Art 1 Final Exam Portfolio

#1 The zentangles project was my favorite because of how free it was and you could literally do whatever you wanted with it. I enjoyed the fact that it was a big group project but at the same time you could free-float between groups so people could always add new ideas to the projects. It was really cool to see the collaboration of so many different ideas. I also liked how no one could repeat what they did which made each project different every time. My other favorite part was working outside especially when the weather was so nice. It was also cool to get to practice on paper, then move out to the sidewalk, and then see all of our practice come together on the big walls of the courtyard. It was cool to see our abilities improve throughout this project and all of the practice made it really obvious. It was also cool how there were only two color options so it forced you to make it pop using only the design instead of simply using a bunch of colors.

#2 The shadow art project was one that I feel I learned the most from because it forced me to change my perspective entirely. It was important to realize the differences that came with using the shadows as the art instead of the actual objects. We created a bridge somewhat similar to the golden gate bridge. The hardest part was putting the water under the bridge. It was hard because we had to hold it closer or farther from the light source to keep it in proportion to the bridge. It was also hard to find objects that were of similar height to make the bridge look realistic. Another of the hardest parts was getting the sun/moon to hang straight to make sure we had a full circle shadow rather than an oval or a thin line. Once we were finished we had a nice bridge with water underneath and even a sun/moon hanging above the bridge which was really cool especially considering all of the minute changes we had to make to get it to look perfect.

#3 I used different techniques that I had learned from previous projects on the painting project. This was also one of my favorite projects because I think it is one of mine that looked the best. The most important idea that I learned that went into this project was shading. It was necessary to use shading on the trees, clouds, and even mountains to make sure that they looked realistic and 3-dimensional. There were also a lot of different brushing techniques and it was necessary to use different brushes for different objects. Like for clouds a big dry brush had to be used to fade the bottoms of them into the sky. A fan brush was also good for making trees and keeping them thin and using different colors to hilight the branches. When this all came together into the final project it ended up being one of my best projects of the year.

#4 I think that the least important project from a learning perspective was the ceramics unit. It was also one of the most fun units that we had in my opinion. There just wasnt a whole lot of techniques that I learned from this unit. I learned how to make a hollow ball of clay in the easiest way and that a hole was necessary to prevent it from exploding. It was also helpful with personal creativity as far as allowing the imagination to run wild. But we didn't really learn any new techniques. It was cool to use the ipad program to plan our project even though it took a little while to get used to using the software. The final product of this project was the most pleasing to me however as it ended up looking exactly how I wanted it to which I thought was pretty cool. While I didn't learn much from this project as far as techniques goes, I did end up learning some about planning and how to use a program that I never would have learned without this unit.

#5 The project or piece of artwork that connects most to me as an artist is the ipad drawing of our landscapes. I think this reflects me the most because my favorite of the two I did was a landscape of an island. I love to be relaxed and calm which is what an island or beach represents to me. The palm tree leaning over the sand reflects a cool shade that adds to the mood of the painting. I enjoyed making this piece of artwork because it was easy to make improvements and you didnt have to worry about messing anything up because it erases easily. It was also easy to add things in because the use of layers helped add some items to the background or foreground. I also liked getting to use photos that I took as a reference to make items like the boat on the sand. It was also much easier to make different shades and colors that I wanted to use as well as having many more brushes at my disposal on my ipad. I liked how this project ended up even though I didn't end up using it for my actual painting I liked how it looked on the ipad probably better than I would have liked it on an actual painting.