5-23-11
Throughout this last marking period in my last year of high school I struggled with coming up with ideas for my art work. As I began to look through my work, I noticed that nearly all of it has to do with nature. When I stepped back and looked at my whole instillation, I noticed the flow of my work and how it has shown how I have changed with my ideas and techniques from the beginning of this year until now.
This marking period I was stuck so I randomly painted from the still life piece. While my mom was tearing down wallpaper I saw how beautiful the 100 year old paper it was, but also how delicate it was. I took it and began to make silhoutte outlines of trees and birds, and other natural figures. I realized that what was even more beautiful was the piece I cut it out from and showing the silhouette with black paper behind the piece. I struggled a lot with the wallpaper, though. It always crumbled when I tried to cut it so I began to think of other ideas. I realized how interesting using the same concept, but with carboard, incorperating the old wallpaper within it. Although time consuming and delicate, I have seen this as my favorite project all this year because its turn out was better than I expected.
This year I began to realize as an artist how important the progression and processes are. My artwork changed when I took this into consideration. I even began to display such things in my art, for example the pieces of fruit progression paintings.
3-25-11
I enjoyed the projects I did this marking period for the most part. Because of how I was trying to do more realistic things I did a continuation of my fruit pieces. For this I combined the style I usually use with the abstraction used with cardboard, paint and various other material. On top of it I painted observational pieces of fruit. I think from my first piece to my last piece I made a lot of progress. I was very happy with my improvement of the observational pieces, especially the strawberry. They were very colorful, but also fairly realistic looking, which is what I wanted it to look like.
After that the still life was put up and I was inspired to do some more observational pieces with that. I didn’t come up with a proposal for it because I was working my way along to decide what I could do with the pieces I made ad how I would make it into a full project. During that whole time I was actively making art, though. I was somewhat happy with how the first piece came out. I didn’t feel happy with the composition, but I think most of the figures in it turned out well. I got very frustrated with the second canvas. I felt that the composition was somewhat better, so I improved on that, but this time the figures didn’t come out how I wanted them to.
I feel that with the pieces that I made for these projects were a way for me to learn different techniques, especially with the still life canvases I painted. From experience with the fruit pieces I learned better how to realistically paint, but I also was able to put the piece better with composition from my first attempt with the still life. From the progress and what I learned this marking period, I feel that I deserve an “A”
1-13-11
I began the Marking period working on abstract pieces on hardboard canvas, after having been told it was a stronger point in my art. I enjoyed making the pieces, but I didn’t really feel as if they turned out as well as the original abstract pieces I made. I blame this partly because I tried to use brighter and more bold colors. They also weren’t as successful as well because the original pieces were in my sketchbook, adding a certain texture that I couldn’t achieve with the canvas-board. Usually when I made the pieces in my sketchbook the paint would act as an adhesive to the other pages making it rip, I tried many techniques to do make this same with the canvas but it never looked as nice. But in the end, attempting different ways of of making the pieces look as I wanted to took a lot of work that was sometimes frustrating which, with the effort I put in would deserve an “A”.
My next project I wanted to explore was silhouettes because of the interest I had in stop motion shadow box pieces. I decided to do a project with silhouettes made of my pictures. My first step was to take those pictures in photoshop and black out the inside of it. Doing this took about a week and a half, especially with having to learn different techniques of achieving this. I did multiple ones of my anti self portraits. I also took pictures of my friends in defined positions that would work well as a silhouette. The next part of the project I wanted to do was paint those silhouettes larger on a canvas. I used to picture of a banana box with bananas on a yellow background. I was the most pleased with how this piece turned out, out of the three I made. It took a decent amount of time to do each piece on the canvas.
I believe that working with my second project was stepping outside of my comfort zone. For the past two years I have been mainly working abstractly, and not with detail and observation. I think this project took a fair amount of observation to draw the pieces which I wasn’t used to. Several times I got so frustrated with drawing it but I appreciated the pieces because of the work and time it took to make each piece.
10-29-10
I believe I grew as an artist this marking period because I branched out to do more realistic pieces of art. Before this I just worked on more abstract or quick sketches of things, which I was content with. My first project was the natural pieces layered on abstract backgrounds. Some I felt were successful in the way I imagined they would turn out. Sometimes I didn’t feel as if they looked much like the real thing, sometimes the images looked like a child painted them. Overall, though, I am happy that I tried this project because a few pieces worked together as I thought they would.
For my most recent group of pieces I focused on just doing abstract pieces on different layers of things. I usually do my pieces on a small scale, such as on my skatch book, but I was told, and realized for myself that I wanted to start making large pieces. I was suggested to start making large scale versions of the pieces in my skecth book. Not exactly the same, but the same technniques and materials that I use in my sketchbook. My smaller pieces included a collage of random materials I found. It was hard to realize while making these pieces when to stop, or when it was good enough as it was. I feel successful in my completion of the larger ones on brown paper. They don’t exactly look like how I wanted them to in being similar to my skecthbook, but I think that I nailed it by stopping before I did too much with the piece.
