I have always been interested in Arts and being an introverted person it has always been my outlet to express my imagination,skills and feelings. Arts to me is so much more than simply visual creation. It is a language/form of expression. In lockdown, being stuck inside our houses and not having much to do, art has been an overpowering source of exit and a medium to rely on. However, during the start of the lockdown, I didn’t find much motivation to do arts and simply kept watching movies and series to pass time. So, in order to find motivation and enjoy sketching and doing arts again, me and a group of my friends came together to join our very own school art club. A club to cherish our love for art together and in that way also spend time with people who have the same hobby. 

Here we spend hours discussing a variety of art styles, artists and artistic eras. We channeled our creativity in the wildest ways possible. Every once in a while we work on vivid concepts like, “brown culture or the nature of an eye” or learn a new technique like, “tie-dye or digital art or black out poetry” and create artworks based on the discussions we had as a group.

• LO 1: Identify their own strengths and develop areas for personal growth.

Before I joined this art club I understood my strengths and weaknesses as an artist as well as realized it throughout the journey. Being good with sketching, pencil shading and still life, I used that skill to finish my artworks in a much better way. Apart from that I used my communication and social skills to communicate with my peers and effectively communicate my ideas and thoughts with all to have engaging and controversial discussions. Over the course, I also realized that my thinking skills were quite strong, thus it helped me to put my imagination on paper. However, I lacked skill of drawing from different perspectives which made it harder to actually portray what I was thinking on paper. As for my other weaknesses I was not very well with human sketches so I used this opportunity to develop my skills in human anatomy. Along with this I also realised I wasn’t very good with time management so once again I used an arts club as a medium to challenge myself and managed my time well by keeping a schedule all the time. 

• LO 2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

There were many challenges that came my way, one of the biggest challenges was coordinating with all my peers and managing the sessions. To overcome this we strategically decided to have video calls frequently and plan the sessions beforehand so that no sessions were missed or wasted. Another challenge I came across was to learn new techniques and styles of art like tie dye and blackout poetry. Although I personally am not fond of writing, blackout poetry’s blend with art allowed me to have a fun time and learn something new out of the process. One more trouble that came my way was my lack of patience and perseverance to see the final outcome. During the tie dye I was very excited to try something new and while doing it I was so eager to see the final outcome that I messed up the entire thing which ruined my t-shirt and didn’t give me good results. This helped me realise that as much as I want to know how the final outcome will look like, I also need to enjoy the process and learn as much as possible through it. 

• LO 5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

Since this was a group project, it required a lot of synergy, coordination and teamwork from all the 10-12 members in this club. We sat together every other weekend and planned out sessions so we would not miss or waste any session. Along with this having a group to work together allowed us to learn a variety of art styles like, black out poetry, needle art, tie-dying etc. Since each member was responsible for teaching a unique art style to others. Along with this having a bunch of people together in this team allowed us to share interesting conversations on our artworks, learn from each other and use the feedback to improve our work. 

• LO 7: Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions

we ensured that everyone of us thought of something original while making our artworks and did not plagiarize our work.  

As a whole joining this art club helped me to develop my artistic skills while learning from the team of very skilled peers. It gave me a push to think out of the box and wear my thinking caps to imagine a variety of ideas. In addition to this I learned to be an open minded person as I learned to appreciate their perspective about viewing a situation and acknowledge their work. In a nutshell joining this art club allowed me to grow as a person as well as my artistic skills.