​When I work with any form of art, I am reminded that art is not what I think I know, but what I know I see. I begin a piece by saying to myself ‘you are not an artist’. By saying this to myself first, no matter what the finish product maybe, I am content with it because I am not an artist, therefore it I can be filled with happiness and obtain a sense of equality when my work is placed side by side with someone who actually is an artist. Art does not come easy for me. It’s almost as though art should be classified as an unofficial emotion. This being because art is what you feel, what you depict when you view a painting, or look at the world; it’s your spirit. And all these I lack.

  In fact, my artwork doesn’t contain any of the qualities one would qualify as being art. There is no skill, no talent, no emotion, no feeling yet what it lacks in those departments; it’s generously made up in effort. I cannot allow myself to do something I haven’t done in a long time, but I could more than a courteous amount of effort into trying, and that is what my artwork is a reflection of: enterprise.

  For my quarter two benchmark, I struggled with what exactly I wanted to accomplish, and what I would be proud to show the world. Something I could own up to, and put my name on. However, this wasn’t easy. I started drawing sketches of different objects that would be placed before at that period of time. This didn’t work. My interpretation of copying what I thought I saw, was confused with copying what I knew should be there. And with each attempted trial, I thought I had failed.

  Given everything I learned about art thus far, I figured I needed to start with something more basic. Something that truly had to do with sight, or something that could replicate my emotions even if they weren’t truly there; for this would be my artwork. So I picked up 3 colors.

Now, the color wheel is not complex. It’s simply an organization of color hues around a circle, showing relationships between colors considered to be primary colors, secondary colors, complementary colors, etc. The wheel can show more, and more mixtures of colors, without every truly defining what color is.  This was my artwork. Knowing that I could replicate something that no one else could define but myself because it was the way I saw it, made me anxious.

And from this, I created my vision of what I believed to the color wheel. I mixed colors to create other colors, and mixed those colors to try and create new colors. I knew my piece was finished when I started to get the sense of frustration. Because I was becoming overwhelmed with the idea of completing my color wheel, I knew I was beginning to think too hard. And because I was able to tap into an emotion, I knew I had accomplished something. When my work is going well, I am filled with a sense of happiness, and when I try to go beyond what I believe to be all of my ability, I know it is time to stop. Art is not my passion, but it is something I am trying to “relearn”. When people see my work; I'd like them to realize that I am not an artist

Vichhay Roeung

Artist Statement

There were many success and failures during this quarter. What this quarter focused on was life and perspective form of art. From my experience this quarter I would have to say it was a challenging and difficult process, as I was introduced to new method of art such as charcoal and real life perspective. Even though using charcoal was like using a crayon, the difference was its ability to show the color and shading. While real life perspective, there were many details in which it was difficult to capture or even show on paper.  

Drawing from real life, was the most challenging process during this whole quarter. As there were always more then just one layer of shade or the image in which I could see, the viewpoints and the details of the object. At first drawing from real life perspective such as my hand was easy but when it came to shading or transparent objects, I couldn’t seem to capture the exact details of the object. The clear bottle small project, I believe was the first challenge in further advancing my real life perspective skills.

My first clear bottle small drawing was that of a glass jug. The difficult part of that project would be my ability to capture the glass like texture of the drawing. Where it looks like the glass was bending and reflects part of the lights. It wasn’t until I worked on the large clear bottle, when I noticed my improvements in this type of skill. Using charcoal, I have to say that was the most successful part of this experience. Mainly because I was able to improve in art, using two skills I wasn’t familiar with, which in the end I believed it was a beautiful piece of art. Which that was one of the art piece that I am proud of and thought was a success.

  For each week there was a new assignment. From real life perspective and charcoal small to real life perspective and charcoal large. Which every project that was assigned during that week must be finished in two class periods, mainly because we only had art twice a week. So most of the projects were to be done on our own time, during the snow, and even when we don’t have the class. I feel that I could get the art done easily and well during class, while at home the motivation for it is not much. Thus, large projects should take a little longer, while there should be art that could be finished in one class period.

  Finally for the menu project where we had to choose a category, I choose to work on the genre focus. Where I had to create two inspired piece of art from my genre. I focused on fantasy art as my genre, as fantasy to me is a colorful and playful art such as a child’s book. Using origami to express myself, I created two scenes. One being a vase filled with origami pastel stars as the soil and lots of origami flowers consisting of a tissue rose and paper lily. The second one features two-origami crane interacting with each other around a pile of food, hearts, and stars. Which these are my inspirations from fantasy art, which combines my imagery of fantasy and my love of origami.