Visual arts has always been something I look up to, and something which helps me explore my inner creative self. However, I had to leave Visual arts as a subject for the past 2 years, or as my batch mates say I gave up on arts, due to assignments and other school work.
The moment I heard about CAS, I just got the perfect opportunity to get my creative self working for something I love doing. For those reasons, I thought of taking making paints from scratch as an experience.
In this project I went out for a hunt in nature, the experience of its freshness and beauty gave me inspiration for making paints from common pigments available with mother nature, such as flowers, soil, charcoal, soft rocks, etc. Once the pigments are collected I mixed them with chemical-free liquids, followed by a satisfying process of mixing the paints.
LO 1: Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth
The experience was so therapeutic, it helped me to identify the inner creative self which was lost somewhere. I was able to identify art and painting as my own strengths, which are also something that helped me to complete this project and understand what works the best, where recognizing my weaknesses in identifying pigments would help me to learn and do a better job next time.
LO 2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process
The biggest challenge over this experience was to hunt for pigments and predict which color they may result in and will even sustain their color or not. This was the biggest challenge as I didn’t know how certain elements would behave and whether they would give me a good color or not, as I hadn’t done anything such as this before. However, tackling this challenge was more fun than it looked as I had to experiment with different elements for one color and get results. But during this experience, I definitely developed new hunting skills as I got to see closely the elements of mother nature and find the correct pigment for further process. In addition, I also developed skills of how to present my experience as I had recorded each and every step and posted it on my social media handle, so I could show people the work I have done.
LO 4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences
The whole process of paint making needed hours of work and demanded patience to complete, from finding pigments to crushing them into fine powder to mixing them into rich and thick paint. Hence, patience and commitment to the project were the key here, to be committed and give this project time and be open to even experiencing failures and overcoming them. While it was hard to show commitment and perseverance because with this project I also had other school stuff to focus upon and this was taking a long time, but this was at last completed.
Overall, this project provided me an opportunity to do the art I had left behind and also helped me to develop skills such as hunting and social media handling. Despite the challenges faced I showed commitment and perseverance and enjoyed this therapeutic experience.
