reflection essay:

From the beginning of the year and now, I have changed significantly. On the first day I could not tell you half of the thing I learned this year. Looking at more artists and art movements this year expanded my perception of art. Even the play pages and fantastic four projects slowly had me realize the areas in art which I enjoyed the most. I realize now that throughout all three years of art, I was to try everything and on top of learning art, learn about myself. Specifically, I learned how to branch out and stop painting or drawing naturalistically (I learned that word as well!) when we went through the Abstract Expressionism unit. I can confidently say that I came out of this year learning a lot. I think I've seen the most growth in abstraction because until this year, I had not even touched anything like it. If I could speak retrospectively for a moment, I think it's because whenever I drew something non-objectively, I was always critical of it because I had no reference to base it on. I still feel like if I could improve on anything from this year, it would be organization, completing, and uploading my work better. As it stands, I want to work on my website this summer and throughout the school year next year. My independent work is something I think a lot about, and I am dead set on using some form of abstraction in my work. I don't want to create completely non-objective pieces but I believe I can blend the two halves of what I've learned through my years of art at Maggie Walker and find a happy medium between non-objectiveness and realism.