I've been in a patch where I'm not very inspired. To be honest, I haven't done much art recently, I need to change that but I don't know how. School is just brining me down. Hopefully it will get better.
I know that I haven't been focusing on my art lately because school has been stressing me out so much. I've tried to ignore everything but the past few days I've let it all out and I've created some good strong pieces. As I've said before I need strong emotion to make my art. I can try and sit down and force myself to draw but I always end up hating it and throwing it away. And I suppose that's one of the 10 mistakes an art student can make. I hope to go to art school, I've never wanted anything more and I've come to realize every mistake is a happy accident that I need to learn from. I read the article "The Top 10 Mistakes Made by Art Students" and I have to say I'm guilty of every single one. A particular line caught my eye in the first paragraph, "If you don’t love making art, your subject selection will torment you. Art will become your demon: the subject you resent with a passion, instead of enjoy." Art is my passion, my muse and yet sometimes I swear it will be the death of me. When you have a block you feel like everything you've worked for just doesn't matter. It's hard to get past but it's worth it when it finally passes and you create something amazing. I'm also quite guilty of waiting too long to start. I'm doing that right now with my senior project. I want to get it done but I can't bring myself to do it. Sometimes when I do finally start I end up starting over again and again. Over the past couple months I have learned to stop throwing away everything I do and work with what I come up with the first time. I've noticed that lately I've been using more color in my art and I don't know how I feel about that yet but I'm up for trying new things. But I think that we can all agree the vain of every art students life is procrastination. I suffer from this quite dramatically and often. I know I need to get myself together if I'm ever going to survive in college.
This term I worked on figuring out what my concentration would be and I made a lot of these flowers. I tried the rubber cement and watercolor but it didn't turn out too well.
I think that there are boundaries set by society to keep us under control. And I also think that we set boundaries for ourselves. Artists use their freedom of expression to create art because sometimes we can’t say how we feel, we have to show it. For this project I used a piece that I had already drawn for philosophy. I found the meaning for the piece after it had already been done. I used charcoal because I’m trying to get more familiar with it. The reason I chose the compass was because you can be told where to go and who you should be but in the end you’re the one who makes the decisions about your own life. Sure people can give you advice and help you out along the way but you should follow your own arrow no matter where it takes you. Forget the boundaries that are set up against you.
At first I had a lot of trouble with learning how to use the pen and ink. My first couple of attempts I just threw away. The one that was photographed wasn’t the best one that I did. I keep getting frustrated at myself because I would get the first couple words perfect and then a blob of ink would drip on the paper and ruin the entire thing. Eventually I just embraced my mistakes and made them a part of the piece. I think I’ll continue to practice because I would like to get better.
For my “Bloom Where You are Planted” piece I did a shark jaw. I’ve been going down the Cape every year since I was 2. It’s my second home. I’ve grown up on the beach. For the past 13 years I have watched shark week and that’s played a major role in who I am. I think that’s where my love of animals comes from. This past summer I got the opportunity to help save a Great White Shark that washed up on a beach down in Wellfleet. I’m not going to lie, when I got to touch it I cried. I have such a love for them and I believe that is what bloom where you are planted means. Living through the things you love and just being happy. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world as long as you remember who you are. “The Value of Simplicity” You could do a value study with a limited palette. I do that a lot in my other art class and I find it very helpful. I really didn’t have any artists that inspired this piece. I tried doing value in watercolor. It was quite similar to the charcoal value that I did this summer. I don’t work with watercolor that often so I was developing my art making skills. I decided to go simple for this piece and I think that it worked out quite well. I feel like I could have gotten better contrast if I had used ink instead of watercolor but that something to try out in the future.
“The A is not an expectation to live up to, but a possibility to live in to.” I’ve been through so much this year. I’ve grown as a person and through that I’ve grown as an artist. High School hasn’t been the best for me but art got me through it. It’s finally over. In the beginning of the year I finally made a blog. I’m still not used to it but to be able to be in art school it’s something I have to do. 2 years ago I was supposed to be in AP, but I don’t think I was ready. I’ve pulled myself together this year and created some of my favorite pieces. Out of all my other years of art I think that this past year my artwork represents who I am. At first I had trouble figuring out my concentration but once I had it I learned how to work with new mediums and improved my painting skills in my other art class. I started off the year strong with my risk taking when I threw the black paint of my self portrait. Usually I don’t like working with other but I learned how to take benefit from other people critiquing my work. There was definitely plenty of problems along the way but I think they helped me out a lot. They make me think of ways around them and in many cases made my art better. The thing that I’m most proud of myself for doing is the blog. I’ve never been good with technology but I sucked it up and did it. I had to because in this day and age you have to have your art online to get anywhere in life. After seeing what I have accomplished this year I hope I continue to grow as an artist. And that’s why I deserve an A for the year. I’m quite happy with how my summer work turned out. I’ll start out with the self portrait. First off I started off by using a picture that was taken of me that showed contrast between dark and light, the concept is referred to as chiaroscuro. I’ve never really worked with charcoal in the past so figuring out how the medium worked was an example of developing my artmaking skills. After working on it for a bit I always ended up with charcoal down my arm and somehow on my face. Personally, I have never liked doing self portraits, but by doing them throughout the years I’m able to see how I’ve grown as an artist. Along the way I had Tsvety make critiques about my self portrait and that helped me out a lot. I never realized how much collaboration can improve a piece. Sometimes after looking at an artwork for so long you can’t see some flaws it may have and a fresh pair of eyes is always good. Towards the end I was getting frustrated and then I “accidently” spilt the black paint on it. Yes, it may have been a mistake but I’d like to think of it as a happy accident. I took a risk and in the end I ended up liking my portrait so much more. Reflecting on my portrait I believe it shows who I am as an artist because my thoughts are always chaotic and I express myself through my art and you can see that. It’s without a doubt and original artwork from me. I’m much more familiar with still lifes but still new to charcoal. I didn’t know that we could do the still life on a smaller piece of paper, but oh well. I prefer to do small detailed work so going bigger was a bit tougher for me but I’m developing my skills. Anyways, I set up a still life with objects that were laying around myself so it was original content. Throughout the drawing process I learned how to blend the charcoal and experimented with using different pencils of softer and harder charcoal. I was having trouble erasing some spots so I learned from it and started to use less pressure on the pencils which seemed to help. I’m pleased with the way it turned out.
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Sabrina NewcombJust a struggling high school artist Archives
May 2016
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