  My sense of creativity had also increased because no one else had really though of using nail polish to create a "sticky situation", so the subject of my project was unique.  My second piece that I feel I grew in was my "Mixed Media" Peter Pan piece.  I feel like I grew in my application of materials because I knew where to put what mediums and different pieces of material.  My technique grew as well I guess in this because when I put the tissue paper on, I knew that layering more tissue paper would make it darker, so I did that in the places that I wanted to be darker and in the places I wanted lighter, I minimized the amount of tissue paper that I used.  I think that as our final project, my artistic vision had definitely grew because the idea that I had for this piece was certainly unique and the way that I set up my idea and made it come to life was as well.  My use of principles and elements got better too because I had variety in this piece by using different materials and mediums to create unity.  I feel that this piece was definitely my most creative and stood out from the others because I decided to make mine a scene of what the real life Peter Pan would be like, but I used different objects, materials and mediums to make it all work together as one.  I feel like since this was the last project that we did, I had enough intuition to know what to do to make it look right and be creative because I had grown since the beginning of the semester.  I feel like both of these pieces show how I have grown as an artist quite well. 

Mini Lessons

 I feel like these two mini lessons were the most beneficial to my learning for projects.  I really liked to the chalk pastels for the candy in the wrapper because it showed me what I was good at and what I wasn't good at regarding chalk.  For the chalk, I don't feel like I needed more instruction for success; I think that my blending was good and I certainly liked this medium.  It taught me that even though I enjoyed using it to try it out, doesn't mean that I would like to use it for a whole project though.  The dum-dum drawing with colored pencils was really beneficial to me and my "Up Close and Personal" project that we completed shortly after being taught this because I got to see what I could do with colored pencils and if I was good with them or not.  I feel like we had enough instruction on how to use them.  The only thing is that I feel like we didn't learn enough on how to blend them well.  Overall though, I'm glad that we did the mini project for the colored pencil because I got to experiment with them and see if I was any good or not.  After completing this, I realized that I wanted to use colored pencils for my next project. I think that was a good call because my best project ended up being the "Up Close and Personal" colored pencil drawing.

My Favorite Medium

My favorite medium to work with was colored pencils.  I really enjoyed working with them because you can blend so easily and go over many mistakes that you make even though you cant erase anything.  I think that doing the mini lessons helped me figure out that this was my favorite medium because I got to experiment with the colored pencils and I think that using them came naturally to me.  Using colored pencils gives you so much variation in color and it is easy to shade with, unlike paint.  You can go as light or dark as you want with the pencil.  I think that using colored pencils gives you a wider variety in how you want to use values, tones and highlights because they are a lot easier to control.  I also think that it was my favorite medium to work with because it's the one that I excelled at the most, making it easier for me to like.  I definitely am going to work on it more, but it's my favorite medium because it all flows together easier.  I feel like I can express my ideas and thoughts more clearly using colored pencils.