I’ve learned a lot so far in STEM Foundations. A lot of projects are surprisingly connected to STEM Foundations. Through all of the stuff we learned and endeavors we did with STEM Foundations, I think I grew in Creativity. I think so because of how much more open I am. In the beginning of the year, I was less original and usually just did the same thing for a while in terms of work. Now, I have grown to be much more thinking and original for different ideas to do work or new ways to do work. I have artifacts to show my growth.

 

My first artifact to show my growth is my final draft of the Science Poster Project. The Science Poster Project was a project where we had to make a poster of a rule we were supposed to follow during experiments. I got the rule “Do not touch any sharp or broken materials/contact teacher if there are broken or sharp materials”. Some classroom content seen in this piece is Collage. Collage is cutting out materials and pasting them onto paper. In order to show layers, the materials must be glued onto each other. Collage is a cool way to show artwork because even though it is hard to use, it gives a look of having a “close up”(having the subject, or thing that’s most important, on the page take a large part of the page to make it look closer to you) perspective with its layers, so it looks like it’s closer to you than in Two-dimensional. This can be seen in the eyes of the people because since the eyes are layered on top of the rest of the body, their elevation on the paper makes you look like the closest thing near you. This shows growth for me in Creativity because it made me get used to a new medium (new art style). We were all required to use Collage. Usually, I draw with pencil or marker, so using a completely different style was really difficult for me. But, eventually I got better and better, and now I’m at least slightly good with the medium. So, I grew in Creativity for trying new ideas.

 

Another artifact to show my growth is my Exploring Composition Drawings. These include the drawings where I used different mediums to create a picture in order to help me learn more about strategies to incorporate in our Storybook, with strategies such as dynamic and static lines (lines that are diagonal or parallel), hues (which are a certain group of colors in the color wheel) and perspective (how far away or close something looks). These were slightly apart of the Storybook Project, but not enough to count. These drawings main goal was to help us remember the different strategies that we learned about in class to incorporate them into our Storybook. Some Classroom Content seen in this piece is Composition. Composition is the way that objects on a page are shown in comparison to the space on the page. There are a lot of compositions. There is Close Up, Medium Angle (where the subject takes at least half of the page) and Wide Angle (where the subject is small compared to the space). You can see this in the picture of pages #36-37 of my STEM Foundations Notebook. The only Composition you don’t want to have is Kindergarten Composition, where the characters stay on the far edge of the ground, and the sky acts as an object above them. This makes the pictures feel unrealistic or badly crafted. This shows growth for me in Creativity because it gave me new ways to visualize drawings. At first, I only knew basic drawing skills and symbolism in drawing. But now, I learned how the space and composition matters in the piece. Now, I can make my piece much stronger and convey the feeling that I wanted it to convey. So, I grew in Creativity by incorporating new ideas.

 

My last artifact to show my growth is the Final Draft of my Storybook. The Storybook Project was a project where we made books for children in order to teach them about Wellness. For my Storybook Project, I was assigned to make a book about Conflict Resolution to help children deal with common problems that they faced, like lying or taking things. We had to do a lot of drafts for a lot of stuff in our Storybook Project, but eventually, it all summed up to good quality. Some Classroom Content that can be seen in this piece is Shading. Shading is making parts of a piece of artwork look darker in order to incorporate shadow. Usually, shading is put in the back to show more emphasis on the characters. Shading is also used to make characters look more dark or scared, with usually a close-up on the face to show their emotions better. You can see this as the second picture in the book, the part where the book says, “What did he just do?!” A specific example of a strategy for Shading is crosshatching. In crosshatching, you make a bunch of small lines down your drawing. When you use a tortillion to smudge the lines, it creates an illusion of it getting darker. The more lines you have means the more it will be smudged, and therefore more it will be darker.  This shows growth for me in Creativity because we had to make most of the ideas ourselves. We only had basic guidelines to write or draw what we wanted, so we could make our story different than the rest and make our idea really unique. So, I grew in Creativity by making my work unique.

 

All of this growth in Creativity is good for me, right now and in the future. Creativity is important in the future because you always want to make your work unique and original than other people’s work. Especially because of how much we care about Creativity at STEM, and how all teachers expect it in all of our work. To continue growth in this subject, I will have to brainstorm more and think of more new ideas. Overall, I really like how much I grew in Creativity.