January 11: Discuss your best and worst art experiences

My best experience in art that I remember happened a little later than elementary school. I was in tenth grade and had a new teacher for the first time and she was an amazing influence on me. It is hard to pinpoint just one experience as the best because she opened me up to so many great experiences in the three years I had classes with her so I guess I will go with one of the first projects that ended up getting through to me. I don't remember the exact guidelines but it involved choosing a song and creating a piece that embodied it. Our only restriction was we all had to ensure it fit on the piece of paper she gave us. I choose the song "99 Red Balloons" because at the time my friend and I were obsessed with it, although I knew very little about the song beyond thinking it had something to do with War. I struggled with the project at first in researching the song and its lyrics and then with how I wanted to use it. I had an idea and I wanted to draw it in shades of black and grey with only the balloons in color but none of my sketches worked the way I wanted. My teacher Ms.L stepped in and worked with me. Ms. L not only helped me learn some new and very important skills while we worked on this project(such as how much a little shading can help!) but she introduced me to a broader range of materials than just pencil and paint. The final project was something I hadn't thought I was capable of and couldn't have imagined when i started out. It made me proud that I had actually drawn something that looked good! This experience is so memorable because it really helped me grow. I had never had the opportunity to learn skills for drawing or painting or just actually any art skills because it was not focused on in my schools, however this experience taught me I could create and that I could learn the skills to draw or paint beyond finger paintings and stick men. It was my first time creating something I could actually call art and the growth and learning as well as the pride I felt when I completed it are what made it so good and so memorable!

As for a negative experience thats harder. I think it would have to be more general as nothing specific comes to mind. probably just the general lack of art education I had access to until high school. I was never taught about art and so I didn't think it was something I could learn, I kind of believed that you either could draw or you couldn't, you were either good at art or you weren't. I think earlier exposure to the actual creation of art would have made the arts on a whole more accessible. I guess my worst experience is that I barely had any experience, heck I barely even crafted in school.