I am impatient as can be. I am also not a big fan of making art, I like to look at it and learn about it but do not like making my own art so obviously art class was going to be a struggle for me, but this year I feel I have really grown in art by being more patient and taking my time while working to have maximum precision. We have done multiple projects that involve patience. For example, in November we worked on gouache paintings. We chose an image and then had to paint it. Gouache is similar to watercolor when you add water to it but can also be very opaque when no water is added. The image I chose was of trees and the sky so I decided that to have the sky be light I would add lots of water. So working on my draft I would water down the blue paint to make this light blue and then cover the paper. To get the desired color I would have to layer it which involved waiting for the previous layer to dry. This is where I had a problem because I wouldn’t wait so the color would not build up. Fast forward to March and we are worked on making mobiles. This consisted of us choosing a design, sketching it and getting it approved. My design was a circle with triangles to represent the sun with clouds at the bottom. To make the mobiles we made stencils with paper and then cut out our desired shapes from sheet metal in the color we needed. Now the paintings and the mobile making are not very similar except for the part where you need patience. Cutting out the sheet metal turned out to actually be pretty difficult, I mean it is metal. I had to have the most patience while cutting out the clouds because as you know and see to the right, they are much curved. These curves were difficult to cut because when you needed to turn directions it was difficult to since you cannot bend the metal so I would have to turn the metal over and cut it. This didn’t work well since the stencil was taped to one side and if the tape was removed it would not stick and taking it off ripped the stencil. It was mainly difficult in cutting the curves themselves because I, as I have said, am not patient and want to get it done as soon as possible. With this project I was forced to go slow and cut slowly to keep it nice and curved. I know I have grown because after that we started the altered book project where we take books that would otherwise be thrown away and change them. For mine I am cutting out pictures from different pages which will then be glued onto different spreads. A lot of the images are detailed and have small, important details and I am using an xacto knife to cut them out. I am not good with using xacto knives because it is difficult for me to cut curved lines which most of the images are. I have had to go very slow as to cut off the essential parts of the image and I feel the mobile making really helped with going slower and taking my time. This will also help me with other projects, whether in art or not, because it has helped me to take my time when working things.