End of Term Reflection

PART 2:

1. How has this term gone for you?

• This term has been a long bumpy road for me. I started this term as one of the least experienced artists in the classroom and feeling frustrated after every piece of art I finished. It was similar to having road rage on a highway with heavy traffic and moving at a slow pace. However, after time progressed, the road I was traveling on got smoother and the traffic began to flow better. My road rage disappeared and I kept moving forward. All through this term I kept on moving forward and did not stop moving!

2. What have you learned?

• As an individual and as an artist, I learned key lessons not only that I could use in the art room, but also in the outside world. Patience. One of the important messages of life is to always have patience in any situation you are in. I remember one time in art class, we were standing up and had to draw our classmates in the type of posture they were in and count how many pencil lengths they were. After the first one, I looked around the room and compared my piece of art to my classmates. Anxiety took over my mind and I was completely stressed out over what I just created. This often happened a lot when I was assigned a project; like when thinking about a topic I wanted to draw or making a mistake and not being able to fix it. I never realized how much patience art includes, but I was lucky enough to utilize it in a relaxed environment.

3. How have you grown as an artist?

• As an artist, I have grown a tremendous a lot. Even though, I did have the opportunity to take an art class last year, I did not have the same amount of challenge as I did this year. I now understand the rational behind time management and how important it is for an artist. When an artist is assigned a group of projects at once, it is important to make a schedule in your mind to know a certain amount of time you need to finish each project before the due date. Also, I have now become a more detailed artist. Before, when I created my own projects some of my artworks were very simple and unoriginal. However, now I am able to collaborate different pictures together and make it my own art piece, and incorporate previous lessons that we have learned in the past.

4. What do you think your biggest successes have been so far?

• My biggest successes so far in Intermediate Drawing and Painting is my last project, the heros project. I was able to include a hero that I learned this year in my English class, Harriet Jacobs (a fugitive slave). In this particular project, I was able to include most of every thing that I have learned in my past art classes. Some of these incorporate, different types of shading, proportion, and emphasis. Even though I did use shading in this project, I also used it a lot in many of my other projects. Every time I used shading I improved more and more, and eventually was able to show specific detail within each of my shades.

5. What have been your biggest challenges?

• After looking back at my art term, I would have to say my biggest challenges this term was any project or assignment that dealt with paint. I started off having a difficult time on how to hold the brush correctly in order to have fluent brush strokes. Whenever I put my brush on the paper, the paint would come off very dry and coarse, which would lead me to constantly having to soak my brush and get more paint. However, I eventually learned that you should always hold the tip of your brush and also if you use more water the paint will come out smoother. In addition, when painting I had a hard time mixing the correct colors in order find the exact color I was searching for. I need to be more careful when combining certain colors together, depending on if it is a light or dark color I am looking to make.

6. If you could, what advice would you give to yourself about the class at the start of the term?

• If I could give myself any advice about the class at the start of the term is that frustration and agitation will get you no where. In my previous experiences (like I said before), I got frustrated very easily over my drawings which I thought did not exceed my expectations. The more a student gets a filled with anxiety, the worse they will succeed in the class. Like me, I may not have been the best artist in the class, but my lack of artistic skills did not get the best of me. I was not scared to question Mrs. Roberts of any advice or criticism that she had on my portraits and I carefully listened to the critical feedback she supplied for me.

7. Looking ahead, what do you need to consider and/or work on to continue to grow as an artist?

• As an artist, I think I just need to keep on practicing in order to grow as an artist. Now since this term has ended I realized that I made a drastic improvement from the beginning of the term to the end and I do not want to lose that focus and determination. I want to thrive as an artist and not turn into the same person as I started as the beginning of the term. Whenever I have a chance now, I will grab a blank sheet of paper and just draw what I see and add some of the previous skills I learned this term in art class!

PART 3:

As a student in Intermediate Drawing and Painting, I am honored I had the opportunity to be put in an environment that made art exciting every day in the classroom. One word that wraps up my journey all through the beginning to the end of the term is challenge. I got put into a classroom with other students who had way more artistic skill than me and I did not even know it. However, I was no where near considered the "outcast" of the group; I was considered the "backbone" of the group. These students were able to push me and give me the drive I never thought I had in me. They may never thought they pushed me like they did, but when I looked around the classroom at all the amazing portraits, I thought to myself, "Why can't I do that?" I was never afraid to hear the superb advice or criticism Mrs. Roberts offered to give me and I never rejected her ideas. Nevertheless, that one question I asked to myself was answered one day. On the heros project, I incorporated different aspects of shading, proportion, and emphasis in my drawing. When I finished the assignment, I lifted my paper up and never felt so proud of myself in an art class before.