Essays

ART 001: You as the Artist

Disclaimer: Please remember, I provide these essays to you as an outline for your own. Plagiarism, using one's work as your own, can have severe consequences. There are many tools integrated into teaching software that can detect plagiarism. It's also as easy as plugging in one sentence into Google to find this essay. I want these to be available to all those that may need an outline or inspiration for their own assignments, however, I know some have used my work and have been caught. Please, don't just copy and paste my work and earn yourself a zero on the essay or fail your class. Thank you for reading and I truly hope that these essays will help. Good luck! If you ever need a peer reviewer for your essay, message me!

For reference, the specific class was "Art Appreciation" (ART 001). This isn't an essay, but I like the art I made :P

"Create an original work of art in any media of your choice, focusing on sharing a visual message with the viewer. You will need to submit a 1 page paper along with your own unique artwork. The two criteria you must write about are:

Your artistic intent – what it is you are trying to communicate with your artwork.

Your composition – why you used the media you chose, why your artwork looks like it does, including usage of the elements and principles of art."

If you'd like some more information on the topic/purpose of this essay, leave a comment!

Grade: 100% 

My artistic intent with the piece I created for this project is that the world is protected. I called back on my experiences from the last few years through COVID-19 and decided to depict a person encircling and watching over the globe. The person was inspired by my mother, sharing many features, who works as an oncology nurse at [local] Hospital. Throughout the pandemic, she has worked alongside many other healthcare professionals to protect those who are immunocompromised as well as the employees themselves. The figure in my piece is haloed in light, and they share that light with the world they hold.

For this piece, I decided to complete it digitally so I could have lots of freedom when working out the various aspects of the work. This mostly included composition and color. Completing the piece digitally also allowed me to use colors and achieve effects that wouldn't have been possible if I had created it analog. I used a square canvas and placed the figure and globe in the center. (The actual center of the canvas is where the top edge of the globe and the figure's chest meet.) Only the bottom of them reaches an edge of the canvas which allows them to take up most of the space while giving a sense of emptiness around them. The person has tan skin and wavy black hair—features the character shares with my mother. They also wear a white mask (over their nose, of course). Surrounding the person and globe are yellow stars. On the globe is a white "cloud" in the shape of a heart. I chose saturated colors for the globe and clothing of the figure to draw the eye there. The clothing is two different pinks to symbolize love. The more saturated pink closer to the center of the canvas/their figure's chest. The mask is white to represent purity and cleanliness. Both the person and the globe are rimmed with yellow/gold to create contrast and connect them to the stars/heavens. There is also a halo of light to separate the person from the dark blue background. Finally, I used atmospheric perspective by making some stars smaller, blurring them, and/or lowering their opacity.