In my first reflective essay, I reflected upon my initial fears of drawing so openly in a room full of people, fearing trying out new things and not being able to draw with such confidence. Thorough the module I opened more and started enjoying drawing freely. I learned the basics of proportions and anatomy and started experimenting with medium I didn’t particularly enjoy or never even tried before. I talk about my feelings when it comes to medium in this reflective essay quite broadly as I think it was the main thing I focused on in this semester.

I would like to cover the medium immediately. I initially didn’t enjoy working with anything that would get me out of my comfort zone. I always felt like using medium such as soft pastels or giocondas is extremely tedious and it is not worth the effort at all. After many attempts, I have started to enjoy using soft pastels in my drawings. I do still consider it a bit tedious but that is a skill I still want to work on in the future. I loved to see how vibrant the colours are and how the blending possibilities are astonishing. Next media I came to love are watercolours. I never liked the usage of the media as I felt it was not vibrant enough and I could never figure out how to use it properly. I have been following an artist Polina Bright through her Instagram account for quite some time now. Bright (2017) amazingly uses fine lines and watercolours. I have always admired the watercolour art and wanted to be able to use watercolours to that extent, but I never felt like I would be able to do so. Thanks to recent assignments I figured out how to use the watercolours effectively to maintain the vibrancy of the colours. I vigorously enjoyed discovering new medium to work with and explore, that is why I decided it would be interesting to use on one of our assigned briefs. I felt like the River Walk brief was the best opportunity to try that approach. I was happy with the results and I am looking forward to discovering new uses of different media or simply mastering their intended use.

The thing I have always been rather insecure about was my drawing style. Ever since I have gotten into drawing I saw many creative people having their own approach to art and delivering the messages with their own style, that made me anxious about the fact that I do not have any person style that stands out and my drawings are not going to be eye-catching enough. Thanks to the Week 11 and Week 12 exercises and the feedback we received at the beginning of the semester, made me realize I already have my own style but I have not realized it because I was only looking at my own work instead of looking at others. When I was looking through the post-it notes feedback, many of my peers commented on my obvious personal style which was evident in all my drawings. I realized this thorough the module as time went. When I look at my work all together I can see similar characteristics in things like how I use colour, how I draw facial or body features and it made me realized that every single one of us has their own art style even if we do not know about it in that instant.

I am still not happy with the fact that I am struggling with anatomy and precision. As a perfectionist, I was unhappy with the fact that the building drawings did not have straight lines and many things looked a bit off. It did give it its own vibe and style is what I think. What is one of my weakness is the inability to explore new approaches immediately. I need to get the courage to use a completely different medium. It started with charcoal at the beginning of the module, then the same thing happened with soft pastels, watercolours and other medium. I was quite worried when we were supposed to work with ink and wax. But the push made me do it and I enjoyed the exercise a lot. I have realized that that is becoming quite a pattern and I cannot wait till I meet another obstacle I will be able to overcome with time.

Probably the best experience thorough the module has been the group feedback that usually occurred at the end of the session. It was interesting not only to see others work, but also to hear their feedback and their opinions. When we did the Tableaux drawings it was fantastic to see everyone’s point of view and to realize that one scene can be interpreted countless different ways and that is all thanks to the artist.

When it comes to feedback, I was given some good ones thorough the module. My favourite one was to draw more than just the subject and focus on the surroundings as well to put it into context. The obvious one for me was to use more wet media, which is what I am trying to improve in and to implement more into my work. I still have not found the courage to use acrylic paint that often but I enjoy using watercolours a lot.

Experiencing new things has always been the main thing for me in this module. With the beginning of the module, having to draw a lot of architectural pieces made me realize new things. I like drawing everything precise so drawing with jagged lines without a ruler or streaky lines with a brush pen was a bit frustrating but as the feedback I got back from my peers offered, it gave it its own atmosphere. So I realized, just because it is a architecture, it does not mean that all of the lines have to be perfectly straight.

I think that one of my strengths has got to be either shading or colouring. I enjoy bringing colour into drawings and making it look more alive. With the River Walk or Hive drawings brief I implemented colour in some of those drawings (or based it solely on colour) to give a bit more life. I work with the same kind of approach when shading. While shading does not give it the life colour does, it gives the drawing new depth and angle and makes it look more realistic and 3-Dimensional which is what I strive for. I find it fascinating how using only one colour or medium you can create a 3-Dimensional piece only thanks to shadows. It is trickier with colours, because overuse can be a bit overwhelming and I do enjoy experimenting with that and finding out when to stop. Recently I have enjoyed majorly using fine-liners, markers and brush pens with varieties of tip widths in most of my drawings. Fine-liners can be used both as the only medium in drawings, with its wide variety of sizes or just as a complementary medium. I enjoy using both of those techniques. Using fine liner and then going over it with coloured medium such as coloured pencils, markers or watercolours is currently one of my favourite drawing techniques. It is also a technique many artists I follow use. Again with my favourite one, Bright (2017), as she uses fine lines for simple, quick hand sketches and I am inspired by the precision and the simple look of those. It made me try different things with fine liners. Inspired by her work I tried doing the line art in many of my Hive brief drawings. I tried using different weight of the line to make a bit of variations and to try make it less flat even though I enjoy the look of the simple, one-weighted fine line sketch.

As a conclusion, I would like to say that I am proud of myself for experimenting with medium that used to be out of my comfort zone as I found out many interesting things I want to try again in the future. I would love to further develop my watercolour drawing skills as I have only used vibrant colours. As much as I love that, I feel like dull colours could have completely different feel to the piece. Next to watercolour I would love to keep working with soft pastels and start using acrylic paint. I feel like I am still not completely comfortable with paint and I have only used it to draw nature in my free time. I would like to properly try to draw figures using different colour variations as we did in last semester. This module has taught many important things about art and the usage of medium and different techniques and I am looking forward to developing those more in the future.