Final Blog Post

final art reflection

1. Which project do you consider your most successful? How did you develop your craft with this assignment? What tools, methods and materials were essential to your success with this project? What ideas, feelings or meanings did you want your piece to express? How did you go about expressing it? 
2. Which project was the most challenging? Look at your brainstorming for this project. How does the final work(s) resemble your preliminary sketches? What changed? Why did you make the changes that you did? What problems emerged in the creation of this project? How did you solve the problems? 
3. Please discuss three new strengths you've discovered or deepened this year. One formal strength (your ability to work with things like composition, balance, rhythm et cetera), one technical or media-specific strength (working in a specific medium or honing a specific skill) and one conceptual strength (you idea development in the specific project). 

1.  The project I consider most successful is my black and white photography project.  I developed my craft by taking a lot of time deciding when and where I would take my photos, how I would place the rings (my objects in the photo).  This helped interpret when the light would be perfect on the shiny metal, reflecting beautiful light into the image.  I placed the rings over and over in different positions and at different times so it would be just the right time.  It was difficult though, because I would place the objects in a good spot one day, but then a block period would be at a different time of day the next day, so the lighting and the placement would be different.  I used my metal rings, some with jewels to reflect more light, and trees and benches to make this possible.  The idea behind my images were to express the different emotions with the black and white images.  Mine was supposed to evoke a happy kind of simple feeling.  It was very placed out, in one of my images each of the three rings was placed one in the center and two on the edges.  It made a very geometrical, simple but shaped and crafted image.  

2.  The most challenging project this year was the ending sculpture project.  Although it was fun, it was very difficult to make details with the tools we were using.  My preliminary sketches in the beginning were quite different from the outcome. It had been a hand holding the heads of balloons.  But in the end it had changed, because of the time we had and the detail I could accomplish.  In the end it is a squarish looking block with lines (like the dents in a hand for fingers), more abstractly than a hand, and round block-like smooth, round balls that look like they are jutting out of a rock-like formation.  It was hard to accomplish what I wanted because I couldn't do much detail in the time I was given.  It was hard to take the shapes out of the plaster block I had started with.  Not many problems occurred during the process of this sculpture.
3.  My ability to work with textures strengthened over the year.  I started off with the 'rubbings' and I would go around trying to find cool shapes, not necessarily objects. I went to the sun dial and got a 5 and the restroom and got a shape of a girl.  I soon realized those weren't textures and I explored more in that, helping me with my textural projects soon after.  Also, I strengthened with my drawings, in the beginning the line drawings weren't too impressive and as the course of the year went on, I added in textures and thicknesses and different colors, making my drawings and paintings more vivid and lifelike.  Also, I could enjoy the process of art. At first I was more impatient, but soon realized things take time, a piece of art won't just show up overnight, it takes practice and practice to get what you want and time to create it.  It took drafts and different drawings to figure out my final projects but I got there, happily