Art 3 Exam

The two pieces I chose to show my growth as an artist would be my tree and stencil face. To begin, the tree was a project assigned by Ms. Rossi. She told me I couldn't make it 3-D, but it could be relief. The project was taking something natural and making it mechanical. Long story short, I decided to draw a tree and cover the whole thing in glass. To begin I drew the tree, this was a lot harder then it sounds. I'm not a fan of drawing, so I really struggled with shading and everything. I learned a lot about value and all those drawing rules. After I finished drawing it I added the glass, this was my favorite part, it took some time but I really enjoyed this. I think that this piece will help me in the future with drawing stuff, I never wanted to do 2-D art before this project, now I can say I am willing to do 2-D art; progress.
Here is a picture of the Tree

My other piece the stencil face was one of my favorite art pieces I've ever done. I started off with a super angry/ kinda cartoony sketch with oil pastels and it looked super cool. I was planning on drawing a huge version of it on one of the walls in the school, but I wasn't allowed to :( Then we were trying to find ways to put it on paper and I didn't like any of it so I agreed to the stencil thing (very reluctantly). I just sketched out the face features on cardboard and Mr. Sands helped me with where to cut things out with the exacto knife. I did two different stencils, so I could layer them and have a background and foreground thing. I struggled with which parts to cut out, for some reason I just couldn't figure it out. I also got really frustrated with the stencils, cardboard and wet paint don't work well for that long. I really only got one day out of the stencils and that was kind of sad, but I put up enough of my little faces to be happy. I think that this piece taught me to try things even if you think its going to be ugly, you never know how it will end up.

My artistic strengths: Creativity. I think the thing that makes me a good artist is my approach in making a piece. I spend a lot of time thinking, I want all of my art to be really unique and different. I also think that I'm pretty good at throwing stuff together, some of my favorite things I've done have been really random and weird and I think that adds a lot of character to art (the randomness).
My weaknesses: I get very frustrated and annoyed when something takes too long or doesn't look good immediately so I end up giving up on a lot of things. Moving forward I'm going to try to stop doing this, its really stupid and stops me from making cool things.

A piece I struggled with is my lump. Don't get me wrong, I loved this piece SO MUCH! It shows my weirdness, my creativity and my love for random stuff. I think that the piece would be a fail to most people, I mean it is a bunch of plaster balloon with sculpta-mold weirdness over it and ink sprayed all over the place. My struggle would probably be trying to figure out what to do. I had a really hard time deciding what to do. Then when I started adding things I was still really confused, it wasn't until I went outside and had a little photo-shoot of it with Mr. Sands that I learned I loved that ugly little lump. I had a lot of fun making it, and I learned a lot from it. If I could re-do my lump I would make it the exact same. I used new materials, and learned a lot about what I liked in art. You should be having fun making art, and if you're not you're not you should try making a lump.

My favorite piece, not just in art 3, but ever is my Lion. I call all my pieces by what they are, but I actually did name this one- The Roar Heard Around the World. All of my favorite art pieces have stories behind them, they have significance in my life. I came up with my lion because of Mr. Sands. He showed me the tape layering technique so I have to give him some credit. Now the reason I did a lion, not really sure I was just trying to think of an animal that would look cool in brown packing tape. Let me just tell you, layering tape is not fun. It is a SLOW process and its not really that interesting. Mr. Sands tried so hard to get me to do my work but I really just wasn't feeling it. I ended up giving up on it, but he got me started on it again. I didn't love the piece until we decided the story behind it. The lion is supposed to represent the hierarchy of animals- the ones that humans have created based on the beauty and intelligence of an animal. I created a lion, when people look at it they see a beautiful and amazing animal. When they see a cow or pig, they see an animal that doesn't deserve life, that deserves to be treated with cruelty and live a life of suffering. I find that horrible, and although people don't see my lion and think "wow I should look at all animals like I'm looking at this lion," I am hoping that enough people will hear the story and think twice about taking the life of any animal, no matter how smart or intelligent. Anyways that story is what inspired me to keep working. This piece really shows who I am as an artist, its unique and has its own feel to it. There are different sized pieces and shapes of tape, the medium is really different and fun. Most importantly, the story behind it is why I love art. All great art should be telling a story, and this story is so important to me. This reason its my favorite is because of the story, it also reminds me of Mr. Sands so that makes me love it too. Oh and the reason behind the name, I want this story to be heard by everyone. And its "The Roar" because its a lion.  So hear he is: