,I Swore to Myself I was going to be better about this...Blogging just Seemed to be easier when I finaly would have something to write about, but all I have written so far is how my first couple of days went and how I just bought Photoshop CS3.....To be exact, I have installed the entire design standard the only things that I have really been doing since then is making some creations and posting them on my Deviantart...most of these are class projects!
Any way, something that I have recently been working on is regaining the patience I have once had with art. Somewhere between RISD (precollege), UMass and the Career Center, I have lost some of my interst in taking my time to do things perfectly. I think this started at RISD and I have only recently been regaining my love for what I am doing, finally adding the passion it lacks.
In the back of my mind I hear Moddocks' words over and over again. "These are really great drawings but they are missing the passion, it seems like...." I am really pareaphrasing this, I lost most of the words long ago, and I am still only guessing (by speach patterns) that it was Maddocks who critiqued my artwork on National Portfolio Day in Boston...any way he said those images looked like I didn't even care about art....and to be honest, after RISD precollege I was just exosted and no longer cared....I didn't agree with any of their propositions on art and felt as though everything that I thought was skillful had been a lie!
It is really the whole concept of abstraction that baffled me, how a random line on a paper could be art was pretty much out of my coheirence, and some how all the people who didn't try and through crap (almost literally) together managed to make it best. Everything they were graded upon was the "concept" and their ideas on what they were making a statement on was the only thing that gave them their grades. Though this was not the same for everyone, I still resent RISD for that, you had to be a good BSer in order to make it there and I was NOT about to do that.....
National Portfolio Day was another reason I have chosen to reject RISD. The woman who was reviewing me was just rude. My major was suppose to be Graphic Design and she basically through my best designs from class aside saying it didn't mean anything to them. The breaking straw was her whining at me about how I had a "horrible self portrait" when she wasn't even looking at a picture I drew of me....I had a portrait of Carol in there and to be honest she doesn't look anything like me!
When I told the woman that it was my self portrait she looked at me as if I was lying and then, with an attitude, went through an found my self portrait and said nothing more than "well that's better" I was like DUHHHH....portraits have been the most frequent thing I have drawn since eigth grade when one of my teachers told my class "Every true artist has mastered the human form..." ever since then I have been determined...
Long story short...It took me a long time to get over these negitive feelings I had towards art and my drawings suffered. I think the best thing that had happened was me going into my figure drawing class last year....Elen was a strange teacher but she forced that block out of me. It took a while but I started noticeing the tention going away. It isn't that I damanded perfection from myself that was the problem, but that I was so afraid to draw something imperfect I avoided drawing things that I wasn't about to erase.
During winter break, I rehabed myself. Drawing crazy things that didn't look tidy and neat, breaking myself out of the bad habits. I ended up having Ellen again for structure drawing and midsemester she got mad at me because I had lost the way I use to draw, the part that she had liked the most. I have a cross hatching thing I do when I shade where there are so many lines, the merge together making a value....this was something good I lost....I spent the rest of the semester training myself to do both....mixing the old and new to create some good drawings...for once....I had one issue by the end...my drawings never look finished. I was still terrified just enough where I would not erase and block things in....but luckily it all ended with the portrait of Abigail I had drawn a long wile ago...
Anyway, I still find myself facing these struggles in my art classes. The only things I don't struggle in are Graphic Design and Digital Media....I know these classes and (since the last day of the Career Center during my senior year) I have true confidence in my ability. I am a Graphic Designer....or truely a Designer. Even with all of my issues on creativity I have (still the random fear of failing) I know, without a doubt, I can create a top design.
I may change my profile picture to the one I drew on my new favorate medium....Photoshop!
