Art 2 Final Portfolio

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.

I feel that our first project was my most successful of my pieces from this semester. The theme was "What's the Point" and after sifting through many depressing and morbid idea and I came up with this archery scene involving an underdeveloped character of mine. I had never used pen and ink before other than for outlining, but the piece came out rather well considering. I actually enjoyed the long process of stippling the sky and like the outcome of that area the most.
After learning the pen and ink techniques in class I moved on to do a rough pencil drawing in my sketchbook and tried the different pen processes on it. It look horrible. I redrew it again on a slightly larger piece of paper and re-did the processes in different areas. Overall, I'm very happy with this piece and I feel that it's the only piece this semester that COMPLETELY followed the prompt.

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. 

The nontraditional portrait. The biggest obstacle of mine was definitely procrastination followed shortly by candy wrappers stuck everywhere and self loathing. Now, the project was.....okay no, it was not done on time and personally I don't think you can even differentiate people out of it, but everyone else saw the people so I think it was just because I glued on all the candy wrappers, which was extremely tedious by the way. The entire project was a challenge for me, but there really wasn't any risk. Candy wrappers wasn't an extremely creative medium either, but hey, it was Halloween. What else are you going to do with them aside from throwing them away?
I don't think this project made me a better artist at all, but I do think it made me a better person as it inadvertently  increased my patience for tedious task by at least double. I guess that would make a better artist as well considering I don't procrastinate projects like that as much anymore....

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.  

There's so many personal mistakes of mine in that sugar skull it actually causes me physical pain. Regardless, I actually like how this piece came out. Painting is not my forte and don't even get me started on watercolors, but I feel that I followed the prompt well on this one and used the theme "Sticky Situation" well. I simply used acrylic and stuck to a stylized style as I'm more comfortable with it.
The pinata is a whole different story. I'm not a big fan of 3D projects and they take me a long time. I barley finished this one on time even by cutting a few corners with the paper mache (which definitely did not lead to a dent on its stomach). I also painted this one in acrylic, but I tried some new techniques in the designs and switched my color scheme around as I ended up having to change the design completely to finish it on time, but look at it!

Isn't it adorable? It made it very hard to be mad at it when the legs (I swear there's 6) refused to
A. stay attached and
B. be painted

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. 

For the matter of Art classes I feel that the unstructured atmosphere is extremely beneficial to students who take the class seriously. I've been in some extremely structured Art classes before and I never produced any pieces that I enjoyed and then when I did they were immediately shot down. My Art 1 class last year in Wake Forest was the first unstructured Art class I had been in and just let me say that it was the best class ever. My teacher's projects were, for the most part, extremely open and even when they were more specific there was a plethora of room to maneuver and add your own creative twist.
The Monochromatic Realism Project and The Creature Design were my favorites.