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.

The project that I feel was most successful for me was my mixed media project. The theme for this project was amusement. In order to complete the project, i started off by creating thumbnails to help my creative process. I sketched a few thumbnails of some elephants playing in water, but I wasn't completely satisfied. I wanted a better visual idea of how my project would look once it was complete. In my sketchbook, I created a mixed media picture using scrap book paper, tissue paper, and water color pencils. I blended and shaded with the water color pencils in order to create the image I wanted, and used gel medium and tissue paper to add the mixed media element to my work. The materials and technique I used were very beneficial in enhancing my project because the tissue paper added texture and shape to the elephants, and the photo transfer gave an edgy and adventurous feel to my project.

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.

One project where I felt I overcame the most obstacles was my book carving project. The obstacles I had to work through was the fact that the pieces I were carving were very intricate. It took me 3 days to finish cutting 5 pages of giraffes, and at one point I was ready to give up. Carving is very tedious and time consuming. You must have a lot of patience in order to get the job done, because pages will rip and tear and nothing comes out completely perfect. I took a risk by choosing to do an intricate animal jungle scene because I knew cutting and carving them out would be very tedious and slow, but I wanted a great looking project so I decided to challenge myself. Challenging yourself and taking risks makes you a better artist because if you don't take risks and explore new ideas, you'll always be playing it safe with your artwork instead of taking a risk and creating something spectacular instead of ordinary.

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.

Two pieces that I believe show my growth as an artist are my sticky situation piece, (first piece pictured), and my up close and personal piece. In my sticky situation piece, I decided I wanted to do a shoe with gum stuck to the bottom and incorporate real gum into the piece. I used acrylic paint to create my piece and a piece of real gum. I painted multiple bricks to show repetition and used different blending techniques. For my up close and personal piece, I used chalk pastels. I loved these piece because of all the different colors blending together. I think watermelon is a beautiful fruit and my vision was to capture that on paper. I think both these pieces show my growth as an artist because I learned how to be more creative and developed different and better techniques for applying paint and other materials to my canvas or paper.

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. 

I thought that letting the students chose their own materials was effective, I do not, however, like the themes. I think students should draw, create, or paint whatever they feel like doing. I think that is freedom of expression. The art project I have pictured is a self portrait blending another student and I's faces together. We used beads for our hair and created a very cool, interesting piece. I used different techniques I learned in art class, like learning how to use photoshop so we could morph are faces together, to complete this piece.