Art 1 Final Portfolio

1.  Which project was your favorite or most successful this semester? Please explain.

 My favorite project would have to be the free-style Photoshop project. It was great because I really had no boundaries and could have a lot of fun with it. Whereas most of the projects were very black and white without any grey area of how to execute it. I really got to put part of my humor and interests into it. Also it really made me smile and think about what I wanted to do rather than just do it. It was really neat using all the different tools in Photoshop because its easier to fix your mistakes than with normal tools. This made me fear mistakes less, so I took more chances than I usually would. That made me really enjoy it more than other projects.

2. Regardless of whether you liked or disliked a project, which one did you learn, grow, or develop from the most?

The project I learned the most from was the printmaking project. It taught me techniques that I later used in the clay tile project. It made me really think through what I wanted the end product to look like before I put anything down. The most difficult part was deciding which parts to shade for the last sketch before carving into the linoleum. This also taught me to be patient with my art when we would flip the prints because if I didn't do it slowly then it would come out all messed up. It tested my patience but it turned out great. There were a lot of steps to do this project correctly and they had to be closely followed. This project took a lot of time but it was worth it.

3. Choose one piece of art that you used skills and techniques learned from previous projects. Discuss your growth as an artist and how you incorporated these skills and techniques to create the piece.

The clay tile really used a lot of the techniques from other projects. It was sort of like a final project in the sense that all me learned went into it. First, we had to sketch it which we did for all the projects so we were already professionals at that. Then, we sculpted it which was quite tedious making it hollow and what not. Which made me use my patience I learned from the printmaking project. We also used values which we learned from our cars we drew. Lastly, we painted it which we learned from the landscape paintings we did. It really brought together everything we did this semester in Art One.

4. Which project do you feel was the least important in learning the concepts taught in this course? Please explain.

The contour shoe project was the least important project in my mind. It taught us nothing that we needed to know. Like if we made mistakes we couldn't fix it which is an essential part of successfully doing art. Also we did like twenty of the contours which made us all hate them because they got really boring very quickly. Most of the contour drawings turned out pretty badly because they were in pen. That fact makes absolutely no sense to me. It was also one of the first projects we did which gave me a bad first impression of the art class.

5. Choose a piece of artwork where the subject matter reflects you as an artist. One that you have a personal connection to. Please explain your choice.

The artwork I was most connected to would have to be my painting. My main goal in life is to travel and this really let me explore painting different places. I have done a lot of landscapes for other paintings but never with so many different aspects to it. Also I usually just use the pre-mixed paints, which limits my color tone. I'm glad I was able to try mixing because I really enjoy it. The most challenging part of this was doing the shading and making the sea blue and building blue different. This really reflects how I have grown and become better as an artist. This was a grat project.