Has your definition of art clanged since from the beginning of this class? Yes. I find that in every art class my definition of art changes a little bit more each time. Art is not somethings that you can teach, you can teach someone techniques, but you can't teach someone what art is, they have to find that part out on their own. I used to think that art had to be something that you could see what it was right away like "oh yeah that's defiantly a bird!", or "Wow that person is so realistic!", and yes this is art too, but art can also be organic shapes, something completely abstract. Something is art when it can make even one person feel something, happiness, anger, confusion, wonder, hope, etc. For me this project was my free project. The free project almost took me to another place while I was making it, and I really liked how I felt when I made it. The final piece for it looks like a lot of things too, which makes it even cooler to me. I always enjoy a good abstract piece.
Choose 1 piece of art that you used skills and techniques learned from previous projects. Discuss your growth as an artist and how you incorporated these skills and techniques to create the piece. For the animal head project I painted it with water color, which is something that I learned how to do the first time I took sculpture and ceramics, I also made eyes for it, and I learned how to do that last year as well. It was really cool seeing techniques that I hadn't yet used on a project, work so well. The water color work so well for my walrus's skin texture, something I wouldn't get with acrylic or glaze. The eyes still took me about five times to make, but they looked so good once I did get them right.
Do over: If given the opportunity, which project would you do over? Describe why and how you would redo this project. Reasons might include choosing a different theme, using a different medium or creating a different idea completely. Include photo. If given the opportunity I would redo the plaster project. I really did not like the shape and I had no direction with what I was doing. I had wanted to use a balloon for this project, to make it more rounded to begin with, but things came up and I was never able to get a balloon, so I just had to use a bojangles cup. The project itself was not bad, it just wasn't what I wanted or what I had in my mind while making this. I did enjoy working with the plaster though, and I will try to do it again this summer.
Sketchbook: pick any warm-up from your sketchbook that you found beneficial, interesting or simply felt you handled well. Describe the activity and reason for selecting it above the others. Include photo. We didn't really do warm ups in our sketchbooks, but I did choose one picture that I had drawn for a project, and I ended up like the picture more than the sculpture itself. I choose it because it is a perfect example for the kind of art I am into, creepy, twisted art. The drawing is of a bald head with vines growing out of the eye-sockets and a tree growing out of the mouth. Its a quite disturbing picture, but I think it is kind of beautiful, in its own creepy way. I think it is interesting because it kind of lets you see the creepier side of me.
Critique an art piece of your own. The dwelling piece is an interesting project because I didn't have a plan for it at all, I only knew what I didn't want it to be. The whole project I was mostly just grabbing things that I liked and things I wanted to put in it, like the mirror and the hat. I ended up filling the hat with dirt and planting bird seed in it, the grass grew a lot more than what I was planning on, and I wish that I had only put in a few select places instead of letting it grow up and dominate the whole surface. While the grass looked cool I was planning on putting small things inside of it like stumps that I had made, and some other small trinkets. I made a few small fairies to "live" in the piece, and I think they turned out really well. I painted each of their wings a different color, and gave them all little black bobs, like a flapper. The colors of the fairies added to the piece because I was able to add blues and purple to the mostly blandly colored project. I added broken mirrors around the edge of the hat and I think it added a really sweet effect that I wasn't planning on, I would totally use the broken mirror in another project. For the most part I am proud of the dwelling piece, but if I could go back I would try to have an actual plan for it.