Reflecting on group work

This week the mural project has been a challenging one. My group decided at first to go with a concept that was putting all of our ideas into one. We worked on that for a while but in the end it didn't work out well. It started getting very messy and many of us worried about if people would understand what we tried to put on the mural or if there was any message getting across to everyone.  It has been difficult because at first when we tried to please everyone we ended up having an idea that may not please the people who have to look at it everyday. A challenging part has been deciding on what we are going to do. Once we decided to work on a new mural idea we had to decided what it was going to be about and what it was going to look like.  Four people our of the five in our group decided on something that had to do with Boston.  Even though we all agreed on it we still had problems coming up with what parts of Boston we wanted or what types of things we wanted to show. Today we finally picked a concept we want to do, but the only problem is that two people from our fiver person group didn't come to school today. I like the whole group as a whole can accomplish a lot when we agree on things, but when we don't then it becomes harder. I think that if we all try to work on one concept and we put our minds together on one thing then we will have a great mural in the end. We have some very talented people who all have different skills that may be good for our mural. We all just need to lean to balance all of our skills and make it into a mural that people will enjoy seeing.

Collage: A Wish Come True

PICTURE COMING SOON!

Found Object Sculpture Reflection

For found object sculpture the concept of my work was to make little kids reading a book. I  got the idea from the little book I found in one of the piles of junk. The process of making my sculpture consisted of me drawing my ideas down and then finding things that I could use to help me make my ideas come to life. Some things I struggled with was finding the proper things to make hands and feet. I wanted my sculpture of the children to look more human and less robotic. I discovered different things like little toy parts that made great hands and feet, even though it looked extremely robotic it worked well with my sculpture. I think the aspect of my work that was the most successful was my idea process and how I ended up creating the end product. Even though at times things didn't work out the way I wanted it to I ended up make a sculpture that I enjoyed and went well with how I imagined it would look.

Hot Air Balloons

For my glass half full project I decided to do the pros and cons of going up in a hot air balloon. The concept of my work was to show that hot air balloons can be something that is unsafe, while being something that is fun and enjoyable. The process of making this piece consisted of me drawing landscapes and a hot air balloon as the main focus point. One problem I faced was the fact that I wanted to use colored pencils but I kept on smudging them pencil with my arm to a point that it looked chalky. I also was having problems with my balloon and making it look like a well balanced circle shape. I discovered that sometime it will be hard to have something turn out exactly the way I want, but in the end it may look better then I thought it might. I got feedback from Lili, who pointed out things like the colored pencil and helped me with some proportion problems I was having. I think that aspects of my work that are the most successful have been the colors that I have used. Even though the colored pencil smudged a lot, the colors that I used look realistic and worked well with my project.

End of Term 1 Reflection

This term in Art Principles has been a great experience. I have enjoyed the projects we have done and the work I have accomplished. I have learned a lot about myself as an artist throughout my time in the class. I learned that I am not good with shading in drawings, which made some of my D.E.A.D pictures not turn out the way I had wanted them to. I think I have grown as an artist because I have learned things like your painting doesn’t have to be perfect right when you start drawing, it changes over time as you go along with the process. I tried to put lots of effort and time into my drawings and projects, while adding my own ideas to them as well. The thing that has surprised me the most is the fact that I don’t shade. When I am drawing I normally don’t notice if I am shading enough in a place, but when I come back and look at my drawings I can tell if I should have shaded something or made something darker then something else. I think my biggest successes has been my growth with my observation drawings. I used to hate observation drawings because I never thought I was good at them, but once I started to learn some simple tricks to drawing from observation, it became a whole lot easier to draw from observation. My biggest challenge this fair has been finishing projects. I work hard on my projects but I never finish what I started. I would like to finish more projects on time, since I don’t know if in the future it will matter more about getting the work done on time. If I could give myself some advice it would be to work more on shading and finishing the work I start. One thing I think I should continue to work on is finishing work/ making my projects look good and are done to the best of my ability, and shading places that need to be shaded in a drawing.

Chair With Coat

Today's D.E.A.D was more difficult then the ones we have done in the past. The chair with the coat was harder to draw because everything in the picture had its place. If a person came up to me and looked at my drawing they would know if I did the chair arm wrong, while with the sticks and fabric people would not be able to tell if I messed up on my work. Today I tried to do more shading in my drawing then I normally do. In this setup shading was important because without it you wouldn't be able to tell the coat apart from the chair, or the black vinyl cushion on the chair to the wooden arm rests. All of the shading was important, just like the proportions of everything. One thing that I had to look out for was proportions. I had to make sure that I mad the chair look like it was bigger then the coat, I had to make sure the legs on the chair looked the same side. This D.E.A.D was harder the the last two because I was trying to make sure I had everything placed in the correct spots. I also had to look for the little details, which made the picture look accurate and where important. I tried to make sure I had everything I needed, but it was hard. I enjoyed this weeks dead, but it was one of the hardest ones that we have done in a while.

Fabric Drawings

Today drawing the fabric went pretty well. I just had to make sure that I remembered to shade different fabrics and try to make them all look different. I struggle with shading most of the time, so I needed to work shading and adding some more details to different fabrics. I enjoyed drawing some pieces of fabric because I felt like I put more time and detail into the piece.

While I was attempting to recreate the fabric I thought that it was extremely challenging at some points. I wanted to add many details to the fabric and I started to give up at some points, but I kept with it and made sure I tried to get it done and make it look nice. I felt okay trying to recreate the fabric, but some fabrics where harder to draw then others that had lest detail.

Todays drawing felt different then the sticks because I felt like everything had its place, while in the sticks I felt like if I moved something by accident no one would notice it. I enjoyed the stick drawing more because I had more freedom while I was doing it. On the other hand I forgot to put light and dark on the stick picture and on the fabric picture I felt like I attempted to add that more. Overall I enjoyed todays D.E.A.D.