1. Choose 2 mini lessons that you felt were the most beneficial in your learning for that particular project. Include photos of these and explain thoroughly. Do you feel you needed more instruction for success? Explain or did you feel that the instruction given was enough to ensure success? Explain. The two most beneficial mini lessons for the pen and ink project included the value charts of pen and ink and the textured cylinder/balls of textured pen and ink. I feel that doing these practices made more more comfortable with pen and ink. I also think that having lots of practice with the pen allowed my final piece to be more successful. After learning how to do these techniques I could easily add value to my piece and differentiate between light and dark in it. Also, I was able to add in more texture and create a more realistic looking piece of artwork. With the practice and instruction I had I created a barn and stippled a lot of it, such as in between my wooden slats, in order to create a balance of where the sun was verse where shadows hit my piece. I feel that it is extremely important to do assignments or mini pieces before each final to help master techniques and create a more well rounded and realistic piece. I feel like the only thing I could've been taught better was which patterns of pen and ink would look best in which places. I know the image we were to create was meant to be a little bit out there and different from reality, however I still wanted it to make sense and sometimes I felt confused on which patterns would go where. Overall I really liked using pen and ink and was glad to have had instruction before just diving into the final piece.
2. What medium was your favorite to work with? My favorite medium to work with was pen and ink. Going into Art 2 I thought that painting would be my favorite medium to work with. Now that I've worked with lots of mediums such as paint, clay, colored pencil, and many more this year I can now say that I like working with pen and ink most. I did a lot of practice with pen and ink such as watching videos, doing value charts, and doing the 100 square patterns. I think these practices helped me with my barn drawing that I did for my final and made me enjoy working with it more. Pen and ink takes a lot of practice because it cannot be undone so you have to be super sure of what you're doing before you start. You also have to know how to use different techniques and be able to show texture, so practice is really necessary. All in all I think pen and ink is something I will use a lot more next year and I hope to get even better with using this medium.
3. Discuss one project where you felt you were the least successful. Explain why you felt this way. What would you do differently to change this piece? Explain. I believe my least successful piece to work with was my clay food project because it exploded in the kiln before I could finish it. I made, or attempted to make, an artichoke. I first did the base of the artichoke just with my hands using a sort of pinch pot technique to make a hallow round oval-like shape. I then rolled out a slab of clay and cut it into leave like shapes and attached them, using the score and slip method of course, to my base. Lastly, I created the stem by just again using my hands. I believe that my piece was least successful first because it exploded but as far as how, I'm still not completely sure. I knew to put a hole in the hallowed shape in order to allow air out when my piece was in the kiln and I did this but my idea is that maybe it wasn't big enough. Also, my stem was not hallow so maybe it was too thick to go into the kiln without being hallow. If I were to do this over again I would make my hole in the side of my artichoke bigger to be sure air can escape out and I would make my stem hallow, as well as have Mrs. Rossi look over it and be sure it was completely ready to go into the kiln.
4. Look over the portfolios of other students in our class. Choose a piece of artwork from one of your classmates that you feel is an exemplary showcase of what the project was to depict. Discuss how the artist used the medium, utilized the elements of art and design principles, was original with their ideas and went beyond their comfort zone or the realm of the requirements. Make sure you have the image of their artwork along with their name (first name only) posted with this response. Also include a link to their portfolio. An image that a classmate of mine creates was from the printmaking project. I think she did a really good job with her using the color choices she did to make her piece pop. She chose a mosque in Spain and I also really admire how well she lined up her prints each time because I know this was something I really struggled with on this project. Reyna did a good job showing the foreground, middle-ground, and background of her piece which can be very difficult to do with printmaking. The way her piece is organized shows great detail and causes her piece to look very realistic. I like how she used the black to add value into her piece as well. She dots and little bit of scratching add real life texture to the piece also just proving how well her craftsmanship on this piece was. It's clear that Reyna took time planning this piece and she did a really good job with it. I chose to pick this because it was something I know I didn't do super well on so, seeing other classmates printmaking pieces will help me in the future to be better at it and to know what looks better and what does not look so good. Overall I'm super impressed with Reyna's piece she created and I believe it's super neat and pleasing to the eye.