How I Struggled in 9th Grade
In art, we worked on numerous projects ranging from drawing still-life to creating a Dayton Regional STEM School recruitment poster. Through every project, we learned different methods and skills that would help us create the most realistic art. Ever since I was young, art has always been a struggle for me but it was freshman year when I started to experiment with new concepts such as shading and new ideas to create pieces.
We spent weeks completing tutorials for using Adobe Illustrator. After finishing these tutorials we were assigned to recreate an animated character using Adobe Illustrator. I chose to recreate Destiny from the Disney movie "Finding Dory". Once I started recreating Destiny I started noticing faults in my work which was restricting my work from being realistic. After creating the outline and starting on the details of the whale, I saw that my character was lacking in shading causing Destiny to not look realistic enough. I continued to have trouble with making my interpretation similar to the real character. After completing the assignment, I realized I should have focused more on the way I had outlined the structure of the body and changed the color of some parts of the whale to show depth.
When we first learned about sketching, we were learning sketching concepts while working on the project of creating a self-portrait. Even though I was applying the skills I had learned, I still did not feel as if I captured the features of my face properly. I continued to revise and consulted my peers, but I still felt dissatisfied with how my piece looked as a whole. After examining the work at the end of the project, I realized that though I had used different skills we learned, I did not effectively use them such as the way I used shading for my face. The shape and the outline of some of the features of my face was not captured properly. If I did this project again, I would focus more on being careful with the way I use the art concepts on my piece. After completing these projects I observed that though I faced many challenges, I became more confident with the techniques that I was using. I have always hidden away any art that I had made but now, I am able to identify good parts of the piece. I have never been enthusiastic about doing art but now I am more willing to try.