Final Reflection Essay

I have learned a great deal of factors through the events of entering in an art course in the last year of high school. It has helped me see a different outlook towards art and its virtuous perspective and creation invokes me into a greater sense through my own creation. During my life in my second half year of art, I have experienced various types of art from the past along with my own strengths and weaknesses. By examining all the artworks I have committed to design and create, there were a show of improvements and challenges through the projects that were created in Art II.

            In some cases, throughout the semester, I have become aware of some of the challenges I had to face along the way that I would never have assumed to have difficulties with this year. One of the challenging projects I have ever encountered had to be my Chuck Close Self-Portrait project. Although it was sort of easy to create a realistic face similar to the original image, I couldn't really figure out what sort of symbol would work for it at all that represents who I am. They kind of throw off the image that I wanted to create and because of that, I’m not entirely happy with my piece. Not only are the projects challenging, but one of my weaknesses that I can’t seem to overcome sometimes is figuring out what I wanted to do for each and every one of my projects assigned. My ideas don’t pop out like they should in most cases and because of that, the outcome of my projects are very plain and poor. Conscious towards my flaws, I can be able to figure out what needs to be fixed in the future.

            Aside from all the challenges and weakness that is reflected through my art, there were some that displayed a greater improvement in addition to my achievements. Out of all the artworks I have done through the second semester, one of the projects I have seen the most improvement on was my free choice project. Seeing how I was able to set up this painting using collage of various materials such as watercolor, paint, and oil pastel, I was able to evoke how I wanted everything to be without even realizing. This helped me not only enjoy oil pastel more, but also combining different media as well.

            During the course of my semester, as my artworks improve through each and every one of the projects that were assigned to us, I have noticed some of my abilities have increased as well.  For example, in my viewfinder project, one of the capabilities I did well one for that project was the ability to blend various colors with color pencils to develop a smooth texture to the creation based on the actual image that was portrayed to. Not only was my blending a great success, but being able to figure out how dark the shading needs to be while create a very obvious focal point was my second ability that I improved on when I was working on my free choice. I enjoy experimenting different materials during my time with my free choice project as It helped me understand how I can work on something I am not comfortable with to something I can.

Overall, I believe that my improvement for this year has been slowly improving as the marking period passes by. Although my creative thinking skills and ideas have not been in its best qualities, I did learn a few things from one project to another. Using some of the ideas and pieces that I have inspired me during my time in art, such as Alice Neel’s show of insecurities through her painting and the symbolic use of creating a logo design, I can expand them through my life beyond high school by taking all that I have learned and add onto the work I will be doing for art next year in college, including the side jobs that I will be performing in the future. Art had guided me through all these years. Although this year may seem a bit difficult to be able to express much of my creativity onto canvas, it helped me understand more about myself in many ways and will be a great influence for future preference. Gaining this experience and having support from others as well as the teacher was something that made me understand how art influence me into being who I am today.