I was taught at an early age to not overly appreciate my own work, but I've always had trouble with that. I've been told often to not seem so conceited about myself. I guess part of the reason that I seem that way is because there's not a lot about me that I feel is worthy of bragging about. When something comes up that is, then I tend to over do it. This is one of those occasions that I talk about a lot as one of my best moments, especially since I'm now majoring in design.
Last year I was in high school art for my second year. High school art is a lot different from college design because there really wasn't any sort of curriculum. We just chose out a picture that we liked and remade it our own way. I really enjoyed doing that because I tended to choose some unrealistic pictures to do.
My favorite piece that I made was a pastel piece of a phoenix on a fiery background. For those of you who don't know what pastel is, it's chalk. The piece itself ended up being 3 ft by 2 ft, which made it one of the physically largest pieces I'd ever done. It took me almost three weeks to complete.
The one thing that frustrated me the most about it was that I could never seem to make it good enough in my opinion. Even now when I look at it, I see places I could have made better. I ended up entering it into two art fairs. One was towards the beginning of the year, and one was towards the end. The first rating was kind of disheartening because it didn't even receive an honorable mention. The second rating amazed me though. Not only did it receive first place in its category, but it also got a best of show rating in all of dry media. Again, for those of you who don't know, dry media includes things such as pencil, pastel, colored pencil, ink, marker, charcoal, scratch art, etc.
I feel that this was one of my best experiences as a design student. Not only did it prove that I had the skills to be successful in my field, but it also taught me something. Just because one person's opinion wasn't quite what you expected, that doesn't mean you should give up. Who knows, you may end up being really successful with the same idea!
