Having reached end of Part 2, I reflected on the Assessment Criteria Points.
Demonstration of technical and visual skills – materials, techniques, observational skills, visual awareness, design and compositional skills.
This section forced me to carry out more observational drawing, which I believe I am gradually becoming more confident doing, as demonstrated in several of the exercises, such as Architectural Illustration and A Rose By Any Other Name. I am also trying to keep up the habit of regular drawing practice in my free time.
I do feel that my technical skills are steadily improving, when I compare them with the earlier units in Level 1 and I am expanding, albeit rather slowly, the range of tools I am trying out, such as linocuts and Photoshop, which I have utilised in this section.
I continue to build my awareness and knowledge of both current and historical creative practitioners, which feeds into my ideas for my work regarding, for example, concept and design choices.
Quality of outcome – content, application of knowledge, presentation of work in coherent manner, discernment, conceptualisation of thoughts, communication of ideas.
I am fairly confident that I have continued to provide a reasonably fluid and comprehensible insight into my process via my Learning Log throughout this section. I have maintained the same structure for outlining my methods, which provides details of both the work I have undertaken and my thoughts as I proceed.
Demonstration of creativity – imagination, experimentation, invention, development of a personal voice.
I still feel that I am not taking enough risks with experimentation, but I am genuinely trying to rectify this. I believe that although I generally prefer working alone, a couple of the potential downsides of undertaking a distance course (rather than as part of a course based in a college or university) is that I do not have access to as many different media/tools and I have to self motivate myself to try out various methods, rather than it being part of a structured lesson with a tutor.
One thing I am certain of is that I have an extremely vivid imagination! I just need to continue to improve my methods of expressing this visually.
Although I found this section to be very challenging, I feel that it must have helped to develop my personal voice as it was mostly based on observational drawings which are my personal, visual interpretations of various subjects.
Context reflection – research, critical thinking (learning logs and, for second and third level courses, critical reviews and essays).
As stated in the Assignment write-up, I found the research elements of Part 2 to be so enlightening and I am certain this enhanced awareness has consistently fed into my work. I think my approach of carrying out initial research for each exercise/assignment continues to demonstrate a solid way to begin each one.