This year in art 3, I have learned a lot about art itself, my personal art, and what art I enjoy doing. After initially not being signed up for the class, I am very glad I dropped learning about random planets and the weather to come do art. Art 3 has been a valuble experience for me because I have learned many skills in numerous different fields of art, improved in many aspects of art, and discovered where I want to go with my art in the future.
One significant aspect of art 3 that I enjoyed was trying new varieties of art with mediums I had rarely used before. This is where I saw the most growth in my artwork. One example of this is wood carving. Before spending two months chipping away at a block of wood in class (and finding woodchips in strage places for months afterwards), I developed a skill for how to create a texture and pattern in the wood, as well as how to create depth in a flat surface. When I began wood carving, this was certainly not the case, as I barely knew how to hold a chisel. Though I cannot say that I have a future in wood carving, I did enjoy the experience of trying something that I had never done before and ending up with a decent piece of art.
The field in which I believe I grew the most was oil painting a still life. Oddly enough, my experiences in any variety of painting had been extremely slim before this year. The only type of painting I had ever done was the occasional watercolor and a 7th grade painting with extremely bad quality washable paint. Going in to oil painting, I expected to fail tremendously. However, it was slightly easier than I expected and, in my opinion, the finished piece was my best piece from the entire year. I learned how to mix colors and get the exact color I needed, how to look at a composition and see values, and also how to make an appealing composition of objects.
The advancements I have seen in my own art have also come with a significant amount of improvements that could be made to help me grow as an artist. One area I feel I could improve is my figure drawing and proportions. Though I did spend a full yea of quarantine trying to get better at drawing hands, people, faces, and other body features, it is still the area I struggle most in. Figure drawing this year in art did improve my drawings by giving me a better sense of proportion and helping me create better gesture drawings to base my figure off of, but I think figure drawing is still my weakest skill I have encountered thus far. My figure drawing I made at the beginning of the year was embarassing, but since then I have improved my rendering and position of facial features and capturing movement and weight of the figure much more. I feel I definitely need to improve my proportions because drawing people is something you simply cannot escape as a student artist, but I have also come to realize that it is okay to not be good at figure drawings. More than anything, I have learned this year that I can shape my art experience however I want, and I do not have to create any type of art that I get bored of or do not enjoy in art 4 and 5.
Next year I will move on to art 4, and I am extremely excited to say the least. Through the fantastic four project this year, I have noticed that I have a passion for creating art that I can wear or use in my own life. I have developed a habit of crocheting before I go to bed, and during Q4, my method of procrastinating on homework has actually shifted from watching Netflix to making art. My favorite at-home pieces I created in Q4 were a crochet bucket hat with clouds, flower crowns, a bunch of tiny polymer clay charms, and half a crochet sweater (so far). I look forward to using what I have learned about what types of art I like to make and applying it next year to make art even more fun.
Comments