Art Foundations
Meghan Healy
Semester 2: |
End of Course Reflection![]()
Art Foundation: End of Course
C Block for second semester was very fun for me because I took the Art Foundations class with Meghan Healy. One of my most favorite lessons was the Family Sculpture. The goal of the assignment was to utilize shape and form, as well as positive and negative space. We were required to create a three-dimensional sculpture that symbolically represents our family and expresses how we saw ourselves fitting into the design. The three essential questions were 1. How can shapes communicate emotional qualities and personalities?, 2. How can you develop your skills and demonstrate craftsmanship when working with cardboard and x-acto knives?, and 3. How can line, shape, and use of space represent human characteristics in a 3-D sculpture? The process was pretty easy and simple. We were graded on creativity and originality, composition, craftsmanship and technical skills, and design process/critique/reflection. I liked this project because it was about you and your family, not just some art. It symbolized who I am and who my family is. I like it because it was a form of expressing who you and your family are as one without any words at all, only objects. Another of my favorite projects was the first assignment we have did, which was Graffiti Art. The goal of the project was to create a piece of Graffiti Art using an emotion word of my choice. We were required to concentrate on three of the elements of design which were line, color, and shape. The word I choose was “musical” because I love music and I feel as if one song can portray hundreds of different feelings or moods. I liked this project because I always wanted to learn how to draw graffiti. I was interested in learning because people think graffiti is not art, but it really is. Graffiti is a form of self expression and artists use it to express a feeling or an emotion. In Art Foundations I learned some of the technical skills in order to make a strong piece of art. For example, in my graffiti project I learned that there are many types of lines in graffiti, such as straight line designs, zig-zag designs, spiral designs, and curved line designs. I learned that there are two types of shapes to outline your graffiti: geometric or organic. I learned that there are different types of colors, such as primary, secondary, tertiary, analogous, complementary, warm, cool, monochromatic, and neutrals. I learned how to do shading. I also learned how to use watercolor much better. In my family sculpture, I learned how to use negative and positive space. I learned how to arrange the objects so that my piece was interesting and that whoever is looking at it can moves their eyes through the piece. In my Clay Shoe project, I learned how to slip and score. I learned that you can't put two pieces of clay together without “scoring” them. If you don’t, they will break in the kiln. I learned that clay can't have pockets inside of them or they will explode in the kiln. I learned how to create texture on the clay. I learned that you had to be very cautious with the size of the clay too, for it may also break in the kiln. For my Word Drawing, I learned how to create darker shades and lighter shades with a pencil, (this is called value) instead of smearing them with your fingers. I learned a few things about myself throughout the course. I learned that I tend to put myself down many times. I was not very confident with my art work. I would complain about how my art work was “ugly” and I would ask if I was able to start over again. After some projects, I finally realized that all I needed was practice & I would become better. I learned the habit of mind I need to work on is collaboration. For example, for the family sculpture project, we only had a limited amount of glue guns. On the last day it was due, everyone was going crazy, wanting to use a hot glue gun. Meghan said we had to share, which I am very bad at because I don’t like working with people in any way. We all had to work together to make sure everyone had their fair share of using the glue guns. I was a little greedy with the hot glue guns, but in the end I realized that I had to share. |