Evaluation

This year’s first project, which was Portraiture Technology, was a great opportunity for me to try out new things, but most importantly discover myself!
Because my test was very poor, I could not get good feed backs on my work and therefore could not find out whether it was effective by representing me. However, I am very satisfied with my work overall throughout this project.

For Criterion A, we were supposed to research on mixed media artists and I found great examples such as Meryt Harding or Dasha Shkurpela, who had created an artwork that might have a similar meaning to my art piece. I came up with different research questions and I think I did good finding the answers, such as when the question was about why artist do use different Medias, I answered in following:
“There are many reasons answering this question, but the most important one is that artists use mixed media to express themselves in an unusual and creative way to show the world who they actually are. Some artists want to get rid of their thoughts or bad experiences, so they as well as include it in their portraits. Instead of using only one media, such as acrylics and oil pastels, they use ANY type of materials to reveal a short view into their world.”
I also did researches on what materials or colors could help me to represent myself more, which was a great help for me, because I did not have that much experience on how materials could represent you. Later on I did some reliable tests on the internet to find out my personality type and the results encouraged me more to take risk and use different materials so that it can represent me in an effective way. One of the results showed that I am hyper and happy person, so it inspired me to use bright tones without any doubt, especially glitters, to really give the impression of craziness and hyper!

In Criterion B, I don’t think that I did that well, because I had some troubles understanding the concept of this part of the Design Cycle for this project, which was to create designs of your picture; however, I understood to sketch designs of your artwork. My design specification was wrong as well, so after I got more understanding, I changed my design specification and it was not that much of a big deal.
Although my design test was very effective at the beginning, which was by putting my portrait somewhere in the school, asking people to write down their opinion on an extra sheet of paper next to the artwork about what they can tell about the artist of that particular artwork and what makes them think the way they are thinking (afterwards, I eventually would ask them who they think is the artist). I won't tell them my name, so that when they are done with commenting, I will compare it with my own comments and the result can tell us whether my artwork is expressing myself enough to let people to know who I really am.
On the other hand, because we had to make the test during the class time, I could not perform my test, because there were some difficulties to just go to a class and ask the teacher to answer/ comment on my artwork. I believe that it was my fault being irresponsible for not testing the whole product in an effective way, because if I already had started with asking people to comment on the artwork etc, then I would have been able to ask other people rather than just my class mates. I think that it will make a great difference and greater result when asking different people with different point of views.
So, for the next time I really would like to start testing earlier, based on the project itself; if the project is similar to this one, where you have to ask people’s opinion, then it is better to start off earlier rather than waiting till the very last day.
I had troubles with altering my pictures and the different effects; although I altered lots of pictures, I actually did not use any of its designs! I chose a design that I had the right position and the right ‘look’ on the face, however I did not actually focus on the whole effect of the picture. I used picnik.com because it was very easy to understand and to use, but as well as it had lots of cool effects, where you could mix them up and create even nicer ones! However, I did not use the original effect of the altered picture; therefore I think that I did not do well on it.
I think that I should listen to the teacher carefully and don’t get confused later on, because I believe that this Criterion was poor because I did not listen to the teacher!
Next time, I should try out new effects on my picture and as well as try other websites to figure out how it works. They might have better design qualities than the one I used? Most importantly, I should listen to the teacher.

Criterion D was fun for me, because I knew what I had to do and time passed by so fast that I could not even notice it.^^ I used good materials that could represent me, such as the candy wrapper or the glitter, which indicates that I like candies and that I am a crazy person. During the process, I kind of felt that I was revealing too much information about me, however I continued with my work because it was too late to start a new one etc. However, I am very pleased that my artwork turned out to be very good, because at the beginning I was thinking that it would look weird that the grey face is contrasting to the brighter colors. But it looked good and it as well as brought my ideas very effectively!
For me presentation, I think I included my process and the materials I used, which was a part of the assignment. However, because I was nervous, I forgot a big part of my speech later on and I was very worried about whether I revealed too much information to the kids. It was very hard for me to tell the others about my true-self, because I was scared they would understand the whole thing wrongly. During my presentation, I can ‘remember’ that I talked calm and organized about the whole process, but I still think that I should improve on my public speaking skills. I need to speak louder and use effective vocabularies to back up my ideas, because it seemed to me that some kids were still confused…

In overall, I really enjoyed this project and I can say that it was the best one so far, because it is very interesting to find out about yourself and think of materials that could represent you. I learned that even though eyes can be the window to ones soul, materials I used for my artwork can be a window as well…