Art 2 Final

1. Throughout Art 2 I created a lot of art work I was successful with. My most successful project was the Clay Project in my opinion. I loved how we got to choose what we wanted to do to some extent. Each table was assigned either dinner, lunch, breakfast or dessert, it was easy to figure out what to do. We were assigned lunch, my idea was to first do a meal, but I didn't think I was skilled enough to do that. Instead I just choose to do French fries, and a plate with a ketchup packet. The process was
 difficult, from picking out my idea to completing the project. After I had my idea of fries and not a meal it became easier to me. I first thought about what the fries would go in and I thought the best idea would be something more real life. I had to create a container that was hallow on the inside in order to put the fries in. The next step was creating the fries out of clay, the fry had to get the right thickness and shape. The ketchup packet was made similar to the container, you had to create two slabs of clay and had to score each slab and put them together with some water. After everything was in the  Kiln and fired painting was also very difficult. Painting the Fries were harder than anything because each fry is not the same thing. You had to show texture on everything in your project. On the Fry container I had to show highlights and low lights. The low lights were where the creases met creating a darker tone. I made sure when I was painting my Ketchup packet I was looking at an image of a real one in order for mine to look lifelike. The detail on the packet was very hard the packet was small to start off with and then the detail was even smaller. The best part of the whole project was brining it home and having every one ask if it was real and asking about it. The clay project was by far my favorite and successful even though working with clay in the beginning was hard.  

2. As long as successful art work there was a lot of art that was less successful. The project that was least successful was my Close-up project. The topic was anything realistic but close up. I had ideas but I looked on Pinterest and found a lot more help. There was pictures of animal faces, flowers, shoe laces, but the one that stuck out to me the most was stems with thorns on them. On my first rough draft I tried to hard to make my art look like the pictures I found. After I threw my rough draft away I started on my final which was already a mistake. I first started off lightly tracing my outline of what I wanted to do. I first had to think about the placement of the steam itself at first, then think about where the thorns would go. There were some obstacles with the placement because I had to make sure each thorn was going in a different direction and make the placement of them different because in real life not all thorns are placed the same way. I honestly did slack in this project, only because we had to do two projects at the same time, the clay project, and then the close-up one. I did spend more time on my clay project which to me is why the Clay project is my most successful and then I finished my close-up project with limited time and rushed and at the time didn't try my best. I could have tried harder when it came to coloring everything. The green in the steam can tell I didn't try. There isn't any highlights or lowlights, but I did try and do some shadows along the thorns of my drawing. In each thorn I tried to make the highlights the top part of the thorns, but instead I used to much of the Prisma Colors and made it look to waxy and they didn't blend together well. The background of my piece was supposed to be a close of flower petals, there was lowlights but no highlights and shading. If I could redo my project over I would actually take my time. I'd make sure I do sketches before my final so I know what I really wanted to do.


3. Starting the Art 2 class I believe I was not skilled to the level I am now. In art 2 we went more in depth to learn things and it wasn't just about the basics. So when we were asked to draw a hand on the first day of I had knowledge to some extent of how to do it. I could definitely tell an improvement with my hand from the beginning of the semester till the end. I know now where to put the highlights and lowlights on a hand. I also learned don't be afraid to go dark when it comes to pencil drawing the darker the better, it makes it look more realistic. To me what helped me the most is the blind contour drawings, it makes you look at every detail without wondering what your project looks like. That was the best way for me to realize looking at ever detail matters. Also while working with hands every time there is a crease it will be darker, and then there will also be highlights. High lights are harder for me on a hand because it was hard to figure out where to put them, but for sure some highlights are on the fingernails. In the hand I did improve on I was very happy with the outcome. A big difference is in my more improved hand I feel like I had the knowledge on when I needed to make parts darker or lighter. In my other hand instead of looking at my hand its self I took a picture of it on my phone and used that, but with my better hand I actually looked at my hand and not a picture. If I were to try to do a hand now I would focus more on proportions, I am proud of my hand but I feel like if I could looked at the size of my fingers compared to the placement of where I place my fingers. In real life if I lay my thumb down on my fingers it goes past my first knuckle but in my drawing it looks shorter than my knuckle. Now I know to look and focus more on the placement of my fingers and the relationship to the whole hand.


4. To me the Mini Lessons that helped me the most were the Color Wheel and Blind Contour Drawings.  Those were both very easy mini lessons but to me they were the most Beneficial. In order to start any project you have to have some idea of what you want the outcome to be, and color has a big part. The color wheel is so wonderful it makes it so much easier to see what color goes well with what. The color wheel is more than just colors. The color wheel is an artist best friend is helps tell what colors will go well together such as Complementary, which are colors opposite of each other on the wheel. The color wheel is also great to know what colors do not look good together as well. Also the color wheel shows how with the three primary colors, red , blue, yellow, any color can be created. All the colors on the color wheel are created by adding some more of the primary color which created tints and shades. The other mini lesson was the blind contour drawings. They were very simple but the concept is very strong. You have to not look at your paper but look only at your object your drawing and try and draw what you see. This teaches you to look at every crack and every curve. This helps very much with every project because if you take the time and really analyze your piece your about to draw you have a better understanding of where the curves are or where the lines go. Both mini lessons were small and at the time didn't seem like much but now looking back to think about what lessons helped me the most both of them helped me great amounts now. The color wheel is helpful for the visual appeal to the project and the blind contour drawings make you really focus on what your about to draw instead of what your actually drawing on your paper first.


5. To me my favorite Meduim was Mixed Media, if was my favorite because the  outcome of my project was one of my favorites. For the mixed media project you were aloud to use pretty much anything you wanted which I loved because there was no limits. You got to use anything you wanted as long as there was a message. The best part of the project is I had no idea what I was doing at first, and even toward the end I still didn't know but some how everything worked together and flowed into a piece I liked. I first started off doing trial and error for my rough drafts, and what ended up being my final was supposed to be an other draft but I ended up liking it more and worked on it more and liked it. I started finding buildings then I started to rip pieces off and glue them down randomly then after I got a lot they started to look like it flows but not to much where you would tell they were the same. I started using random things and in the end I liked how everything worked together. I started using different shades of blue to create the sky I didn't want to use straight edges so instead of cutting I tore each piece up and layered. For this project there was a lot of layering. I first used black tissue paper then gesso to make it lighter then different layers of paper then lines of glitter with more gesso on top to even out the color.  I loved how you couldn't really mess up. In my art work I added a random person and made him stand on mountains with his finger tracing the glitter, and somehow it all fit together. At first I didn't get the concept and at the end I didn't get it you just have to trail and error a lot of times until you just find things that work.