In my first year of art in high school I learned a lot. I learned many different techniques and materials you can work with in 3D art. I worked with paper, wood, clay, metals, plaster, and other materials. In my final paper artwork, I created an artwork about instrumentalism which tackled the idea of people spending too much time invested in technology. I used techniques that I learned beforehand hand to create the project such as used tabs to glue shapes like rectangles together. In a wood project I incorporated balance when arranging the shapes to make my artwork better. In the clay unit I learned how to crave designs into clay using a technique called sgraffito. Overall, during the year I increased my art knowledge to create artwork that people will want to see.
In my artwork I was usually given a prompt that allowed me to create unique artwork such as the wood project. The topic was consumerism where I had to create something that could be bought. I created a figure of Jolteon form Pokémon on a Pokeball that comes with a stand. With my metal metaphor I chose a unique metaphor of people watching TV with their eyes glued to the screen. This was a fun project that put two unlike things together like juxtaposition into an artwork. The clay unit was a bit different because my artwork showed more of my personal self. In my Bas-Relief Tile I added clay for a castle and carved out windows. The place was supposed to imitate Disney land which was important to me because I’ve visited it many times and lived near it. 3D art allowed to to be creative and express things visually that I could not explain as good as with words.
Each of my artworks were unique because it came from my brain even though the class was given the same topic. For example, for our first clay project we were to create a stamp. We could put basically any design that could fit on it. I chose a star because it is my favorite shape and a signature for me. The project allowed me to express myself and give me a unique identity. There are many different designs such as clovers, rainbows, but my clay stamp allowed me to put an imprint on my project that made it feel more personal. I also liked choosing a color scheme in the wood shapes project that allowed me to pick my own color combination that could mean different things. In the Shadowbox project where we basically layered paper in a box, we were supposed to recreate a scene. Even though it was hard cutting out small details, the project made it feel personal through me because I recreated the scene of the final fight between Harry Potter and Voldemort. Throughout the art year I never felt pressured to do one thing and I had a lot of freedom to put my own style into every single one of the projects.
I felt that the I grew in art this year. Whether it was an easy or hard project I learned something. A project that I really struggled on was the pinch pot. Even though I tried to make a bowl it turned to be more of a cup. I learned in this project that clay doesn’t always work how you want it to. You have to make sure to take care of the moisture levels and be patient when working with it and let it sit. I was in a rush with the project, so I kept cracking the clay when I tried to stretch it and it became harder and harder to keep it smooth. Another project I had trouble on was the wire insect. It wasn’t a material that was easy to work with, so we used pliers. Even the my wire insect wouldn’t stand so I had to give it support. It was also very hard to knot the wire so it would wrap around other pieces of wire firmly. This gave me trouble on having the antenna stand up. The third project I got stuck on for a while is the clay whistle. It was hard to do because it actually had to be functional. I made the clay whistle into a campfire which represents me goin camping a lot. While I struggled in some aspects, some things that I excelled at was creating neat folds and being careful when using a hot glue gun. My knowledge of form allowed me to neatly create the legs of the chair and shape of the TV. I felt the art year as a whole taught me a new perspective, even though I won’t be taking more art classes to pursue other interests, 3D art was a new and refreshing experience for me.
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