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1. My most challenging yet successful project this semester was the oil landscape final artwork near the end of class. I choose to replicate my picture of the Antelope Canyon which, along with a strong light source and lots of depth, contained a lack of variety of colors leaving a first impression of a monotone landscape. The biggest challenge I faced was using a broad spectrum of colors to create contrast within the painting. Instead of using mostly shades of reds, yellows, and browns, the most abundant colors within my piece are violet and blue. I developed the ideas of color choice based on my many colors sketches and blending colors beforehand. I also developed ideas for this project by looking at other angles and reference photos of the same landscape to see other highlights, shadows, colors, and areas of depth that might have come through clearer from a different perspective. At the beginning stages of choosing to do this project, I decided between two reference photos (seen above) and made a final decision to attempt the canyon because of the challenge it provided and the vision I had about how good it could turn out. Overall, I think that this project forced me to think outside the box in order to create an effective realistic interpretation of a landscape. My project ended up unique not only because of setting of the landscape which steered away from the traditional landscape view but also because of the realistic quality achieved by the color scheme, shapes, and shadows.
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1. My portfolio is a pretty accurate representation of my growth as an artist this semester. Looking back through all of my pieces this semester, I can see a clear improvement from beginning to end. Throughout the semester, I tried new techniques, mediums, and styles of artwork that improved my overall skill as an artist. One of the biggest things that I learned in this class was to think outside the box when choosing colors to use in your piece, whether that be whites, dark colors, or colors that you don't see in the picture. My pieces reflect my growing ability to put this knowledge into practice and effectively create paintings with this skill. In my paintings, you can see the increased contrast and realism. One thing that I don't think is accurately described in my portfolio is my strength within the different mediums. Looking back at the mediums shown in my portfolio, I see greater skill portrayed with oil and acrylic paint. In other and previous pieces outside this class I have effectively used watercolor well. Overall, my portfolio shows my growth in this class as an artist.
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3. The project that I felt I was least successful with was the watercolor final. For this project I choose to paint a pink flower in a background of leaves. If I was to do this project again I would probably choose a different landscape that fit the size of the project more appropriately and filled up the space of the watercolor paper. If I were to improve upon the piece that I already choose, the first thing that I would change is the composition. Instead of focusing most of the piece on the backgrounds leaves and greenery, I would focus the perspective more closely on the flower. Some other steps that I would take to improve the project would be to add more contrast throughout the background be adding additional colors and bolder shapes. I feel that this painting lacked a focus and most of the colors and shapes blended together. In future watercolor paintings, I will make sure to use my experience from this project to use watercolors light properties to my advantage and to focus on the composition of the piece.
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5. The two mini-lessons that were most beneficial to my learning was the oil still life and the prisma color fruit drawing. I felt that I was well instructed and practiced my skill in both lessons. The oil still life helped me to practice my skill to find the right composition. This project also allowed me to practice blending colors with oil paint and creating a realistic and 3D effect by adding highlights and shadows. I enjoyed working with oil paint which led me to effectively working on the textured landscape and the animal portrait. The prisma color drawing of the cherries was a challenge to turn a 2D shape into a 3D figure. This lesson successfully taught me how to blend colors together to add density to a shape. In this project I also learned about choosing the color scheme and blending the right colors to create an appearance of realism. These projects effectively prepared me to create my future final projects.
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7. My favorite medium to work with this semester was by far oil paint. I had never worked with oil paint before this class and was pleasantly surprised to find out that I enjoyed working with this medium more than watercolor or acrylic. In this class we did a few mini-projects and a couple of bigger projects practicing oil techniques. The reasons that I enjoyed this medium so much was because of the properties that makes oil stand out from other paint mediums, which I discovered while working on these mini-projects. The 2 apple paintings that I completed helped me to practice different application techniques of oil paint such as using different brushes and using a palette knife. While working on the oil still-life, I learned how to blend oil paint in order to create a realistic piece. I had practiced blending colors previously with other mediums, but I found that blending paint with oil was very different. Blending colors with oil built up my skill as an artist to be more intelligent with my color choices, my different brush strokes, and the planning of my pieces. I believe that because of the skills I learned throughout the practice pieces with oil helped me to effectively create the textured oil landscape, animal portrait, and future pieces using oil paint.
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