I haven't quite finished it yet since I don't know how I should exactly end it.
I'm hoping to get some feedback and suggestions on how to improve my essay.
Thank you!
Prompt: Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution, or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are today?
It is a Saturday morning, 10:30 AM in the year 2002. Today, I start my very first advanced art class, where I am abandoning the crayons. I can hardly hold my feelings of anxiousness and excitement as I look across the room and see skillfully crafted painting after painting. I take my seat at my very own easel and I watch attentively as my teacher points me to where the different sets of Strathmore paper, Winsor and Newton canvasses, Grumbacher oil paints, Liquitex acrylic paints, Marie watercolors, Prismacolor colored pencils, Faber Castel drawing pencils, and Red Sable brushes are. Finally, he unveils the first object I will draw: an egg.
One solid white egg: that was my first task in this art class that I had yearned to be in for years. As weeks passed, I cannot say the subjects did not get more exciting little by little; first the egg, then an apple, an orange, a banana, a pear, and some grapes. But where were the sculptures, landscapes, flowers, people, the very objects I wished to paint that I had seen in so many of the great arts? I was not thrilled to say the least, to come to my art class every week only to return to the same monotonous routine. We drew eggs and fruits for months in numerous shades, various angles, and in endless quantities. If there was one thing I had learned in my advanced art class, it was patience.
After sketching hundreds of those mundane objects, my teacher finally allowed me to shift my focus into anything I desired, using the tools I acquired through practicing the fundamentals of shade, proportion, and composition. I ended up painting a basket of fruits, realizing that I was not ready to create those majestic paintings I admired. Now, as I do any artwork, I subconsciously view everything as either a fruit or an egg. I look through my portfolio fraught with paintings of the things I find beautiful. I discover that learning how to paint or sketch is like learning how to do anything else, such as learning to talk and spell, none of which would be possible if I had never learned my alphabet. I understand the need for a solid foundation and build off those principles in all aspects of my life. Through art, I have learned to appreciate my ABC's, to pay attention to detail, to view everything as a whole, and to be patient.
I am ambitious. I want to apply myself to do something great for those I know, those I have not met, and those I may never meet. I look towards the future and hope that it will be another morning, 7:30 AM in the year 2010 when I will embark on my first college class, where I am utilizing all the basics. Whichever form the egg or fruit will take, I will be ready to soar above my limits.
Good essay. You learned a valuable lesson, and demonstrate it with specific examples. Your style and grammar are solid, so there's not much to criticize here. You might tightened up a sentence here and there, I suppose:
"If there was one thing I had learned in my new advanced art class, it was this: patience."
"If I learned anything from my advanced art class, it was patience."
You could cut this down even further, but this retains the stylistic effect I think you were going for.
Ah, as an fellow classically trained artist, I feel your pain!! (I now have the urge to smash hardboiled eggs with WAY more effort than necessary, just to release the pent up anger I have at drawing 23435872364957326495243 of them.)
Anyways,
I love the idea, as well as the second half. There is nothing that I would change in those parts.
The first half, however, got a little redundant. I can see where you tried to emphasize some things by adding lots of detail, but the lists got a little tedious. As a rule of thumb, keep the lists under 5 things.
I just noticed that you seem to switch back and forth between tenses in your past paragraph. I'm not sure though, seeing as I often have the same issue myself.
Basically, I just suggest toning down the listing, as well as going through the grammar with a fine tooth comb.
Good luck!
