Strengths and Weaknesses

What are they?:

• Strengths:

A strength is a characteristic or skill someone has that puts them at an advantage over others when it comes to performing certain tasks.

• Weakness

A weakness is a certain characteristic or subject that puts you at a disadvantage when it comes to performing certain tasks.

Evaluation of my strengths and weaknesses:

Strengths:

What professional qualities do I have?:

I have a range of skills and strengths I have gained overtime throughout different experiences that could help me in a professional setting, whether that be work I do now in class or work in the near future. 

A skill that I have gained through doing projects (Coursework in particular) is working towards a set deadline, the course I am doing now has taught me discipline and skill in how to work towards a set deadline and make the most of my time. At first I would just spend all my time panicking about the date rather than spending my time working towards making the final product. Deadlines can be made if you manage your time well, as you do more projects that have deadlines your work flow will naturally speed up, so you begin to create good quality work in much less time. During my first year FMP (Final major project) I was doing digital art everyday, the more and more I worked, the quicker I became at making good quality work. 

Through doing commission work online I have learnt how to communicate with clients in order to work towards a final product that fits their requirements. To get a better vision of what my client wants, I would often read through lengthy paragraphs of what clients wanted. To help me I would break down the paragraphs into simple bullet points and resend it to the client to ask is this is correct and if there was anything I missed. I would then create thumbnail sketches to plan out the piece, once this was done I would send the sketches to the commissioner and ask which one they like or if there was a different way they would like it. After moving on from this I would begin a more refined and finished sketch of the piece, I would once again send it to the commissioner to see if they are happy with it before inking and colouring the piece (My commissions were done traditionally so there was no way I could undo the colouring and inking once it was all on paper). It is important to communicate with clients or higherups when you are working on a project for them so it what they envisioned in the end, if you continue to make products they are happy with they are more likely to commission you again or keep you in your current job  (This could also lead to positive references for future jobs).

What do I do well?:

To me I feel like I do my main specialism well (art) I can work in a range of mediums and styles meaning that I am rather flexible with what I can do art wise. I have been doing art since I was five, I worked traditionally with mediums like watercolours, oils, acrylics, pencils and alcohol based markers. After starting college I began to do digital art more and more, I leant about the software and tricks on how to use it effectively over the course of the first year of college. 

I manage my time well when it comes to deadlines, I use an app called “forest” which has helped out with my concentration and focus when doing my work. As well as this, just doing several projects with deadlines was really good practice to get better at time management.

What is the level of my education?:

I have obtained several GCSEs, an art qualification outside of school and am currently attending a level 3 course (year 1 diploma). I achieved five pass level GCSEs at the end of highschool, my GCSE results were:

• English language -Grade 4
• English Literature -Grade 5
• Mathematics Foundation Tier -Grade 4
• Combined Science: Trilogy Foundation Tier -Grade 3
• Art and Design -Grade 6
• History OG -Grade 3
• Citizenship studies – Grade 6

For the qualification I have gained outside of a school or college setting; The art tutor I had during highschool offered qualifications, the qualification is from Trinity College London, it is an entry level 3 explore qualification. To get the qualification I went out to learn about and explore various artists from different eras. I learnt about the baroque era and impressionist era, as well as this I experimented with mediums like oil paints with turpentine and watercolours. I learnt various techniques like the bulbous technique, shape break down and various brush strokes.

What is my biggest achievement?:

For me personally, my biggest achievement would have to be getting through the college year despite having some unfortunate events play out throughout the year, while the events did manage to get to me I am still really proud of myself and what I managed to achieve in the end despite of it. I will admit that I haven’t been my best throughout the course of the first year (specifically in the beginning) I allowed what was happening outside of college to effect my progress through the first portion of the year, while I am upset over this and do wonder what I would have been like if nothing bad happened outside of college, I am at the very least happy and proud of the fact that I have managed to get through it and am now happy and healthy, and can get back on track and improve what I would like to do and face any new challenges in the future with a fresh and open mind!

What personal qualities do I have?:

I have a few personal qualities that aren’t related to professional work and academic work that I can consider note worthy. The first one that I will add is that I am a happy and optimistic person, I try to remain happy with myself as much as I can because if I am negative I will drain myself and others.

A quality that I feel benefits me in both a personal and work space is wanting feedback on my work, to me accepting feedback and working towards a new goal is very important. Throughout unit 8 I was constantly asking for feedback on my work so I could make it as good as possible and learn on the way. When you get feedback it teaches you rules and techniques that you can apply to future work that you do as well as the work you are doing now.

Weaknesses:

What am I bad at?:

While I have areas that I am good at, there are certain areas that I am lacking in, it’s normal to not be good at everything. The important thing is what you will do to fix it.

One thing I feel that I’m bad at is knowing that it’s okay to make mistakes when doing new things you aren’t familiar with. I’ve been doing art since I was five so I have become aware  of certain rules of art, because of this I have a certain standard I work towards when doing art. Sadly this standard I have stays with me even when doing tasks that are new to me or I have only been doing for a year. If what I am doing doesn’t reach the same standard I have for my art (despite the task being new to me) I will get upset despite it being new. Because of how long I have been doing art for it doesn’t feel like I am practicing or getting better with each piece (even though I am) because of how much I have done it, only when I look back at my old work I realise how I have improved. Say for example 3D modelling, I actually did a bit of 3D modelling in high school and I wanted to do it for a GCSE since my school offered in when I started high school, sadly my high school couldn’t fund the club I went to or the GCSE a year after I started and I didn’t really think of perusing it after. 3D modelling in a way is like art, the more and more you practice the more and more you’ll improve over time. I really wish I told myself this when I came to college because I just didn’t get why I couldn’t do it as well as others who have done 3D longer than me, as obvious as the answer was.

What can I improve?:

To me the number one thing to improve is my “it must be perfect first time or else you are terrible and won’t ever get better at this” mentality, this has held me back and will continue to hold me back unless I can completely get over it, thankfully progress has started and the mind set is beginning to disappear and I am working towards being accepting of new work and tasks being imperfect the first few times around, work still needs to be done but I am getting there.

What are my personal flaws?:

A big personal flaw I have that everyone picks up on is how much I say sorry, I don’t even know why I say sorry so much, it just happens. One time I was on a three hour shift at work and my colleague counted the amount of times I said sorry, he counted 37 times (This is just including when he was around and could hear me). 

Another flaw I have (which I have already discussed) is just having the “it must be perfect first time or else you are terrible and won’t ever get better at this” mind set, it just won’t help me at all in the future when doing new things and are naturally not great at the task at first. Now that I have realised this is a problem I can now work towards fixing the issue.

What tasks do I usually avoid doing?:

At this point in time the tasks I avoid doing tasks that are new to me or tasks that I know I’m not the best at that are in subject areas that I don’t specialise in, this could include 3D, science, sculpture (I have tried using it several times when I can to try and get better at it in the past). I tend to avoid a lot of complex technical tasks since there is normally a right or wrong answer or way to do things with technical tasks, whereas with tasks that are less technical they often have different ways to work around them to achieve the final product. 

What are the roots of my failure?:

The main reason I have failed in the past is the fear of failure itself. The fear of failing something that is new to me (which should be okay) has caused me to fail at getting better at new things from immediately shutting down the task from the fear of looking stupid and having a product that is flawed. Because I have learnt so much about art over the course of nearly twelve years now and have gotten to a certain point with it, in a way I have forgotten that at one point I wasn’t great at art and that you will always be bad at something that is new to you on the first few tries. Now whenever I perform a task that is new to me I always tell myself since realising it is an issue that it is okay for it to not look or be great as many times as it needs to be. 

Skills audit:

To have a better understanding of my skills and what I can improve on I have worked on a skill audit that I was given, the audit has grades, qualifications and skills.

Personal development plan:

This is my personal development plan, this plan shows my goals for this year along with the deadlines for completing said goals. My three plans are career and skill oriented and deadlines are set for 2020 (Skills being due in July and career option due in January). As well as this I have written how I plan to achieve these goals.