Setting and Achieving Artistic Goals

As the year closes with the end of another semester, another phase of life shifts before the final year of highschool and more open variety of what to do for the future. As mentioned before many times, there is more to being a good artist than just art skills; various life skills such as socializing and connecting, planning for the future is important as well. Be sure to plan realistically that would work for your current living situation and possible future living situation as well, along with extra caution in case unexpected events may damage it. Along with that, you should take action to work towards your goals as well, such as looking into what art schools to attend, scholarships to apply for, and ask teachers for help with preparing after highschool. The future can be intimidating, but with setting realistic goals and preparing well enough, there are better chances to achieve them and get better.

Connections with Other Artists

As reiterated before, art and becoming a better artist aren’t just about improving your art skills. Being a good person with socializing and connecting with other artists is just as important, and helps both with art skills and personal improvement as a person and perspective. As you make more friends with other artists, it’s best to befriend various people with different interests and mediums, as you can learn even more advice from different sources to incorporate with your art and drawing methods learning from others. Along with that, with more connections you have, there are better chances to meet even more people in studios, jobs, and different areas of professionalism that could even recommend you through those connections as well. With both socialization and heeding advice, improving your art can go farther than just working independently!

Emotions With Art

Emotions are powerful and deeply influential with art in many ways. In expression through the medium of art, the emotions of the artist can be painted through a canvas, scratched into the paper, chipped into the marble stone, and splattered and bled out through a mass of colors. Even a subject matter as mundane as a portrait can evolve to depict the fear, the anger, or the joy in a youth, to an aging individual, to the worn elderly. The scenery of a beach could be depicted as a relaxing mundane vacation, a festive party in the tropical world, or tsunamis of tornadoes and storms in the howling hellscape of blue aquatic torrents of foaming flame. Sometimes the frames of the art are a window into a captured moment in history of great emotional turmoil and impact, sometimes art is the window into the artist’s personal emotions and psyche for a glimpse into their personal world. Emotional pieces have shown such power through strong colors, bold action, or the silent aura of emotions subtly echoing through the frames into the void. With art, emotions have always been the beginning and the end.

Organizing Your Art

For art, it’s not just about learning to improve your skills, but to organize your supplies, artwork, and files as well. Creating art is one thing, but ensuring that they’re neatly saved and won’t risk getting lost or ruining each other in clutter is another essential skill as well. With traditional artwork, the different methods to preserve your art can vary depending on your medium. Such as sketches on paper, which can be laminated or put in plastic sliding sheets to prevent waste and water to damage the paper and smear the pen and pencil marks. Other mediums such as paintings can be framed and covered as well. It’s also recommended to scan or take high quality photos of your traditional artwork, just to be able to save a digital copy on hand if the original is ever tampered with somehow. For digital mediums, it’s recommended to have separate files specifically for art, art references, and so on to differentiate your art between any other files you have in the computer. Naming them is important too, and is recommended to have a short name that’s easy to remember, along with a date to know the time you drew it to compare to later pieces to see improvement. Having specific categories is another good idea too, to allow easy navigation and accessibility to find certain files as requested, such as trying to find art references or portfolio pieces specifically. With organization, there’s less hassle to find and try to fix any art, and more convenience to focus on art and learn other essential life skills!

Professional Art Portfolio Tips

With a huge emphasis on artistic skills, it’s also essential to remember that connections and a good portfolio are important for being hired or reviewed for a potential art career too! Especially if you produce a lot of art, it’s best to collect your best work to have in a convenient way to present, especially on hand at a moment’s notice in case there are any surprise meetings with potential employers. With portfolio websites, there are many free sites online such as wordpress, wixsite, weebly, and more! It’s best to collect well taken pictures of your work (if done traditionally) or render digital work in high quality to make more crystal clear. It’s also wise to categorize and group different types of art for specific mediums, years, and indication if they’re personal work or work from hired employers or commissioners. Keeping a professional profile is ideal as well, such as an appropriate username, contact information, and a consistent username for all or most of your social media. That way, with both a professional, easy to recognize, and consistent brand on various platforms, it’s more convenient to gain contact from any source, and have a wider range of exposure to show your best work to everyone!

Art Conveying Life Lessons Through Stories

As with art, an important point for art is to not only depict a scene or story, but to convey themes and lessons that the artist feels like are important and should be taught. A manga series, Mob Psycho 100, is an interesting story about psychic powers and paranormal experiences with spirits, and has major themes about emotions, connections, various types of conflicts, and kindness conveyed through the story. Mob Psycho 100 premises with Shigeo “Mob” Kageyama, a stoic esper with psychic powers under the teachings of his mentor Reigen, who’s actually a con man pretending to be a powerful esper like him. In this world, espers/psychics have supernatural powers that are heavily rooted in their emotions. For Mob, he looks emotionally stoic on the outside, and actually wants to focus on other aspects of his life “being a normal person” instead of actually improving his powers. As the story progresses and conflicts with other spirits and enemy psychics become more drastic, it is revealed that Mob is actually an emotional iceberg who bottles up his emotions, and thus his powers, out of fear of and hurting people with his powers due to severe trauma related to them. However, he makes friends with many people, both normal humans and espers alike, and learns valuable life lessons about improving himself, allowing himself to be more expressive, and cope better with his emotions and psychic powers throughout the story.

In this story, the main character introduced is Mob, who is a young teenager with psychic powers. On the surface, he’s reticent and stoic with his emotions and expressing himself. Along with that, despite the fact he’s one of the most powerful espers with advanced powers, Mob actually wants to live a “normal life” like everyone else without powers, and strives to be normal and fit in. Upon closer inspection, he’s actually an in depth character who is revealed to actually suppress his emotions and powers due to his fear of hurting people with them, especially after a traumatic incident at a young age. Though he means well, his methods of coping with the trauma and his emotions and powers are unhealthy, though he gradually matures and learns to handle them more healthily throughout the story.

As Mob Psycho 100 is a manga series, the story has several arcs and various story points that each have unique conflicts between Mob and spirits, espers, and evil organizations. However, all the arcs, though momentary experiences, actually contribute to one major conflict that spans the entire plot; Mob’s conflict with himself with his powers and emotions. As stated before, Mob is an emotional iceberg due to him bottling up his emotions and expressing himself and using his psychic powers a little as possible. It’s an unhealthy coping mechanism though, and results in emotional meltdowns that occur when his emotions reach their peak to the point he can no longer suppress them, which explode in a great burst of psychic power. Due to the fact Mob has hurt a family member in a traumatic situation at a younger age, he feared continuing to hurt people with his powers and emotions, and thus put emotional shackles on himself to restrain himself. In the series though, Mob joins several school clubs, befriends many people, both with and without powers, and finally matures to accept his emotions and powers as a part of himself that shouldn’t be suppressed, an instead healthily expressed and embraced.

Compared to Catcher In The Rye, Mob and Holden both have self-loathe in a way, but their methods of handling their self-loathing and emotions starkly contrast with their external behavior and interactions with others, especially with projecting onto others. In Mob’s case, he strives to have positive connections with other people and sees the best in everyone he meets, even to villains that end up befriending him. Along with that, Mob projects his feelings of loneliness and struggle with emotions improving to be a better person onto other psychic espers, and relates to them with the criticism he has about himself. Holdon, on the other hand, hypocritically criticizes other people harshly and refuses to acknowledge that he’s projecting his own flaws onto them. To add to his negative contrast, he prefers to isolate himself and avoid others, and always has negative interactions with people he doesn’t even like in the first place, leading to strained relationships and clashes on both sides.

Mob Psycho 100 premises as a paranormal story about ghosts and espers, but is truly about human struggles with emotions, relationships, and self-improvement to be a better person, along with the emphasis of refusing to be violent and instead be kind and help others instead of fighting. The manga is very interesting with expanding on the connections between “psychic powers” and emotions, and subverts the trope of how Mob’s bursts of powerful psychic explosions aren’t an impressive flashy power, but instead a tragic look into his trauma and struggles suppressing his emotions. It also emphasizes how psychic powers aren’t actually the most powerful thing in the world, but subverts it depicting is as any other trait or skill in an average life, and that the strongest thing is actually relationships and connections with people. While there are many stories that are in a pessimistic tone, Mob Psycho 100 stands out with showing painful and realistic emotional struggles, but overall maintaining a healthy positive tone. I personally rate this 10/10, and heavily recommend reading and watching this series to anyone.

The Catcher of the Rye Chapter Critique

In the beginning of the chapter, Holden moves to Ossenberg Hall and proceeds to open and read Out of Africa while donning a red hunting hat he bought recently. He contemplates the book, stating that his initially expectations of thinking it would “stink” were disproven as he read and became more invested in it, but his reading is interrupted when one of his next-dorm neighbors enters the room. The neighboring student is introduced as Ackley, and Holden describes him in a negative light focusing on his bad hygiene, manners, pimply skin, and rude personality, along with looking like he lacks friends. As Ackley continues to spend time in Holden’s room, he pesters him with questions, touches stuff around the room, and clips his nails on top of the table, all while ignoring Holden’s protests. However, Holden’s roommate, Stratlader, who’s also described to be more handsome and popular, enters the room, Holden leaves due to his hatred of him.

Ackley is one of the two characters introduced in this chapter, and already develops a negative image with his description and behavior. From his introduction alone, he’s described to have terrible habits such as never brushing his teeth, touching other people’s belongings, and dealing with his pimply face. He’s shown to have a negative relationship with people around him too, as he ignores Holden’s protests of him being in the room and conversation with him, along with leaving the room the moment Stratlader enters. In general, he’s also describe to be lonely as he was the only other person not at the game and “hardly went anywhere.” There is potential to his personality and behavior being better though, as Holden has an unreliable narrative in the story where the details of the plot are manipulated by his personal emotions and perception on other people.

Early on in the story, a conflict is shown with how Holden and Ackley dislike each other and have a negative interaction in this chapter. They have rude behavior and responses towards each other, along with disrespecting each other’s wishes, such as Holden wanting Ackley to leave the room. As this chapter shows a single small interaction between them, it doesn’t seem to be an important conflict relevant to the overall plot or show Ackley would be some kind of antagonist against Holden in the story. So far, there aren’t any motivations or obstacles between them or the plot that motivate the conflict other than their personalities and behaviors bothering each other. However, their conflict is still important because it highlights Holden’s pessimistic personality and narrative of others, even though they may share the same “negative” traits such as him, like both him and Ackley being lonely people without much friends at their school.

Comparing Ackley and Stradlater was one example of a comparison in this chapter; Holden points out how they strongly differ with their personality, behavior, and appearances. In Holden’s perspective, Ackley has many negative traits, having poor hygiene with an unhealthy appearance, rude behavior and actions towards others, and lack of friends. On the other hand, Holden states that Stradlater is athletic and is more physically healthy and “attractive”, along with having a more cool and positive personality and interactions with others, along with how he states that he’s a popular kid at school.

This was an interesting chapter seeing Holden’s relationship with peers around him, especially with how they interact with him and show their connections. It’s noticeable that Holden has a lot of tense relationships usually on the negative side, but it’s also important to know that Holden himself has an extremely pessimistic outlook on life and other people. He usually talks and focuses only on traits he perceives as negative, and overlooks any positive traits the person may have, especially because of his personal emotions warping his narrative to be unreliable throughout the story. That being said, it’s interesting to see the different people that appear in Holden’s life, and see how they’re perceived in his perspective and personally guess on Holden’s accuracy of how he judges them. For this chapter, I’d rate it a 9/10.

Art is Subjective

There are different mediums of art, artistic interpretations, and overall a wide range of depth and expression that art can convey. There is no “good” and “bad” art that can be measured like a ruler, as art can have strengths and flaws in different aspects, such as shading, expression, style, anatomy, and so on. One artist can draw people with on point anatomy and draw them in an appealing style, but it can also be severely lacking in expression, such as crying. Maybe they can draw beautiful faces, but can’t draw in depth expressions because of their art style restricting them and trying to keep the face looking beautiful despite drawing expressions that are considered “ugly” and more emotive the “less beautiful” they’re drawn. To contrast, an artist may have a very simplistic art style and draw plainly, if not in a more “immature” child-like drawing style. However, they’re not restricted by the artistic skills and impulse to draw “pretty” looking art, and allow themselves to draw “uglier”, and thus, more expressive and powerful emotions in their subjects. While art can easily be interpreted and seen on the surface, it’s also important to see beyond that and into the depths of any details it has or is lacking in.

Wisdom Tug-of-War

Ever since I was a young kid, my parents always told me to work on grades for a better future. I only spent my free time studying, reading books, and trying to achieve high grades since I started elementary school. I felt like I had to do everything my parents wanted not only for their approval, but for basic respect as I only knew at the time making them happy was to get good grades and listen to them about everything.

However, my opinions changed later on around middle school when I started to draw more. Whenever I was exhausted or wanted to take a quick break, I started off doodling small things on my homework and notes, and gradually improved my skill as I kept drawing more on my homework over time. Then, I actually wanted to draw more and become more independent being an artist, not just a scholar listening to instructions from other people.

To keep me on the “right path”, my parents initially discouraged me from drawing on my homework and notes, usually making me change my papers or focus on other curriculums instead of being able to draw. Their efforts were frustrating to put up with, and their effort to keep me on the path to only do what they wanted for academics made me more determined to strive as an artist.

In the end, with approval from other people and teachers around me, my parents finally saw how much art meant to me, especially as a gateway to freedom and personal achievements apart from academics, and grew more accepting of me being an artist. Ever since that point, I’ve been drawing more and honing my skills over time to build a portfolio to show to others.

I slowly realized that school wasn’t, and shouldn’t, be everything a person should put their value and complete time and effort on. Only forcing people to follow other’s instructions to life and an entire lifestyle can be damaging and harmful to the person’s physical and mental health. Thus, I learned that it’s more important for a person to be allowed to be independent and have specialties and work on their own talents and skills that make them unique, and definitely something they enjoy on their own.

One important aspect of art is the colors, which is vital to compose a final piece perfectly and catch people’s eyes. There are many ways to color art, especially to experiment with different palettes, matching colors, and contrasting colors! One important thing to know is the subject matter being painted, and if the colors would suit the tone of the artwork. Bright hues are more positive and more commonly used to evoke emotions such as happiness, while darker hues are negatively and commonly used to evoke emotions of sadness or fear. Symbolic colors work well for this too and can even depend on the subject, such as the color red symbolizing royalty through luxurious shades in a king’s attire, or death through splashes of blood. Some colors can match as well, like coloring with blue and green, which are cool colors! However, contrasting colors, such as red and blue, can work, as long as you have one of the opposite colors be less shown like a trim, which can help reduce eye strain. There are no limitations to coloring art, the possibilities of improving art are endless!