I would consider the first week of my senior project to be successful. Bearing in mind that I changed my project on Thursday the 31st and only got it finalized on Monday the 4th. I then spent a good portion of Wednesday the 6th and Friday the 8th driving. Outside of these hurdles, I was able to be very productive and get a great start on figure drawing, and begin to work on some shading, and landscape work. Going into an art project, it’s hard to know how something will work out, but I’m proud of my results and notes so far. One of the things I expected coming into my project was to start all my interests at the same level and work equally on all of them – instead, I’ve focused on the three things above. I originally thought that I could focus on all of them simultaneously and get the fundamentals that way. But after looking through my courses, I found my figure course was perfect for building the fundamental concepts. I’ve discovered a lot of technical ideas, but I’ve learned that I haven’t taken notes on my progress on landscape by John Berger and Art in Time a World History. Both books are equally interesting, and both are entirely different from each other. My expectations, moving forward, shifted, but I was expecting them too. My biggest expectation shift was something I touched on earlier about general learning compared to spending all my time on one concept. My other ones are the number of charcoal pencils I’ll need. I expected I would only need three, or at least that is all I got, but I was halfway through my second pencil five days in. In part, I switched to working on a landscape at the end of the first week because I could use graphite pencils for it. This is in part a special way I sharpen my pencil using a blade and sandpaper that often results in broken charcoal, but it’s also connected to the softness of the material – or at how fast it comes off. In reflection of the first week, I think I need to work on things I’m looking forward to doing next year: getting a daily routine, starting my hiking, and starting posture drawing or shading/still bodies. A daily routine is something that was recommended by one of my digital teachers. It’s good to have a daily drawing challenge that gets some basic ideas flowing and technically wakes up your hand before diving into new concepts. Next week, I’ll complete some more landscape work inside the house – especially on trees and streams – and hike in upstate NYC while drawing what I see. Next week, I also want to get to a new concept before I go too far into posture. I haven’t decided if I’ll do shading or portrait work because they’re both interesting to me and will be useful for developing drawing skills. I also have the rest of my bibliography books arriving which – after I read them – will allow me to extend my bibliography.