Art I Final Portfolio

1. My favorite project of this semester was either my landscape painting or my value motorcycle sketch. I got very frustrated with the motorcycle value sketch sometimes, but it was really interesting to me. I realized there are so many more colors in between black and white than people recognize. If many people look at a black and white picture, you can ask them what colors they see in it and they will typically say the same three. Most people answer black, white, and gray. After doing this project, I see that there are so many different tints and shades of gray that can appear in one single picture, and without those tints and shades, the picture wouldn't look the same at all. The lights and darks of grays, black, and white all come together to create an image of something. There really is no just black and white. The in betweens are what make up the picture, and they're very important in creating a realistic image.

2. Though I did not enjoy the self portrait, I thought that was a very beneficial project. I didn't do well at all, as my portrait looks nothing like me and I should've included deeper values, but it taught me a lot. I realized I have to stop thinking about what I think something seems to look like and really pay attention to details. I also learned a lot about value. I was afraid to add darker values and shadows because I thought I would ruin it. Looking back on it, I realize the darker values would have made it look much more realistic and authentic. It also made me much more aware of the structure of a face, which is very helpful when drawing people. If you draw someone, you need to know at what points their features lie or else it will looked like a deformed and disproportional cartoon.

3. I think that my landscape painting project incorporated many of the skills taught throughout this semester. I had to use value in it to give it life and authenticity. I determined a light source, and the value of the rest of the painting was all centered around my light source, which was a sunset in the background of my landscape. I used a lot of the things I learned during our lessons on color, because I had to know which colors to use to mix and where to use them. For example, there are many places in the painting where, prior to taking this course, I probably would have just used white paint or black paint, especially black for this specific painting. Now I realize that all that is really needed is white or black paint added to a different color to add tints or shades. This keeps the painting more realistic and it keeps the harshness of solid white or black out of the painting. Also, I had to blend in many places to make sure that there wasn't too much sharpness in my lines on the painting. One of the first things we learned in art this semester was to get preconceived images of things out of our brains so we could draw or paint what is actually there. This was very helpful when painting the palm trees because I had to pay attention to the real lines of the trees rather than the false images already in my brain of them.

4. I feel that the blind contour drawings may have been the least important project this semester. I think it was helpful, but my reasoning behind saying that it was the least relevant to the course as a whole is because I don't feel that I necessarily used what I learned from it and applied it to any of our other projects like I did with most of the other units. I understand some of why we did the unit, but I just don't see it as the most important. It did, however, help my hand, eyes, and brain work together in a more coordinated way. I just didn't use the skill of keeping my drawing or painting utensil down to the paper or canvas without picking it up or looking at it in any other project outside of the blind contour drawings. Also, it caused a lot of frustration and irritation because I couldn't get my blind contours to look the way I wanted them too and I got impatient. It just didn't seem to correlate with our lessons on value, color, or many of the other lessons we covered this semester.

5. My stencil project is probably the most personal to me. This is mainly because it's of my little sister, who is very special to me! Also, as dumb as this may sound, Abby and I bond a lot over certain music. She usually likes pop, and our favorite person to bond over is Justin Bieber, and she is wearing her Justin Bieber pajamas in the picture! The colors in the stencil piece are some of my favorite colors, so that reflects me in it. My stencils started falling apart, so I ended up having to do parts of it free hand. I was okay with that because I enjoyed the freedom of spray painting it myself. This kind of represents my personality a bit as well, if you think about it because I like freedom and independence from others. The project in general was a very fun one and I enjoyed it a lot. I never had thought of being able to do anything like that but I think it turned out pretty well!