Is art without meaning decoration?

Most time we get so hung up on pleasing a teacher or just completing a project to get a grade, that we miss the most essential part of our artworks : the meaning behind it. The predicament that Mr. Sands described in his article is one that I can easily relate. All throughout Art 1 and for a good bit of Art 2 as well, most of the art assignments I did were were done to follow a teacher's directions to learn a new skill. For example when my Art 1 class was introduced to oil pastels, we did assignments where we drew a circle and used oil pastel to add values and make the end result look like a sphere. Although they looked good, the task was tedious and didn't allow for a whole lot of creativity. I have a few oil pastel spheres hanging on my wall, but when I go to college I probably won't take them because they hold no value to me. Another tedious aspect of art is when teachers give you the instructions for an assignment and you have limited options. In my opinion, this doesn't allow for creativity. One such assignment I did was back in art 2, when we had to recreate the style of a famous artists. The artist I ended up with was an abstract artist, and since I didn't relate to this style of art I found the project very limiting. Even though the end result imitated the style, I am not very proud of the piece of art. Art without meaning, is not appealing to the one who has to create it as there is a clear lack of inspiration and worth attached to the goal. This is why i like open ended assignments

art 3:

Done first with prisma colors

For this project I chose to explore the element of color. I wanted the color of the flowers to be bright and vibrant as it stood out against the plain cardboard background. My top choices for the medium were acrylic paint and prisma-colors as they would have a vibrant appearance on the cardboard. I decided to go with prisma-colors because it blends easily, and you keep layering it to get the right values.

Waiting for the background to dry

In the background, I applied layers of blue, turquoise and red water color paint to get a subtle yet interesting background. The water colors didn't over power the flowers and my background didn't look empty anymore!

All done!

 I chose this subject because I wanted to go for a landscape/nature theme, which would be common for everybody. By focusing on color, I could give a unique aspect to common everyday flowers, by letting its natural colors stand out.

 

With filters :)