22-23 School year reflection essay: Art III final

A wide variety of art projects this year allowed me to work on different areas of improvement in my artistic skills. Specifically, this year I think I have grown the most in my understanding of form and color.

In my art skills inventory, I mostly used two-dimensional shapes to represent subjects that were supposed to exist in three dimensions. This meant there was a lot of guesswork involved with shading. However, my understanding of form evolved throughout the year (I think...). Firstly, I think that Tommy Hawkin's figurative drawing lessons revolutionized my understanding of drawing as a whole. Learning about gesture drawing and "searching lines" strengthened my ability to visualize forms on a piece of paper. Also, I think that because the excruciatingly slow wood-carving process forced me to consider the forms I was working with more carefully, I became better equipped to translate 3-D forms into 2-D forms of media when the oil painting project rolled around.

Speaking of the oil painting, the color theory and oil painting unit allowed me to work on my ability to manipulate colors. For example, mixing oil paints to find a color match for a real-life subject that was in front of me prompted me to consider the colors around me in a way that I hadn't before: "What is the undertone of this shadow?" "Does the value of the paint on my palette knife match the value of the area I'm trying to paint?" And, most importantly, "Am I painting what I color I know this object is, or what color I see this object is?" Arriving to this last question on my own terms has prompted me to reconsider the role that I think colors can play in art.

There are still a lot of improvements to be made to my art skills inventory. I think I need to improve the likeness of my art to its subject, especially when it comes to human faces and figures. However, this issue has also arisen for inanimate objects, such as the objects I painted for my oil painting, which don't resemble the real-life subjects as much as I'd like them to.

Next year, I plan to mostly use animation as my media; however, I will probably still experiment with more traditional forms of 2-D art, like painting on a canvas. I think that my newfound understanding of form will definitely help me in making my animations alive (even more "cartoony" animations that outline all their characters, like Snow White from Disney, depicts subjects in three dimensions). Also, the skills I have gained in working with colors might allow me to put together more immersive animations (especially if I am working on an animation that is fully-colored and that is meant to elicit a certain mood from an audience).

Overall, I think it was a productive year, and I can't wait for Art IV.