My Past Art Projects: Rated
My own worst critic is indeed myself (please don’t take that as a challenge).
What follows is a non-exhaustive list of some of the art projects that I’ve worked on in the past. I will be brutally honest and rate them 1–10, along with an explanation as to why I like or dislike them. Feel free to laugh and point, just not in person.
#1: A product of me being chronically online
Starting off relatively positive, this first piece was made using a paint pen and acrylic paint on glass. Because I’m Gen Z and always on my dang phone, I saw this trend online where people would paint their favorite anime characters using the glass from frames. I thought it was a great idea, and decided to try it myself. Typical me, I bought the supplies and let them sit for probably a good year. Finally however, I felt motivated enough one random day, and started painting. I printed out a picture of Yona from the anime Yona of the Dawn (highly recommend), traced it on the glass with the black paint pen, and also used the picture to color match. While I am a fan of the anime, I ended up giving it to my sister for her birthday, as she is a much bigger anime fan than me.
To be honest, I like how it turned out. However, I wish I could’ve used a thinner brush for her hair’s highlights, as well as used less of the paint pen for outlines. Without the pen, it’s harder to tell where the next color needs to begin, but it looks better. For example, the shadow by her nose looks more seamless than the shadow on her neck. Overall, I like it, but it could be better.
Rating: 6.5/10
#2: Accidentally #pride?
Number 2 is a watercolor painting on watercolor paper with outline work in fine-tip Sharpie. This was made to be part of a birthday present for one of my best friends. We have a history of gifting art to each other, so this was not out of the ordinary. This piece was made and titled in reference to our childhood together, when our favorite activity was to swing on her swing set and sing songs from Barbie movies until it was dark outside. So, it gets points for nostalgia.
It gets points taken away for creativity and originality because if you look up “two girls drawing”, something very similar to this will come up, because I used those as inspiration. I did personalize a couple details, but it’s very obviously similar, so points get deducted for that. Another thing I dislike about it is that the girl on the left (who is supposed to be me) looks taller than the girl on the right, which is not canon, but I was too lazy to fix it. Our shoes also look a little weird, which I rationalized was to match the art style, but we’re being 100% honest here, so points get deducted for that as well.
One thing that I realized as I was planning this post, is that the rainbow background could imply that we’re a wlw couple. Which, nothing wrong with that, but that was not the intent. I’m not deducting points for that, but I think it’s funny.
Rating: 6.8/10
#3: Cursed dog
Surprise, surprise, this next one was also for someone’s birthday. A friend of my family used to have a dog named Riley, but sadly he passed away, and so for the family friend’s birthday, I thought it could be nice to memorialize Riley on canvas in acrylic paint. The thing is, I was a bit ambitious.
I’m somewhat comfortable painting in black and white, and Riley was a greying black lab, so I was confident going into the painting. I sketched it out and even tried to color match the paint with the colors in the reference photo. As you can see below, it started okay then ended up looking a bit off.
I’m proud of the eyes and even the highlights on Riley’s coat, but somehow his mouth and muzzle are far too wide looking. By the time I finished painting, however, I had already put at least 6 hours into it, and I was tired. So unfortunately, I gave the family friend the finished product. It is currently hanging in his office, but that’s because he’s too nice to tell me it sucks.
Rating: 4.5/10
#4: Museum worthy?
This last one is ink on handmade paper. I made this for an assignment in freshman year Intro to Printmaking, a core class. The assignment was to create a piece based on some sort of inequity or injustice. I decided to base my piece around the injustice and inequity that Black women face in the American healthcare systems because it’s an important issue that I feel like isn’t talked about enough.
Going back to the piece though, I’d say points should be deducted for lack of originality, as I was inspired by a photo that a news article used in its header. I would also say points should be deducted for printing the ink lopsided on the page, for a lack of clean edges around the perimeter of the print, and the red ink bleeding into the white. Of course, in my art critique, I explained all these imperfections using witty metaphors, but in the nature of rating, it’s obviously far from being perfectly executed.
I will say though, it reminds me of a piece that I might see in a museum, in the modern art wing. It seems like the kind of piece where I might say, “I could totally do that”, and then of course I never do it. Except I did! But it’s not in a museum…
Rating: 7/10
That’s all for now. This topic is actually incredibly humorous to me, but at this point you may be bored of my opinion on my own art, so I’ll save the others that I have for later.
If you got this far, thank you. Feel free to roast my art but also don’t be too harsh please — I’m just a girl.
