Art 2 Final Portfolio

                                                        Final Exam
1.

I think my most successful composition was Scientific and Contrast drawing. The themes that I chose was 'Land Versus Sea' and 'Life and Birth'.  The subjects that I drew were baby turtles returning to sea. I chose sea turtles because it represent land versus sea; the turtles are crawling from the life on land to the new world in the sea. The land and sea are two completely different worlds. The turtles have to face many obstacles while making their journey to the sea. This also brings the turtles back to the theme of life and birth. The turtles have just been hatched and are now making their way on their journey through life. The medium I chose was charcoal, and the brand I used had a tint of brown in it. This helped the drawing have a different sort of feel to it. I think the blending really helped the turtles come to life. I took a while drawing the biggest turtle in the project. I spent a lot of time shading and making sure that each and every part of the turtle had a realistic feel to it. The sand took the longest for me to draw. It was hard coloring it in to make it look real. 

2.

I felt I was least successful in my mixed media project. I have never done mixed media before, except for the little mini exercise we did in our sketch books. I felt like this composition is very bland and there is not much to it. I feel like I could have arranged it better and fixed the awkward space. I think this project could have worked if I had more time to play around with it and spend making it look realistic. I don't like how big the table came out to be, and I wish I could have finished making and entire face. It would have looked a lot cooler if there was an entire face looking at the fairy instead of just an eye. I didn't have enough time to paint an entire face. I am pleased with how the eye and the fairy turned out, but other than that this project looks really boring. I liked the usage and varieties of mediums I used. I used acrylic paint for the eye and fairy, glitter for parts of the fairy, water color paint for the jar, tissue paper for the table, chalk pastels for the skin colored background, and colored pencils for the treasure box.

3.  

The first piece that I feel showed my growth as an artist was my painting of a strawberry. I learned new tricks for applying acrylic paint. I never thought of applying a base coat underneath the background. I applied a thin layer of red orange paint, and then when it dried, I added a light yellow. It added a calming tone to the painting which I really enjoy. I also learned to push the shadows and highlights in the painting. Without the light greens in the leaves, the shadows under the leaves, and the light areas in the chocolate, the entire painting would look dull. I also learned a lot about color mixing. I always had trouble making the perfect brown. It would either come out looking too red or too green. After a lot of practice, I was finally able to make a brown I was content with. I envisioned my painting to look exactly like this, except I didn't think I was going to include the chocolate drippings in the final. I think it may have ruined the painting, but I am still pleased with how the strawberry turned out.

The second piece that I feel showed my growth as an artist was my chalk pastel drawing. This was the first time I had ever done an in depth drawing made with chalk pastels. I felt like I grew with making different textures for the skin of the dragon. I learned not to blend some of the lines to define them more. I did blend parts of the drawing to make it have both smooth and rough textures. I used both the charcoal sticks and pencils. The sticks were easier to use for the bigger areas and the pencils where better for the light spots and thin lines. This was the hardest composition I made this year, and I think I did a good job with it. Since I had never done a drawing in chalk pastel with this much detail, I think this piece showed the most amount of growth through out.

4.

One mini lesson that made me feel the most beneficial about my chalk pastel drawing was the candy in the wrapper drawing. I felt like I didn't need more instruction for success. This drawing helped me learn how to shade with pastels, make highlights, and shadows. This exercise helped me me especially with highlighting. The wrapper of the candy was the most challenging part of the drawing. It was difficult to make the wrapper look like it has crinkles. There were lines that were either too blended or too bright. I learned that the lines had to fade into other lines. This helped me a lot with my chalk pastel drawing.

Another mini lesson that made me feel stronger about painting was the acrylic paint lesson. Before this mini lesson, I hadn't used paint in 6 months. I had forgotten how to mix colors and blend paints. This lesson helped me a lot because I had to match my colors exactly to my partner's colors without them being there next to me. The only issue I had with this was the paper because the paints dried out very quickly and it was hard to blend. I much rather prefer using a canvas for acrylic paint. I felt like the amount of instruction on this lesson was enough to help me on my final. It helped me refresh my brain with some mixing tips such as adding dark colors to light colors. This lesson also helped me get the grasp of using the different sized brushes. I learned that it's a good idea to divide the paper of canvas into four squares to make the painting process easier and help with proportions.

5. My favorite medium to use was the acrylic paint. I felt like it was the most calming, stress relieving, and most fun medium. I loved mixing colors; it was one of the most fun parts about the process. I loved being able to create such realistic visuals. Painting is always something I've enjoyed doing; I do it in my free time and hang up my pieces. I think that creating an image by mixing paints and different sized paint brushes is incredible. I like how you can build up the intensity with the paints. I feel like painting is also my strongest point in art. The eye painting in my mixed media project inspired me to start painting portraits on my own. The only thing I will need is to buy some paints and an easel.