Art – A Medium Of Expression

Visual Arts (VA) is one of that subject that I always look forward to in school. What I like about it is that we are not told what to do, but we are given the opportunity to do what we want. Sometimes it became hard for me express through art, I didn’t understand how to proceed. I thought I didn’t have the patience of doing one thing over and over again, but that paradigm about me had been changed by attending few classes.

I was confident with my skills in doodling and abstract drawing. However, I still can’t paint/draw human figures. We were learned to do clay moulding, which I already had experience doing. Next up was wood carving. The most tiring experience of all time. We were given a piece of wood, we had to polish it and carve what we want with specialized tools. Greatest trouble was figuring out what to carve. Longest trouble was carving. However much I despised carving, I didn’t give up. I attended all the classes, even when I had chances to skip and not carve. The outcome was beautiful, according to me. It was so much better than my expectation. The relief after completing was the best feeling ever. We had spent months on carving and printing.

Throughout all this, we were also asked to keep a diary. A personal diary, not for writing but drawing. I also have a dairy filled with my drawings. Then we had a presentation of our work throughout the year, when my dad saw my stuff and appreciated me, I felt so proud.

Then we had to paint different sized blocks in three primary colors (red, yellow and blue) and neutral colors (black and white). It is a very tedious job, but not much of skill is required as the woods have to be painted only in those colors. I was thankful for my colleagues to help me out with the painting, it would be finished on time.

Another important thing that I learned was that, if I my work has been influenced by someone than it is necessary for me to acknowledge them – otherwise it would be academic dishonesty.

Also, the way art is interpreted is very subjective. There are chances that what I find appealing, someone else might find it saddening – mostly depending on their context. Hence, it is very important for one to keep in mind other cultures and society while expressing, hurting their belief would be an unethical way of expression.

I understand art, I don’t have to think for a long time about what I want to do. If I really want to do it, the idea will already been formed inside me. Everyone has an artist in themselves, I am proud to call myself an artist.