Art 2 Final Portfolio

Exam Questions

1.    Which project was your most successful? Describe the theme and or topic and the process you went through to complete the project. Were the choices you made regarding material, size, technique, etc beneficial to enhancing this project. Please explain.

2.   Discuss one project where you felt you overcame the most obstacles. What were those obstacles and how to work through them? Explain how taking risks or challenging yourself made you a better artist.

3.   Look at your body of work over the semester and choose 2 pieces that show your growth as an artist. Discuss each piece and how you grew in the following areas: application of materials, techniques and skills, artistic vision, use of the principles and elements, creativity, intuition and subject matter. 

4.   This semester we introduced a new way of teaching and learning. Students had choices in subject matter and materials. Explain your thoughts on how effective this was (or if it was not) to your learning experience in this course. Provide examples through your art projects so we can see evidence of your learning. 

1)

 I think that my final product from the What's the Point?  project was the most successful.  The topic I chose was the Cinderella castle in Disney World and Main Street.  I loved this topic the most out of all of my projects because I want to work in Disney World and I love the memories I have there with my family.  For this piece, I used a pencil to create a replica of the most famous road in Disney World.  I used a lot of technique because this piece involved a lot of shading to look realistic.  I also used perspective drawing, which was a challenge since I had not had much experience with it.  Perspective drawing requires having a fixed vanishing point that all of the lines go to.  The other horizontal and vertical lines are all parallel to each other.  This product took a lot of time at school and at home because I wanted to make it as perfect as I could.  Each line made a difference and the different leaded pencils helped with the shading.  The size of this was normal sketchbook paper.  Once I began my sketch, I realized it would take to long to draw a final sketch and a final product.  It would have been much more difficult and less accurate if I had drawn this on much larger paper.  I also think that the pencil was effective in creating darks, lights, and highlights.  The different values in this piece were done really well, and I'm proud of them because I'm challenged by going all the way dark/light enough to look realistic.  I think that the repetition of the balloons also adds an interesting more abstract value to the piece as opposed to the standard buildings.

2) 

This was a very...interesting project.  I decided to depict this rather strange face that my brother makes all of the time.  My choice of medium was colored noodles.  That sounds like it would be crazy and look nothing like a person at all.  This was an obstacle for me because as I was creating this picture by hot gluing the noodles on, it never really looked like anything up close until I had a majority of it finished.  This is one of those projects that looks better from far away, and unfortunately I haven't quite mastered the ability of creating a piece that looks good from up close and far away!  This was a hard piece to accomplish because I had to work the noodles together or break them to get them to fit into the proper lines that would come together to look like a person.  I think the uniqueness of this piece is something that emphasizes out of the box thinking and trying to break free of pencils and paints which is more comfortable.  I gave this to my brother for Christmas, and let's just say he was speechless!

3)

I feel like my Up Close and Personal piece included a lot of growth for me as an artist.  This was really only the second time I had dealt with oil pastels, so that was a challenge.  It was hard to learn how to add the layers of color and the different colors to make things look realistic.  I think that in the end I did a nice job with the highlights and shadows.  Sometimes, I colored with the colors too much so it was hard to put the highlights on over that. I think there is some really nice emphasis on the blues, pinks, purples, and greens in this piece and they contrast nicely with the browns and navy background.  I even added purple to the green leaves because I'm always told to add purple!  The composition of this piece was nice and a different angle, which is interesting to see and draw.  I really love how the tree and the nest actually look round.  That's because when I was coloring them with the pastels, my lines went with the shape of the objects so they would look realistic.  The variety of shades of colors also help with that and give it a more round, pleasing look as opposed to just being colored one color. 

 My Sticky Situation piece also showed growth as an artist.  I had nice application of the acrylic paint to form a realistic picture.  I spent a lot of time blending colors to create ones that would really go well together and look real.  I used a lot of highlights and shading with this piece.  I think it was cool that I used more than just whites and blacks to do that, but different browns, greens, and greys as well.  My artistic vision on this one was pretty unique.  I was thinking about doing a broken down staircase, or banana peels on the floor, but I just combined them.  I think that it is a success when you can put ideas together to create one individual product that isn't at all what you expected.  My vision for this piece changed a lot as time went on.  I thought I would have the door, then that I didn't need it, then I added it.  I had blue walls but then I added the stripes.  It got altered from my original idea, but it's okay for a piece to take unexpected turns along the way to create something new and improved.  I had a lot of the repetition and sticky elements in this piece as well as using the different ways to mix colors by adding different shades and varieties of colors.  This piece was creative because it was just different.  Other people did stairs or bananas, but they didn't to both to create something that was similar to mine.  I like how it got the point across and it also had a level of mysteriousness and curiosity with several unanswered questions for the viewer to ponder.

 4)    I, personally did not prefer the more open vagueness of the art topics this semester.  I am a person who likes to be organized and told what to do and how to do it.  This new way of teaching required much more brainstorming and planning, but the ideas just weren't coming to me.  That was the problem really.  The themes and mediums available were good enough, it just wasn't easy to come up with ideas of what to do and what compositions to put those ideas into.  For example, my Mixed Media project was a swing.  

Just that, a swing.  The theme was amusement, and I thought of ideas but none of them seemed to really come together in a product that was unique and full of variety.  I finally decided on a swing, but my color choices changed from my final sketch.  After I had finished with the swing and the background, it was so dull I had to come up with more ideas on the spot.  I'm not so good at that so my attempts were kind of weak.  Maybe if I had more parameters about what must have been included then it would have sparked more creativity, but the ideas just weren't coming on this one.  For this project, the openness was not helpful towards my final product so it wasn't one I'm really happy with.    I suppose it was effective towards my learning and it challenged me throughout the semester.  Looking back, I'd say that it is a great idea to allow for more creativity, but maybe next time around there could be some more regulations or at least more help with coming up with good, doable ideas.  I do like that everyone was able to create something completely different.  Also, all of the brainstorming and sketching only added to the time it took to complete a project.  I feel like all of these projects seemed to drag on because I was putting a lot of effort into making them look good, but maybe next time we wouldn't have to think of twenty ideas.  Maybe just five to ten, so that we kept thinking until we got a great idea and just went with that, not spending so much time on thinking of ideas we won't use.

 Thank you to Mrs. Rossi for a great Art experiance!!!  I had a great and very enjoyable year!