The Art I Did For Fun at Art School

Throughout the course of my time at SCAD, I did a couple projects, sketches, and samples that weren't for a grade. Mostly just quick things to keep my sanity during very hectic classes or to keep my creativity flowing, here are some of those random "for fun" things, from freshman to senior year (mostly excluding breaks):

Freshman Year: 2016-2017

In the summer before I started college, I enjoyed the freedom of creating my own work without worrying about grades or restrictions. I didn't want to stop for the whole summer and lose a bit of that creative muscle before heading into my first real hardcore art education experience.

Foundation studies was fun and really aided me in my future work. Most people complain about it but I really did have fun drawing with charcoal, creating weird collages demonstrating optical mixing, and printing with raw fish (yes that was actually part of one of my assignments). I did, however, miss the creative freedom from that summer.

I did a couple sketches (like this one, shown above) that were mostly done just mindlessly doodling in class but I did spruce them up a bit with old linocuts from high school. This was done in the very being of my first quarter when we didn't really start full blown projects yet.

In Winter Quarter, I took the 3D design class, which I was super excited for throughout the break. The class turned out to a bit of a let down though so, to compensate for my disappointment, I did a 3D project for myself (shown below) based off an assignment my friend had to do for the same class with a different professor.

I also began sketching border designs freshman year, which ended up becoming my favorite thing to sketch. The sketchbook page shown below are some doodles I did before getting my mini grid sketchbook (which you can read more about here).

Sophomore Year: 2017-2018

My second year at SCAD was probably when I had the most time on my hands due to not having the stress that is the huge adjustment of freshman year while also not being in the harder classes yet. I was pretty much done with foundation studies and taking 100-200 level classes in my major.

That fall quarter, I took my second fibers class which focused on structures like knitting, crocheting, and felting. Felting, while not my favorite at first, turned out to be something I really enjoyed once the class ended. The first image below on the left is a sample of Nuno felting with needle felting over it and copper thread embroidery. In the middle image, I tried more embroidery mixed with needle felting on polyester. I continued exploring embellishment on paper (Instagram post below) and even started experimenting with making my own sequins (below on the right).

Sophomore year was also the time I got really into experimenting with a variety of materials, sometimes resulting in some -wacky- stuff. Below are some examples of my wood chip obsession. I played with glueing them, sewing them, painting them, thread wrapping, etc.

On a shopping trip to an antique mall, I came across some old black and white photos and, for some reason, I sewed leather and copper paper fringe to the sides. I think it might've been to bring out the whimsical nature of the photos more, but I don't really remember.

Lastly, I continued to work in my sketchbook, filling it quicker than I ever had before. Below you can flip through some of my favorite pages. Most of these were done while procrastinating the work I was actually supposed to be working on (I always finished my work on time I just got bored with some of my schoolwork sometimes and needed a creative release). This sketchbook was the first time I wasn't so strict about creating. I treated it as a way to let loose, which helped me with my overall attitude towards process work and the idea to consistently work in your sketchbook.

Junior Year: 2018-2019

My third year at school consisted of many long nights at Pepe Hall, as I had finally gotten into the higher level courses in my major. This was the year I took my first screen printing class, followed by the second class the quarter after. I didn't have as much time to do work that wasn't for school but, at the same time, I don't think I needed to as much since I was actually enjoying my schoolwork more. Even so, every once and a while it is nice to get your mind out of class and do something for yourself, which is why I did the sketch below.

In the beginning of fall quarter that year I had the ambitious idea that I would do a whole project for fun so I did some process work for it, shown below. It was supposed to develop into another hand painted dyed scarf collection like the one I had done the quarter before for my dye final. Unfortunately classes got hectic and I wasn't able to do it.

Fortunately though, that winter quarter, I learned how to make screen printed silk scarves in class! Downside of that was I ended up not really liking the outcome of mine which leads me to another project, one that I've talked about before...

These scarf designs, shown below, were done digitally in the beginning of spring quarter that year while I was studying abroad in Lacoste, France. The one in the middle eventually developed into the Egretta Scarf, a process you can learn more about here, and the other two were meant to go with it.

I'll talk more about the rest of my work from this quarter soon in a separate blog post about my study abroad experience.

Senior Year: 2019-2020

All that energy I had creating work for fun in the first three years of school ended up going into my senior thesis work. All throughout the Senior Studio classes, we were supposed to do daily practices which could be anything we wanted it to be, from collaging to drawing to sewing: anything. (You can read more about these here.) If I had a sudden impulse to make something based on a weird idea, I would do that weird idea for my daily practice, not just "for fun". I mean, technically it was still "for fun" as I didn't have to spend a certain amount of time on it. Basically, it was all fun for me still but all of it just went towards an actual grade. Because of this, I didn't do a lot of work outside of these that didn't go towards projects for my thesis. But, again, every once and a while you just gotta do something for yourself to get your head out of things...

During winter break of that year, I had started weaving on a frame loom to make little pouches, so when winter quarter started to get hectic, I began weaving for fun just as a way to turn off my brain for a bit. The picture below on the left shows the weaving I did that quarter and the circles on top of it were gonna be handles, if I wanted to make the weaving into a bag. I also weaved a bit spring quarter, while quarantined due to COVID-19 (below on the right).

I won't go into much else about that last quarter, as I did write about it here. I will, however, share one last thing I did for fun that quarter that I didn't share in that entry:

I did this small painting on a whim when I couldn't fall asleep one night and made a time lapse video of it. It was during a point in my last quarter that I was starting to get really anxious about graduating. Creating was the perfect therapeutic activity, as it's always been for me. No stress. No rhyme or reason. That's why I've always loved art and why I always felt the need to create outside of the need to do so for class.