Reflective diary of my first week in art.

               Over the past few weeks, I have been working on my induction project for college, which goes by the name of, “Who am I?” This task has required me to take a variety of photos and draw some observational drawings that mean something to me. I have used my camera to illustrate the fact that I have  a passion for film, that I love my pets, that I have hobbies that include baking and art, as well as trying to depict my favourite place to go with friends and family. I attempted to use composition in a creative way in order to make the photos more interesting and eye catching.

                I drew the hands to illustrate friendship and how, despite the small disputes within my friendship group, we will always be friends. I used biro as I was trying to take inspiration from a modern artist, Vince Low. I wanted to get the impression in my drawing that my friendships aren’t based on looks, they are based on personality.

                This oil pastel drawing of a rose symbolises my Mum as it is her favourite flower. I wanted to show that she is one of the most important people to me. I used the colour pink to create the impression of care and compassion. I used Georgia O’Keeffe as my inspiration for this drawing as she focuses on the botanical aspect of the world and also concentrates on the colours red, pink and orange.

                In another drawing, I have tried to capture the idea that I love going on holiday due to the fact that I have drawn a pair of sunglasses. Although this drawing cannot be linked to a specific artist, it follows the theme of Simon Hennessy’s work. He manages to paint very realistic images of people wearing sunglasses, whilst also capturing the image of a famous landmark in the reflections.

                Moreover, the lion’s eye is used to symbolise my star sign, Leo. Although the artist that influenced me, John Banovich, does every animal in the wild, I particularly liked his big cats’ paintings. He succeeds in catching the beauty of the animal, despite its deadly reputation.

                The oil pastel drawing of the games pieces and dice was made to show my love for playing games. I have taken inspiration from many artists that use oil pastels as their chosen medium including: Sven Kinader and most importantly, Diego Simancas, who uses bright bold colours in his drawings.

                Additionally, I have drawn a shamrock to illustrate the fact that I am part Irish and that I have an Irish background. I used charcoal as I thought that I would be able to achieve a realistic drawing of a shamrock, as charcoal allows you to capture highlights and shadows well. I used Wendy Hollender as inspiration because of her botanical drawings, however, my drawing is slightly different because she uses coloured pencils, yet I have used charcoal.

                Throughout the first four lessons of A level art, I have begun to understand how to communicate with fellow students and we have started to talk about possible improvements of each other’s work. We have had the chance to explore previous A2 students’ work and begin to express what we think about their individual pieces and their whole body of work. Within our last lesson, we have been starting to think about the ways in which we could evolve our induction project into something more meaningful.

                Many of our tasks during the lessons has sparked a lot of ideas about developing my work, however, I particularly like one of them; I am interested in presenting the fact that I am deeply opposed to the whole concept of zoos. As many of the aspects within my induction project are linked to animals and nature, I want to show how I hate the fact that animals are being taken from their natural environments and being placed into manmade settings. Ever since I was a little boy, I have always hated zoos and I believe that using it as a project will allow me to express my strong feelings on this particular issue.

                This first week in art has been a dramatic change from what I am used to as we have a lot of freedom to what project we choose to do. During GCSE, we were told what project we had to do and were limited on the materials that we could use. Also, we didn’t do much peer assessment, however, I have now realised that it is important to receive other people’s views on my work.

                In the future, I am hopefully going to use my blog as a way of getting feedback on my work so that I can improve it to the best of my ability. Furthermore, I am hopefully going to use it as a way of posting inspirations of mine so that I can always refer back to it when producing my work.