Reflecting Once Again

The first marking period is over already?! What?! At the same time... summer seems so long ago... And so much has already been accomplished in art class. I've finished a shoe drawing, a presidential collage, water-colored papers for a book, and even started the designing of our next project, paper lanterns. That's lot of things to do in just a two-month time span! Throughout this marking period I've been exploring new techniques of art. Many of them, I never even knew existed, let alone know how to do them! I also feel like I've grown in skill. Before doing my shoe drawing, I hated (and feared) drawing from life, but after the deed was done, I realized that it really wasn't so hard. If you just relax, it actually comes to you by itself! And with my collage, (truthfully after I had finished it), I realized that less decoration was the key to creating a powerful piece. Next year, I'll do that better. But now I know.

The Next President Collage: Why Can't We All Just Be Friends...?

The second project for this year was more than just visual art. It really made you think. The assignment was to either chose a president and portray his ideas trough a collage, or go your own way with a subject that America's split about. I went a completely different route and chose to make my collage about the idea of bi-partisan...ism... or however you say that. Otherwise translated as, "why does America get so split around election time? Why can't we all just work together to create a better country?" So that is the idea I based my collage upon. Many different textural elements went into this piece; including magazine pictures, acrylic paint, charchol, tissue paper, a tissue itself, watercolors, stitching, and much, much more. All these things helped to create a (hopefully) decent collage. The main portrayers of my idea are the shaking hands in one corner, which symbolize agreement, and the cartoon, painted donkey and elephant on top of the world, representing the two parties finally getting along. I also wrote "We are one!" in marker along the bottom of the page, hoping to get that message across. The giant red hand-print (my own, by the way) represents the people of America, and their strong hand in our country's politics. Because the U.S's future is in our hands. I hope we make the right decision to get along.

Shoe Art

The first project of this year included something I'm not too confident with: drawing. I've never had an easy time drawing my whole life, and I'd be much happier not drawing at all... but you have to face your fears eventually. So I did. The first step of this project was to bring a pair of shoes into class (a pair I could live without for a few weeks). Once everyone in the all the periods of art brought in their shoes, we got a pretty decent pile. Now, it's time to chose a section of the pile... and draw it. I think the first stroke of the pencil– the first line,

was the hardest of all. But once that line was made, it was surprising how smoothly the piece started to form. Once the shoes had a decent outline, I started to shade. Here's probably the root of my fear of drawing. It 's just so had to get shading right. If you do it wrong, the drawing could end up looking fake, or the dreaded word. Two-D. The ending result isn't the best in the class... or my favorite work of mine; but I still am proud of it. At least you can tell what it is I was drawing. I hope that by the end of this year, I can draw better. But Doing this shoe drawing really made me realize that if I don't think about it too hard, the drawing usually can come to on its own. So in the end, I think I can say I have conquered my fear.