Final Blog Post

 The two works that I believe are my best from this school year would be my blown up picture of a fire hydrant with textures on it (from the texture project), and my four paintings of a coffee mug ( . (neither have formal names). These two works really demonstrate how I have used the idea of "stretch and explore" to develop my craft. For the fire hydrant, I though the project was on texture, I brought in a side of digital media and photography to help bring out the textures. These two concepts contrasted each other better than I expected which created a great composition. The smoothness, color and intrigue of the photo (I blew up the photo so only a small handle of the fire hydrant was in the print) worked with the rugged, unique features of the textures (the textures were rubbings from several different things) to equally bring each other out. "Stretch and explore"was a big part of this project because, bringing in the photo helped me separate this work from the idea that everything had to conform as simply a set of rubbings. Next, my other work that stood out to me the most was my collection of four paintings of a coffee mug. Just like the texture project, my paintings of the cup in the color project (mixed in with diptics on my blog) incorporated a digital side too. I set up my composition, took a picture and used that as my basis. There ins't much shadow in the photo, but there a lot of different backgrounds that I used different shades for. In this craft, the "stretch and explore" idea came in when it came to experimenting with colors and how I could shade or lighten the paint. What I liked about that was that I could fix any "mistakes".

My least favorite work was my relief sculpture from the texture project. The problem I had in this project was that I could not find inspiration. I felt rushed in the beginning of the project and I started putting random things together hoping that it would work. The textures themselves were good but they did not go well together. Also, I did not like that I "separated" my sculpture with the large piece of blue wood in the middle as that disrupted the connection. Knowing all of this now, I would go back and look for textures that may be different, but go well together and bring each other out.

My greatest strengths I would say are my creativity and open mind. These two qualities god hand in hand.  I usually can come up with some great ideas and manage to translate what I want into a piece of art, but I also can pause and look back at my work, make it better and most of all take suggestions.

Overall, my performance in class I think is highlighted by the fact that I work hard every time and I truly enjoy and have a passion for art. The fact that I love art makes it easy to give it my all and really experiment in class. I do think I could improve in efficiency. I have always liked to take my time with art, but at least in class I have to speed up my process so I can stay on task and not get behind.

I am very excited to continue with art next year. I am most looking forward to learning more techniques of drawing and painting that will help me improve my art. I want to absorb the most knowledge possible to keep working to make my art better.

Art has many lessons to be learned from its long process. All the values we have learned this year such as "stretch and explore" and "engage and persist" can be translated to life and work. You always have to give one hundred percent in your work and life to get great benefits.

Landscape

There were two parts to the landscape project: drawing and photo. The photo side of the project was much easier for me as I am very familiar and comfortable working in the darkroom. I can look at my print and know what I have to do to improve it or simply to get it exactly how I like it. This idea of "perfectionism" I have developed, while it may work with photo, it does not work for everything. When it came to drawing, I got frustrated when I could not translate the exact lines, shadow and composition I was seeing onto my paper. This struggle influenced the project heavily for me. My drawings are much more focused on certain objects that are closer to me, whereas my photos have a "bigger picture" sense about them. This created a very interesting composition of my book as on nearly every page I have a "smaller" drawing contrasting a "bigger" photo. My drawings are very line oriented whether the lines are fine or somewhat abstract.On the other hand, my photo's were much more detailed and had more to do with a larger focus and more interesting composition. When it came to making my book, I was very comfortable in what I wanted to do. I accomplished the cool cover I was looking for and I tried to contrast my photo with my drawings on almost every page. This project helped to show me two the different ways I can go about trying to "capture" a landscape. Now I can use this as a base for other projects similar to this one in the future.