My first week of the senior project has been the experience that I wanted it to be. I am finding that the work that I have put into this painting has paid off and although there have been difficult moments in regard to planning, that was my intention from the start. I always wanted to challenge my process of making art and I think that I have successfully done that thus far. Of course, my dreams of this project would be for it to end up perfect and exactly the way I imagined but I think the wonderful thing of constantly being able to paint is also immersing myself in a medium and tempering my expectations because of that. Coming into contact with oil paint and the difficulty of brushes and cleaning and mixing colors and color theory will always be a road bump in execution but being reminded of it helps when sometimes I set unrealistic goals.

I have discovered that when I apply myself I can often achieve impressive results. Impressive on my scale would be making progress to an extent that I have never done before. I have surprised myself that I can work so deliberately when engaging with different circumstances I have never been in before. I have always painted in a room full of others and with a teacher walking and live models. But this proved to be very different but I would say not any less fulfilling.  I have found that when throwing myself into this experience I knew it was gonna be difficult but being able to spend hours without time limits to really figure out the details and inner workings of a project that I have shaped has allowed for copious amounts of improved skill. These past weeks have made me slow down and really take a moment. In the first two days, I had done so much 

work on my painting and once I stopped and took a step back I was able to apply more cautious thought to my mark-making and decision making. What had also helped was having the art meeting with James and several other students. These meetings consisted of art critiques and conversations about art development. Staring at a painting for so long can often distort some aspects 

that although clear to others have become murky and similar to me. One of those major points was the proportioning of certain areas and the hesitation to paint. Many gave pointers that I wrote down about how an arm or stomach or face could be wrong even when you check it multiple times. James following a meeting questioned why I had fleshed out so much of the figure in drawing. This question prompted me to think carefully about why I did that and evidently caused me the next day to start painting. I hadn’t even realized that I had become so focused on the drawing that I forgot that paintworks in ways that can complicate the underdrawing. In all, I am super happy with the direction I’m working in and the progress I have made.