Metals!

     The second marking period is coming to an end but its just the beginning of our new project in art: metals!  When Mrs. Kiick told everyone we were starting a unit of metals my first thoughts were "Cut through metal? Sometimes I have trouble cutting paper!" And since then, I had been dreading the day when I would have to start cutting my metal, and I took my time on planning out my design with paper.

     When I finally sucked it up and started sawing out my design, I realized it wasn't as hard as it looked! Although the lines I cut aren't very straight, I was VERY surprised that I even had the ability to simply cut out a shape.  It turns out that I like metals a lot more than I thought I would!

Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali

            Salvador Dali was delivered into this world on May 11, 1904 in the town of Figueres, Spain, which is only a mere 16 miles from the border of France.  He lived in this town for his whole childhood, and vacationed in the costal village of Cadaques during the summers.  This is where his parents built his first art studio.  Some of his paintings show his love of the area of Spain where he lived.

            After attending the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts, his talents as an artist were recognized in his first one-man show in 1925.  Dali soon became identified as a Surrealist, and was a leader of the Surrealist movement.  The Persistence of Memory is his most famous surrealist painting. 

            Dali had different views than the other Surrealists, and he began to have conflicts with them.  He was forced to leave the Surrealist group in 1940, although he continued to produce surrealist works for international exhibitions.  But by 1940, Dali had begun painting with religious and scientific viewpoints.

The Persistence of Memory
I found this portrait interesting because its very unique and it makes you think.

            When World War II began, Dali and his wife took off for the United States, where they stayed until 1948.  The Museum of Modern Art in New York provided Dali with his first retrospective exhibition in 1941.  Later, in 1942, Dali published an autobiography titled The Secret Life of Salvador Dali.  After this, Dali entered his classical period and produced many paintings including The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, and The Sacrament of the Last Supper.

The Sacrament of the Last Supper
I liked this portrait because I have learned about the Last Supper, and it was interesting to see Dali's interpretation of it. 

            In 1974 (by this time Dali was back in Spain) Dali opened the Teatro Museum in his hometown of Figueres.  Salvador Dali died of heart failure on January 23, 1989 in Figueres.  Dali was an artist of many genres and has famous works from nearly every style of art he worked in.

     The reason I like Salvador Dali is because he  has worked in so many different genres of art, so its easy to find a painting by him that you like.  I especially like his surreal paintings because they are so different and strange, and they make you think.  What I found interesting about Dali is the fact that he came back to the town of his childhood: he was born there, and he died there.  He was famous, and wealthy enough to live anywhere, but he chose to come back to his hometown.

Finished Self Portrait!

     Everyone finished their final self portraits a few weeks ago, and there were huge paintings of faces hanging all over the art room!  My finished portrait turned out in the same way my practice one did: the ink caused the paint to chip off in weird patterns.  It surprised me that this weird thing could happen twice, to the same person! But I'm glad that my portrait is the only one that looks like this, because it sets it apart from the others! 

     Every Creative Art Class voted on each portrait in specific categories.  A few of the categories were most intense, most dynamic, most peaceful, and best composition.  I was very proud that my portrait was voted most haunting, most mesmerizing, and most like my personality! 

Collaging Your Identity

     Collaging: my favorite activity so far in Creative Arts Class!  The whole classroom was covered in supplies- glue, tape, paint, buckets of water, magazines and old photos, basically anything you can think of!  We had been given the assignment of making a collage of our identity.  This was a hard topic for me, I'm only a freshman, how I am I supposed to know my identity?
     Since I couldn't think of what to do, I looked up identity poems online and wrote them down on a paper, along with some lyrics from my favorite songs.  This became my background, after I drowned it in water and paint.  Then, I started gathering things from my house: old baby pictures, toys from my childhood, even some things that I had drawn a few months before (most likely while watching T.V.)
     I made sure to have an item that represented everyone important in my life: my family, my friends, and of course my wonderful golden retriever.  I had a letter from a friend, a toy snake I had found with a different friend, pellets from my brothers air-soft gun, and foam from a jewelry box.  Then I began mashing everything together on the piece of cardboard that was the base of my collage.
   
     To explain the buckets of water mentioned in the first paragraph, I must explain the concept of a packing tape transfer. To make a picture see through (like the one of the baby in the top left corner of my collage) we put tape over the picture, rubbed it down with the back of a pair of scissors, and left the taped picture in a bucket of water.  After waiting for some time, when the pictures were taken out of the water, the paper would rub off the tape, but the image would stay imprinted into the tape, making it transparent.

     My favorite part of my collage is the picture of me as a baby, looking out the window next to the front door of my old house.  The other part of my collage I like is the eye, which is supposed to be Taylor Swift's eye.  Taylor Swift is my favorite music artist, this blog is even named for one of Taylor Swift's songs!
     Making my collage helped me figure out my identity.  What I realized is that the person who I am is still evolving, and that I don't have a true identity yet.  I think my collage shows that I'm still looking for my identity, lots of random things are sort of stuck together, but in a way that works.  That's how I feel like my identity is now: crazy random things all put together to make one person!

First Marking Period Reflection

     The first marking period is coming to end!  I feel like my outlook on art has changed.  I have always loved art,  but now I know much more about it.  I really learned a lot of  things that will probably help me with art in the future.  I was also surprised with some of the things I made.  I can't believe that some of the pictures I painted/drew are actually mine, and I'm glad I'll get to keep them forever in my book.  So far, Creative Arts is my favorite class!

Self Portraits

     After we finished drawing fruit, we started a new project: self portraits.  These aren't regular self portraits, though.  When we're done drawing them, we paint them with our own custom color and then cover them ink.  After the ink dries, we rinse them out in water.  Our final paintings are going to be on a huge piece of paper, but we practiced on regular paper.
     My favorite part of the whole experience was creating our own color of paint.  We did this by mixing basic colors of paint together, without using white or black.  I mixed blue and green with a little bit of yellow and purple to get my color.  To get lights and darks for shading in the painting, we added black and white to our original color.
     Once the paint was dry, we coated the painting in ink.  We had to wait for the ink to dry before we could rinse it.  To rinse the painting, we held it under the sink and gently rubbed it, which took away ink and some paint, leaving behind different textures.  We used colored pencils to touch up the paintings after rinsing them.  I just finished my practice painting, and am ready to start my big one!

Fruit Drawings

     We spent quite a while drawing fruit in art class, and by the time we had finished, I had decided I would much rather eat an apple than draw one.
    
     We started out by drawing a still life of whole red apples, green apples cut in half and cut oranges in pencil, without color.  This was the first time I had ever drawn fruit, and for me it was much more challenging than it looked.  Besides drawing the right shape of the fruit, you also had to have the right shading in the right places.  This was the most challenging part for me, and I wasn't very good at it.  I'm hoping that I can improve my shading with practice, and I'm sure that there will be plenty of projects in the future that will require shading.
    
     After we completed our black and white drawings, we moved on to colored drawings of apples.  We had to draw a whole red apple and half of a green apple.  Although my red apple turned out more like a tomato, I was pretty happy with my green apple.  Since it was much more flat than a whole apple, I had an easier time drawing it.  Also coloring it was simpler, because the mixture of colors in the white insides of the apple weren't nearly as intricate as the greens, reds, oranges and yellows of the whole apple.  I drew my apples on a background of yellow, orange, and red, and the page is now sitting in my folder, waiting to be bound into the book.