1. What challenges were you faced with when collaborating on a large scale portrait?
2. What is the importance of ‘refinement’? What have you learnt about this process of finishing an art work? When is an artwork finished?
3. What is the importance of working to deadlines?
4. What did you learn from other artists in your group? What were your individual strengths? What areas of improvement do you need to consider?
5. What is the importance of planning and curating an exhibition? What aspects of an exhibition need to be considered?
6. How could you improve on the exhibition?
7. How well do you think you worked during this project? Does your sketchbook and blog reflect your arts process well?
8. What did you learn during this unit of work?
9. Have you improved any artistic skills or ATL skills since starting this unit?
10. How would you change the unit to make it more fun?
1) When it came to challenges, I found it especially hard for my group and I to successfully match the same shades and colors when painting the backgrounds and the face with acrylics. At first we did not all agree on one color, but when we did it was difficult to complete it at home because we could not find or mix the same color. Also, when it came to the background and face we also did not make everything the right size. For example the face did not align at first, and none of the microchip designs we painted were the same size or style even though we had agreed on one. It did not initially work out and just looked messy.
2) I really realized the importance of refinement when we were "done" but every shade and line did not add up. That's when I realized we are not done. Our group decided on scrapping the entire background and making it black, and I decided to redo the face so that it would align. This was probably one of the best decisions though last minute that we made as it really gave much more edge and contrast to our work.
3) Working to deadlines can be really hard but it's an absolute necessity. If we did not try our best to work to our deadlines it would have ruined the exhibition as the work would be unfinished.
4) I learned that in collaborations like these you might not agree on everything but fairness will help you make your decisions. Also, particularly with myself I have realized that painting might not be my strong point but it is something I can improve on and might be able to learn in my free time. I found it pretty fun to do, even if I wasn't that great, because it was something I've never really done before. However if I want to start painting I think I need to do simpler things first before I go on to painting people.
5) When planning and curating an exhibition, aesthetics and convenience are something I took in to great consideration. For example when a person is going through the actual exhibition it needs to be laid out in a way that people can see the full art work, and give them enough space to focus on only that. It has to be need and visually appealing so there is no crowding in the space. When I was thinking about curating the exhibition I thought that it would be best to leave the collaborative boards up and along the wall because people could pass by them and look at each individually.
6) An improvement I believe could've been made to the exhibition is to make the pietist from the other class just stand out a bit more. They were completely in the back and not many people paid as much attention to them as the others. I think this was because there was a lack of presentation and no title to their topic or a description of their work. Also rather than improving the exhibition visually, we also needed people actually Invigilating.
7) I think personally I have been doing pretty well with my work. However, I am not fully satisfied. In truth my blog and book do not at all reflect my progress as an artist. As well as some of my art so far do not reflect my personality or concepts that I believe in. I need to work on getting my self up to date with all of my work. This is probably the most vital improvement so to do this I am going to make a plan for myself to complete all of my work so that I am not stressed about it. Also, a good idea could be to decorate and create my art book pages as I go along when I have the time and then I can just arrange the information and artwork into it as I need to.
8) In this unit I learned a lot about my skill and where I need to improve. I think shading and thinking about tone and value are some of my greatest weaknesses. I do have some talent for drawing but I am not using my potential and I must try to improve when drawing things in real life like people, plants and animals.
9) I think I definitely improved at sketching people because of the chuck close technique. It's something I haven't done before but I was able to some degree, accurately sketch my sister.
10) To make this unit more fun, I think it would've been better if each group decided to choose who they were creating the collaborative portrait of. Someone who really inspired youth or meant something to them. However this can be a problem because not everyone will agree on one person. So maybe what we could've done is have a read through the 100 top most influential people and then allow each group to choose.
