Art 2 Portfolio

Final Exam

1) My most successful project was the Up Close and Personal Project.  We could use colored pencils, oil pastels, or chalk pastels, and I chose to use colored pencils.  We had to focus on creating emphasis, which draws attention to a focal point. Emphasis is created by using contrast, isolation, convergent and/or placement.  I created emphasis by putting the bright colors of the pinwheels against a black background, which really made them stand out.  When I first started my project, I drew out all of the pinwheels on the paper and then I planned what color I should put where.  When I finished shading in each pinwheel, I colored the background black to make the pinwheels really pop. This was my most successful project, in my opinion, because I think I did a really good job of
shading the pinwheels to make them look like they were made of plastic and were actually three dimensional.




2) My least successful project would definitely be the Mixed Media Project.  When we were practicing it in class I loved how my p
iece turned out, so I put a picture of it on here because I like it so much.  I feel like for my final project, I didn't add enough layers.  It had so much going on, but yet it looked so empty.  I should have added more mediums like paint or markers.  I also think that i should have had my characters overlapping instead of each being separate.  Another way that I could have improved my project is by adding more words and hand drawn items to it.  I feel like i should have spelt out "fantasy" with letters cut from news paper.  I could have also drawn my own characters from my imagination, because your imagination is a fantasy.  Overall this project was my least favorite, and I wish that I could have thought of more ideas for it while I was working.



















3) Just in the first few days of class I improved so much.  The sphere was a sketch that we did on the first day of school (I think) while we were being taught how to shade.  My transition between values was really bad, and I did not do a good job of shading with the shape.  The other sketch is of a brown paper bag that I think we did on the third or fourth day.  I did a much better job of shading and transitioning between values.  I also did a good job of adding highlights where it was light, and adding the dark-darks where the bag was really con caved.  Overall, my growth in my ability to shade and show value was pretty amazing in my opinion.  I think I still definitely have room to improve, but I just need more practice!

4) I found all the mini lessons that we did to be extremely helpful.  A very beneficial one for me was when we drew the soda can using oil pastels.  We were really shown how to create value by using three or four different colors, and not just by changing pressure (like we did with pencil).  I think my can turned out pretty well for it being my first time using oil pastels.  Another beneficial lesson was where we drew the pen and ink wine bottle.  At first it was kind of confusing to me how to make something look three dimensional by just using lines or dots, but when we started applying the technique to the bottle it began to make more sense to me.  I liked this lesson also because we were taught that when you are shading a bottle, or any cylinder-like shape that you should make the edges a darker value than you do the middle.  Honestly, it was hard to pick which mini lesson helped me the most because I found them all so beneficial because they gave us a chance to really practice our technique different ways before creating a final project.

5) My favorite medium was colored pencils.  I felt like I had the most control while using them.  I also really liked how you could blend colors to create value, or you could just push harder or lighter with your hand.  Like I mentioned before, my favorite project was my pinwheels, that I created with colored pencil.  Colored pencil was kind of hard for me at first.  This lollipop was what we made in a mini lesson for colored pencils. I liked being able to use so many colors combed into one item.  And I also really liked that with colored pencil, you got to you a piece of paper that was not white.  Colored pencils were fun for me to use and I am really happy with what everything I did in colored
 pencil turned out to look like.