As I look back on my first year here at Maywood, I find myself being happy with a lot of the growth I made in pursuing a career in art. I started off this year thinking that I was meant to dive into painting, and develop a passion for the medium that would go beyond a simple interest. However, through interaction with others and being acclimated to many of the professors, I learned that Illustration might be where I find myself feeling the most fulfilled. While painting is something that I enjoy doing and want to continue developing my skills, I find myself feeling limited with its potential, and wanting something that offers more diversity and a range of approaches.
Some Fun Works!
In addition to discovering a new path in my creative endeavors, I found my skills as an artist developing a lot in the past year. Through these classes, I learned to explore different media and experimenting with a lot of mixed media as well to find new techniques and styles that would change the way I go about creating each piece.
One of the works I found myself being the proudest of this semester is this micron pen, archival ink work of an octopus that I had created over winter break, and a ballpoint pen rendering of the human form. Being one of the largest works I had ever made, this 20×28 inch beast of a project consumed three months of my life. Every day, I spent roughly 6-10 hours working on this piece, meticulously creating hatch marks that would give the illusion of depth and form. It taught me the importance of patience and pressure when creating mark-making, as each line had to be deliberate and planned carefully. Furthermore, the work taught me how to work with proportion and scale, challenging me to take a small image and transfer it to a large sheet of paper. While the ballpoint pen piece was not nearly as large, the work was still tedious and had to be planned out carefully.
Looking at mixed media, these works were some of the pieces I was also content with. The work comprising of shapes was definitely one of my more explorative works, as the media was all diverse, and I used a plethora of materials and overlapped them to give dimensionality to the piece. In particular, I worked with gouache, Copic marker, white gel pen, colored pencil, micron pen, and POSCA paint markers to achieve a clean, linear style. Nonetheless, the other work, a still life of pomegranates used a white gel pen, Copic marker, and colored pencil to get intense color, bright highlight, and well-rendered form.
Lastly, while there may not be any reason why I made these works, here are a few other pieces I was happy with throughout the course of this year. As you may be able to notice, I tried to go as diverse as possible when reflecting on the material used, and the subject matter depicted. I pressured myself to try to grow as much as possible over the course of the fall and spring semester, and as a result, I feel decently satisfied with my growth. While I feel like there is immense room to improve and refine my technique, through continual practice and diving out of my comfort zone, I can hope that I find myself happy in Illustration, and can grow more throughout these next three years!
