The Making of "The Birth Of Venus" Table: Creativity

This project was self-imposed. One night after dinner, my roommate and I decided that we wanted to decorate our room and make it a bit more comfortable and welcoming for our new roommates, who are younger than us and feel like our little sisters. We really wanted to do something nice for all of us, so we decided to construct a table that could be used for eating dinner or simply just gathering around.

Like I stated before, the aim of this project was to do something a little out of the ordinary for me and my roommate as well as make something nice to add to our room. Neither of us take Art so therefore it was our first real experience in the art room here at school. It was an opportunity to do something different than our usual routine and use a part of our minds that we don't get the chance to exercise in our daily lives.

The final product that we managed to create is a beautiful, knee-high table that is fully covered with our interpretation of Botticelli's famous painting, "The Birth of Venus". To create the table, we had to nail together pieces of wood and then sand them in order to be able to paint on the surface. Then, we put primer on the table. While the primer dried, we sat around and tried to think of what we would like to paint on our table. We wanted it to be something that we would be able to draw well, and also something that represented our room. We looked through countless art books until I finally stumbled upon the aforementioned Botticelli. It was perfect, a beautiful symbol of womanhood and a celebration of all that is feminine. We read a lot about the painting and its subject matter before deciding on using it for our table. Then, we had to trace the outline of what we were going to paint in pencil. As neither of us are art students, it was very difficult to capture the human form when we had no prior practice or experience with such a thing. It took many hours, but finally we were ready for paint. We painstakingly mixed all the colors until we had all the shades we wanted and then filled in our sketch. The entire project was difficult, but we only overcame the challenges by persevering and not getting discouraged by the amount of time and effort the project took.

I learned that I truly enjoy making art, even if I'm not incredibly good at it. I also learned the value of working very hard for something and the satisfaction that you get once you've finished the project. It is so nice to look at my beautiful table every day and know the work and care that was put into it. The pride at having overcome my inexperience with art is a wonderful feeling.

This activity benefitted all of my roommates and made our living together more pleasant. We bonded over the making of the table and it is a constant symbol of unity in the room, something that we worked together on and something that we worked hard for.

I've learned not to be intimidated by something just because I'm not an expert in it. Before the table, I was afraid to try anything artistic because I thought I might fail. Through this experience, I learned that the things I can learn from attempting to do something new are valuable enough to risk failure. I also learned that I need to branch out and try new things more often, because I may just surprise myself with how much I enjoy some new project or task, just like I was surprised by how much I enjoyed making the table.