Year Long Reflection

I have learned so much this year it is insane. I’ve come really far in a lot of different ways using a lot of different mediums. At the beginning of the year I used a very formulaic approach to a lot of kinds of art, drawing specifically. This kind of trapped me in a very uniform art style that sacrificed real details and emotion in the art for assurance that I was making art “right.” I did not learn to stop doing that immediately and I can see that in my art skill inventory, where I used specific methods to draw my own face that made it look not like me. Looking back at my self portrait from just a little later in the year, when I gave up on trying to use these formulas and just tried to draw what I was seeing, I ended up making a piece of art that really looks like me. The same is true with my composition. In the still life inventory I tried to fit all the parameters of what makes a good composition that I had learned and in doing that I made a pretty crappy composition. In all of my pieces going forward through the year though, my composition became stronger and was one of my strongest points on my still life painting. I think leaving behind this formulaic approach and very calculated kind of art let me enjoy the process more and create much more fluid and overall higher quality art.

Looking at all the things that I have learned, I think I have grown the most in my use of perspective when creating compositions. In my self portrait perspective was one of the most important parts for conveying what I wanted through my piece, and it forced me to think a lot more about where I wanted the viewer to be looking at me from. In the end by forcing me to think about it so much in that piece, I also used it in my still life as another part of my composition. While I had trouble actually painting it, from the beginning I knew how I wanted to use it which created a much stronger composition.

I think I still need to work on my use of different line work and textures in my work. One of my biggest problems with my abstract expressionist piece was that I was not able to incorporate texture as much as I wanted in the beginning. Varying my line work was another issue I had earlier with my self portrait as well. I became so focused on creating a uniform work to create depth and shading that I forgot to use different lines which led to a part of the piece that was more boring. In the future I want to have a better understanding of different line work or brush strokes to create a better texture on my piece and add to my composition and colors.

Going forward I will definitely try to incorporate more texture into my pieces either through textured mediums or through using different strokes. I also really enjoy painting natural subjects such as plants and animals, something I explored through my Fantastic 4 project. I found through the year that while creating art of human subjects can be very rewarding when it looks good I do not enjoy the process and find it to be really stressful, and when a person doesn’t look right anyone can tell. With natural subjects there is more wiggle room for the artist, and I really enjoy the subjects. I think nature can be really eye catching and using those patterns and subjects in my art is something I would like to continue into next year and beyond.

Career: Art Conservator

"What is an art conservator?" you ask. The job of an art conservator is to preserve and restore artworks in museums or other collections. They must repair works, as well as protect them against everyday elements to ensure that artworks are able to be enjoyed far into the future. To be an art conservator there are many necessary skills. First off, to be an art conservator professionally, most art institutions require applicants to have at least a masters degree in art. A strong background in art history is also needed, to understand the techniques used and the works that they are conserving. Finally, a background in chemistry is also necessary in order for conservators to be able to use the correct chemicals and preservation materials to actually protect the artwork, and not destroy the paint or the canvas.

A typical day for an art conservator would usually include looking at the artworks they would conserve under special lighting or with a very magnifying lens in order to find any issues or damage in the works. Once any damage was identified they would spend a lot of time going through many stages of reparation, such as removing old varnish, mending any tears in a canvas, matching pigments to the original paints, and revarnishing to protect the work again. Some conservators also travel a lot for their career, to different museums all over the world restoring art.

Finally, there are man majors that would be very useful when pursuing this career, but some of the best are art conservation (the name gives it away), art history, studio art, and even chemistry. In the US, NYU has a very competitive arts program, as do University of Delaware, Buffalo State College, and UCLA.

Progress: Still Life #2

Since basically starting most of the painting from scratch, things have gone a lot better. I have been trying to keep a relatively consistent height when viewing the still life I am painting in order to avoid any more issues with perspective. Overall I am much more happy with how the painting is looking since then. I have also tried to be less absolute with the grading in between colors and to try and understand how to crate small tonal differences to create form rather than just blocking out colors.

I think one of my biggest challenges so far has been the flowers. There are lots of very small details in the flowers that have been really hard to convey in the painting. There are also portions of the flowers that when compared with the background have very little difference tonally, which has made painting them somewhat hard. I have found certain ways to create very small differences though, and in some places I realized that it would be easier to wait and convey the difference once I began color glazing. Overall though I am very happy with the direction the painting is heading in, and I am very glad I made the decision to redo some of the parts that just didn't look right.