I have been making art ever since I was able to pick up a pencil. One of the main reasons I make art is for my own personal satisfaction. Of course I have been drawing and making other art pieces in all of the art classes I have taken throughout my entire school career. However, each piece had significance because they reflected my own personality and making them solely for the purpose of getting a good grade was never at the top of my list as to why I make art. Being able to express myself through my drawings is very important to me. Art allows me to make certain statements about issues that I would not have been able to express any other way. The last time I made a drawing was yesterday when I was working on a self portrait. I like getting critiqued on my pieces and asked a friend to look at my drawing. She told me the strengths and weaknesses of my drawing which really helped me to improve the final product.
The sources of my ideas are things that stand out to me and/or things that I am interested in. I love to do still- life drawings and each of the pieces I do show my perspective on the world around me. I learn the most when I have an interest in what I am studying. That is the best way I will be able to retain new information. I know that everything that I will be learning will not always spark an interest, but I will work hard nevertheless to learn as much as I can. The conditions I need in a classroom to learn the most is for the professor to be available for his/her students whenever they need assistance. Also, I really enjoy getting honest feedback for my work because it truly does help me improve all of my skills as an artist. The materials that I have used to create art are pencils, pens, paints, pastels, and different types of paper from construction paper to canvases. The use of these materials depends on what I am trying to create at the moment. Each drawing utensil I choose serves an important purpose because it allows me to make the types of strokes I want for that piece.
There are many things that inspire me. This may seem like a cliché but some of my most important inspirations are my friends and family. The people closest to me have inspired me to pursue art academically because they see the talent that I have and know that I have the potential to be a great artist in the future. They want what is best for me and know that I will be a great art teacher. I gave up taking art classes in ninth grade because I had schedule conflicts. It was horrible giving it up and probably one of my biggest mistakes. My friends gave me a hard time about it and made me realize that I was just wasting my talent so I decided to pursue art education at college.
I define art as using one’s creativity and imagination to make a piece that reflects the artist in some way. In my opinion, anything can be defined as being art as long as the piece came from the imagination of the artist and has some sort of significance to them. I believe that all art should mean something to the artist that is creating it. If it doesn’t, then there is no reason to make it. I think that movies, music, video games, and comics are all art forms because they all came for inside the head of one person or many people. All of these things started off as an idea that people wished to make a reality. The art of an artist reflects that artist’s personality and style. These can also be said for movies, music, comics, etc. Directors and musicians put their own style into whatever they create. I believe that all people get to decide what defines art. Each person has his/her own opinion and is entitled to it.
