Reflection Essay

As I did art this year, I saw a lot of change in how I approached it and what I wanted to accomplish in doing it. Specifically, I have learned so many new techniques for how to make art. This applies to the medium and also the way I went about making my art. For the mediums, I feel like I saw the greatest growth in my use of conté, especially as we did the gesture drawing. The gesture drawing experience also helped me begin to approach art with a more open mindset and focus on movement and emotion rather than perfection. This is a mindset I worked on throughout the year and feel like I saw the most growth in. In the past, I have seen art as more of an objective with a distinct end goal, but working on things like the gesture drawings and all the different types of abstraction helped me learn that a lot of what makes the end piece special is the process. I feel like I still need to improve on time management and the importance of each part. I am still a perfectionist so I want to work on knowing when to stop in a piece and knowing where I might need to add something instead of just getting frustrated. 

Overall, I’ve learned a lot this year, specifically because we have had more freedom and access to different techniques, and also had professional instruction. As I move forward with my independent work I want to experiment more with some of the techniques that we tried like oil painting, which I learned a lot about because I had never done it before. I also want to try different things with color, which we learned a lot about in our color theory unit. For the summer project I want to expand on specific mediums I liked as well. This year has been very constructive and impactful on my journey as an artist, and I can’t wait to apply my knowledge to my work next year and also over the summer.