Arts Award blog (2)- artistic strengths and weaknesses :)

My Artistic Strengths and weaknesses 

strengths 

• drawing from photo references 
• pen and ink drawing
• graphite and charcoal 
• portraiture 
• organic subject matter
• gouache painting 
• coloured pencil, semi realism 

weaknesses

• landscapes
• stylised work 
• textiles
• acrylic paints 
• expressions and emotion in portraits 
• fluidity/ roughness in work

my general artistic strengths are based around the more traditional forms of making artwork rather than the more experimental types that I'd like to become more familiar with. I'm quite good at drawing from photo references, mostly using different forms of dry medium on paper with the occasional wet medium such as oil or gouache paints but I haven't really explored as much with other more 'non-traditional' forms of making art such as textile design and sewing or with 3D sculpture work that I find rather interesting.

I also tend to struggle with putting emotion and expression into a lot of my work, mainly concerning my portraiture as I find it difficult to draw and understand how the features move and sit within certain expressions. In this way, my work tends to mimic most artwork before the 1900s, with a focus on the work being aesthetically pleasing and practical rather than conveying a message or emotion which I'd quite like to be able to do. I'd like to try and get myself 'out of my comfort-zone' so to say and try and experiment with an arts challenge that differs at least decently so from the work I have done so far.

I have the most experience with graphite and charcoal mediums, coloured pencils as well as pens and inks as they've been my medium of choice for a while now, since I finished my GCSE in fine art due to their ease of use for me and lack of other equipment and preparation needed to use them (when compared with mediums such as oil paints). 

Overall, I think that my best path forward would be to attempt to learn a new medium or technique that I'm not as comfortable with and don't have as much experience with such as working in 3D or with textile techniques that I haven't used before.