Art Two Portfolio

Art Final Two

1.  My most successful art project was the egg drawing: Eggcelent.  I think that I was able to work well with pastels, and became good at giving value with them.  It was supposed to demonstrate contrast, and I felt that it would be cool to contrast the yolk of an egg with the egg white.  However, I wasn't able to successfully add enough value and detail with colored pencils, and I kind of forgot about the project.  However, we started experimenting with pastels in one of our lessons.  We had to draw candies.  One of mine was a spherical yellow hard candy, and it turned out well.  I realized that the candy looked similar to the yolk of an egg, and I realized that by using pastels I could really make the egg jump out more.  I decided that this was the best idea, and rolled with it.  The egg worked well, but it took a bit to make it so the skillet that it is on looked acceptable.  After experimenting with the pastels with a bit, I was able to make the skillet look more three-dimensional and attractive.  The purple background worked because it is a complimentary color to yellow, which was the centerpiece of the egg.

2.  My painting, Burning Down The Mouse, was my least successful.  It was an alright idea, but it involved far too much detailed drawing, which is not my strong suit.  The concept was a sticky situation, which could either involve literally sticky materials or bad circumstances.  I had quite a few workable ideas, but many of them involved human drawings.  Mrs. Rossi rightfully told me that human drawings weren't the best idea, as she had not taught us how to make them yet.  This is especially true of me, as I am awful at drawing people.  I had to modify some of the ideas, and one of the only viable ones I had that didn't involve animals was an idea about a cat looking into a mouse hole and seeing a group of scared mice.  I realized after going into the project further that it would be a huge challenge, but I felt that I had to continue.  Going back, I would have taken more time to think of an idea that worked for my skill set.  The mice don't look very realistic at all, to the point where some people weren't able to tell what they were.  Plus, in trying to make them grey I ended up making them look blue.  The pink was distracting as well, and the wood could have used some more time.  Still, I did learn some things while working on this painting.  Mrs. Rossi helped me with how to give wood texture in a drawing.  Also, I think that the cat looked good and I was able to show it in an interesting way.

3.  These two pieces show my growth as an artist quite well, even if they were made in quick succession.  The first was just an exercise.  It was an attempt by me to show value using pastels.  I wasn't able to make it feel natural, and couldn't really pull it off.  There are pretty much three different colors/values.  I didn't get how to go more gradually.  However, the second picture is much more successful.  It looks like one surface and everything blends together nicely.  One of the most important things I learned this year as an artist was how to implement value.  I also think that while these two pictures only show off one concept, they are representative of the growth I made in all mediums.  I would start out not being confident or successful, and then would slowly build up my ability.

4.  One of the most successful mini-lessons I did was the yellow candy with pastels, shown above.  It really prepared me for the egg drawing and taught me a lot.  I became more proficient with that medium and worked what I learned from that lesson into later projects.  The other successful lesson was the practice mixed-media.  It was good because it allowed me to master using the gel medium and figuring out how to piece the pictures together in a way that was pleasing.  At first, I didn't understand how to properly glue the pictures down to the paper.  However, after this lesson I became a lot better at it.  It also opened my mind up to what could be done in collages and mixed-media.  I saw that it wasn't quite like the other mediums and that it required a different way of speaking.  While these two were particularly helpful, all the lessons were good warm-ups.

5.  My favorite medium to work with was the mixed media, or more specifically the collage style.  I thoroughly enjoyed looking around trying to find things that would fit into a cohesive whole, and had fun working on the project.  It was one of the easier mediums, but to really make your piece stand out you had to think very carefully about it.  It was relaxing and served as a nice contrast from some of the more intensive mediums.  It is interesting because it is a good way to show off your influences and display some of the things that you like.  Plus, it uses more than one concept, so it is varied and exciting.  It was interesting to see what some people did, and how using the work of other people can accurately reflect your own artistic leanings.  Overall, I feel like I would enjoy working with collages later on in life than any of the other mediums.