Most Successful Project
In my opinion my most successful project would most likely be my clay pizza. Our theme for this project was lunch. And one of my favorite lunches would be pizza. As I thought out and planned this project I ate pizza and took many pictures to help me achieve proper proportions, colors, and textures. I started out with this project by cutting my triangle and adding bubbles, ridges, and smoothing out the clay so that it looked as real as possible. I created my toppings of pepperoni, sized them out to proper proportions, and curved them out. I added a layer of cheese to achieve the most realistic look as possible. The most difficult part of this project was painting. It took multiple layers of paint to achieve the correct colors in order for the pizza to look the most realistic. Altogether my techniques, colors, materials, and size helped to create very realistic piece of pizza. For my presentation I placed my piece of pizza in a used pizza box with grease stains to support the look of a real slice of pizza. Overall I thought that I was very successful with my piece of pizza.
Least Successful Project
In my opinion I thought that my least successful project was my colored pencil abstract ornament. I felt that this was my least successful project because I did not spend as much time and effort into this piece as I would have liked. We did this project at the same time as the clay food so I spent more time and love into the pizza than on my colored pencil project. I thought that I did well on my sketch of the ornament in my sketchbook, but putting it on a larger piece of paper that was black messed it up. If I had done my final piece on a white piece of paper I think I could have been much more successful. The white paper helped to enhance the light reflection off of the ornament, and the black paper made it so that I had to use more white colored pencil. Also in the background of my piece there were blurred ornaments and I did not execute the look of them very neatly. Had I spent more time I think that this could have been a great piece. I was grateful that I learned from my failures in this piece and it helped me to plan out my time better on other projects after this. And although I did not like the end result of this project I did enjoy using the prisma colored pencils and I would choose to use them again in other projects.
MY GROWTH AS AN ARTIST
I think that the 2 pieces of art that show my growth most were the hand that I drew on the first day of class and my Epcot Ball painting. The first day of class Mrs. Rossi had us draw a picture of our hand; she gave us no instructions other than to “draw what you see.” I drew what I saw for the most part but it definitely wasn’t my best work. I shaded but I also traced my hand with a dark line that didn’t make it look realistic. Mrs. Rossi taught us a lot of mini lessons, which helped to refresh my memory of the proper way to draw realistically. After a lot of practice and I was able to improve immensely in my realistic drawings. Drawing things I was unfamiliar with helped me to draw what I saw instead of going off my memory. My second piece that I think I improved the most on was my Epcot Ball painting. This piece was a challenge because I had no idea how I was going execute this. I was able to plan and practice and each time I tried again I was able to improve even more. My painting skills were put to the test with this but I thought that I did a good job at improving my artistic eye. I enjoyed being able to improve because of these projects.
MOST BENEFICIAL MINI LESSONS
I feel like the 2 mini lessons that were most beneficial to my learning in this class were the Dum-Dum drawing and the artist painting puzzle piece. I feel like I was able get more experienced with the materials used in these mini lessons for my other larger projects. I loved drawing the Dum-Dum because I thought that it was nice to be able to practice drawing a small object before going into my large ornament. I was able to learn how to shade using colored pencils instead of just one color from a lead pencil. It helped me to pay more attention to detail and learn more about my mediums. With the artist painting puzzle piece I felt like I learned how to mix colors to as realistic as possible and to also learned how make things proportional. I thought that the instructions I was given were enough to ensure success for these projects. I really enjoyed being able to have these mini lessons to help me improve as an artist. If I could change anything I would want to do more mini lessons because they were so beneficial.
FAVORITE ART MEDIUM
My absolute favorite medium to work with would have to be clay. I took a sculpture and ceramics class last year that really helped me to get familiar with this medium. I love working with clay because you can make a blob of nothing turn into anything and everything. You can do so many things with clay and there are unlimited things you can make out of it. It is easy to put any texture you want on it. I loved even more that we were making food out of clay because I want to work with food when I grow up. So this project helped me pay attention to little details that benefited me in this project and will benefit me later. One of the best parts about clay is that after it has been fired you have even more work to do before it’s done. So not only do you get to sculpt, but you also get to paint. If I could have changed anything about this class, I would have done another project with clay.