“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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