My most successful project was my text project. The theme was culture
and we had to use text to convey the theme. In my brainstorming ideas, I
already had an idea of family tree. But the problem was that family
trees are overused ideas, so I had to think of a way to be creative and
think outside the box for my project. My first idea was to draw a tree
on a piece of paper, but the outline and inside of the tree would be
family words, like "Daughter, Father, Cousin, etc". Mr. Sands said it
didn't look like enough, and that it was plain and flat. So I went back
to the drawing board. I then had the crazy idea about painting an actual
tree as a family tree. I asked Sands about it, and his eyes lit up with
that idea. He said "Now that is thinking outside the box." 
My next step was to choose a paint that did poison and kill the tree. I tried acrylic and temper, I ended up using temper because it was an easier paint to use on tree bark. My original plan was to have the words going up the tree vertically, but when I actually got to the painting part I painted them wrapping around the tree at an angle, so that they continued up the tree in a constant line. I painted all the way up the tree to the base of the first limbs, and all the way down to the base of the trunk and even the roots that came above the ground.
The project where I feel that I've overcome the most obstacles would be my intertextuality project. First, it took me a really long time to think of an idea. But eventually I thought of a good idea; Santa that went on a hunting trip. I used colored pencil and was having trouble making the shadows dark enough. I would try to add shadows, but Sands would say, "Go darker!". It took me a good while to get enough shadows to make the picture look more realistic. I then realized, I hated colored pencil. I just don't like the way they blend and the texture they make on the paper. But in the end, I was really happy with how it turned out. The dark shadows I made helped the piece come to life a lot more than the first time I thought I was done.
Over the semester, I've improved on a couple things. On my perspective project, I learned how to be more creating in my ways of drawing. I learned how to draw at an angle so when its viewed from a certain way it looks proportionate. I've always stuck to drawing things facing straight on the paper, so this gave me a different view, literally. Another project that I have improved skill on would be my redo project. I redid the stippling technique I had used on a project in the previous year. I improved on my skill and technique overall, and learned how to add more lights and shadows without overdoing it.
I really enjoyed this semester in art class. One reason was because Mr. Sands was my teacher and he is awesome because he really lets the students do practically anything we want. We are allowed to choose what we want to do and use for each project and he will tell us his opinion on it, but won't make us change it if he doesn't think it will work. We are allowed to fail in projects and see and learn our mistakes and why the idea failed, and we can choose to correct the problem or to just change our idea altogether. I liked that we got to choose the mediums in our artwork. I really love stippling and pencil drawing, but seeing other people at my table using different mediums like painting, it made me more willing to try new things. Having different options in each project let us express ourselves in different ways through our art.
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