Midway through their year-long effort into creating a 12-piece portfolio, seniors and AP Art students Kaitlyn Billinger, Evvy Kikkert, Haylo Morgan and Joshua Beckett continue their efforts to finish their works by May. As the smallest AP Art class since Mrs. Elena Lopez took over the class, the four students work in the midst of a different art class in second hour. Each piece of their portfolios are centered around the idea of emotions, and what emotions were, or continue to be, important to the painter.
Billinger is six pieces into her portfolio where she’s looking to the past for her emotional inspiration, and making it vibrant with color.
“One of them is the experience of sadness, fear,” she said. “There’s also this aura, a thing that you feel that’s also emotion, like overwhelmed, or spacing out.”
Her strategy for the workload is taking Painting 3 on top of AP Art, and using the other class as more in-school work time for her portfolio. This, however, comes with an additional number of weekly sketchbook assignments for a total of 8 per week. Kikkert, meanwhile, is making plans for better time efficiency this year.
“I plan on being in the art room for tutorial every week, because I definitely need it,” they said. “At this point, I haven’t done a ton of work at home so far, so I need to make a shift towards working at home more.”
Kikkert’s portfolio also looks to the past for inspiration, drawing from emotions brought on from time spent growing up, particularly on their sense of being different from their peers.
“I used to get really emotional about my birthday,” they said. “It’s a lot of excitement built up about something that’s supposed to be special, and then it not turning out.”
Morgan, meanwhile, is seven pieces into a portfolio centered around taking the baker’s approach to a theme. Their goals for the semester include finishing their portfolio, and not getting glitter on the floor. For example, one of their pieces features a cake with two hands reaching to grab it.
“I painted it because it feels like I’m in an active tug of war with how I should feel and how I present myself,” Morgan said.
