Last term I really pushed myself out of my comfort zone, and learned a lot about what I can do and what I enjoy doing as an artist. This term however, I learned a lot about how I work as an artist. I found that it was easier for me to start one project, move to another, and then come back to that first project. It helps me if I don't look at a piece for a long time, then come back and look at it with fresh eyes. My biggest success this term was probably one of my pieces with the notecards. Unfortunately the piece got lost in the abyss of the art room. It was the project where we had to somehow enlarge a small square of one of our notecards. I liked these projects because you had to copy an image, but you could somehow change it and make it bigger. I like taking an image and changing it somehow. Towards the end of the term, I was very stressed out with school and I think I wasn't focusing enough in the class, so I couldn't develop very finished pieces. The hardest for me, surprisingly, was the still life. I hadn't drawn in so long it was hard for me to focus. I was also trying to use new techniques with my drawing. I tried to do the undetailed parts first and then go in on the detail. I had a really hard time with this, but in some ways it was a learning experience, because I realized that maybe I can come up with a unique style of drawing. I've discovered I like having a balance or a certain relation between detailed and undetailed.

Symbolic Still life

For my symbolic still life I knew I wanted to use a clock somehow to go with the theme of change. I decided to use pine cones and branches to show how seeds grow into trees. I placed them near the window because I wanted to use shadow in my drawing. The clock symbolizes change, it kind of shows how it takes time for the pine cones to grow into trees. I wanted to do it all in pencil, because that has always been my safety area, but now i've started thinking it might have been easier with charcoal or some other material.

Opposites project

My theme for the opposite project is change. I wanted to use the theme of nature and changing seasons. I wanted to show that nature and seasons change all the time, but the fact that seasons are always changing never changes. I really wanted to use something with photos and images to show nature. It was too hard to develop pictures and find the right one, so I printed out pictures of nature and put varnish over it to make it glossy and photo like. I made all the images black and white to show that nature never really stops changing, so its unchanging in a way. I also put it in a circle to back up this idea.