ART 2 FINAL EXAM QUESTIONS
1. This is an easy question to answer. I feel like I really grew in a number of areas this semester, since art has always been something I enjoyed. When you enjoy something and put forth aspiration and care, then you're obviously bound to make improvements. A major project I feel reflected this was the Acrylic Paint Project. I didn't pick this one because it was my favorite, but the fact that it was most fun to me along with the clay project proves why it helped me grow so much. I did not even know I could paint in between the lines at all! When we were told to get a canvas, I thought "oh no I'm going to waste money," but honestly I like my painting enough to hang it in my room. How did I improve? I think it was the technique and time I put into the work project. We had more time on this one than normal projects and this really allowed me to take advantage of my interest in doing it right. Also, learning proper paint applying techniques as well as how to layer my painting made it look somewhat as if an actual artist painted it. Things like applying a layer of background color to your canvas and using minimal amounts of water (unlike watercolors) are some things that really helped my progress and final outcome. For my theme, I was given Andy Warhol, and this was the main factor that allowed me to succeed best in this project. It was a style of art that I could actually connect with and relate to. Since I play videogames and watched cartoons a lot as a kid, I was actually interested and knew what would possibly look good pertaining to his specific style. On another note, I really researched this man and the 60s to really try to be accurate in portraying his style, but me being able to relate to it really let me personalize and add to it, making it my own.
3. I really honestly thought the mini lessons were one of the most beneficial things we could have done. Every medium we worked with was vastly different and very jumpy from subject to subject, so if we didn't learn techniques specific for each one, we weren't going to get the improved results we were looking for. The first lesson that really helped me was one of the first things we did: perspective. I know it was a mini unit in itself, but the street view exercises we did to grasp the concept with the line drawing and step by step process really set us up for greater artwork. This kind of perspective technique can e applied to many different forms of art, so it's cool that we learned some things we can apply no matter what kind of art we're ever doing. This helped me understand size and proportion as well, and definitely did not feel like any waste of time. Another area we had mini lessons on was PEN and INK. In this area, I struggled because I've always had a hard time being neat with pen. Mrs. Rossi ended up showing us things I did not even know existed: pen drawing techniques. I did not know about hatching and cross-hatching, or stippling with many tiny dots. It just fascinated me to actually be learning useful things in these mini lessons that helped improve my art in the main project. If we maybe had a bit more practice or methods of doing these basic techniques, then all of our art probably would have been even more diversified and professional-looking.
2. One area I really developed in was perseverance and patience. A big project that helped me with this was the CLAY PROJECT. By far taking me the longest, I went through countless struggles trying to get a size proportionate box out of a slab of clay. If I had simply not cared like other areas, It wouldn't have came out right and would have been a waste. Molding the clay with my hands taught me delicacy with hands and forming the clay into something you could call art. It helped my artistic vision advance, making me able to envision and see things that weren't previously thought possible in my mind. Another project I really got better in was the Water Color Project. Since getting this medium right the way you want it can be massively challenging because of the way the paint trickles everywhere, it really taught me to work with materials given and applying the techniques taught to my artwork. It also really increased my creativity in this class when i used it. It allowed my form of art to be more colorful and free flowing, which looked cool to me and just triggered imagination. These were some of the best projects ever done in an art class.