Wrapping Up Art (NCEA Level 1)

After long days and long nights. I have finally finished my artboard for 2019! It's quite a rollercoaster ride not going to lie.  I started the school year with an enthusiastic attitude, I was looking forward to an artboard that mirrors my beliefs and opinion about the world.

In term 1, I was thinking about doing an artboard that tackles the topic of feminism.

These were the kind of ideas I was producing while brainstorming in term 1

But when Mrs Clemence made us watch about figuring out what could be our why.

Why we chose art as our subject in the first place?

Why do we want to to produce these kinds of artworks?

- I wanted to produce these as a channel or way to say what I wanted. Artworks that symbolises my opinions. Artworks that no one would ever know I did them, not because they're very good artworks but instead the message it's trying to convey is the things that I don't share that much to anyone.

With this picture, I sketched at the start of the year what my board would look like
at the end of the year. From what I remember,
I mainly based this folio plan from the NZQA website
Visual Exemplar that got excellence.

Before the school year has even started, I already had heaps of ideas regarding topics like social issues that need to be talked about more. Topics and issues such as climate change, feminism, politics, education system, and more.
At first, I could not choose which topic should I focus on my board. But I started the year with feminism as my main subject.

I remember taking these pictures during our holidays in 2018. I thought about including these old works on my board. I used my DSLR and sat down on my bed where the sun is hitting it. I used the sun as my main source of light and played with shadows.

These pictures built like the first leg what the main message of my board at the start of the These artworks are inspired by my art history artist Barbara Kruger. Barbara Kruger as an artist tackles the same topic which is feminism. She creates artworks that make people question their decisions She creates these textboxes in colour red with her iconic font Futura. I did these artworks using photoshop, which I learned using on my own time during the holidays before the school started. I edited the photo into black and white and added the text boxes.
(you should see my other blog where I specifically talked about her artworks). 

I continued to play with photoshop with more photos that I took, but this time I played with different hues of blue. I remember taking these photos with a movie CD that created the circular shape on my face. I was experimenting with different orientations of the CD which produced different sun rays, which also produced different shadows.
These artworks were like thermal imaging that we see at airports. For my board, this thermal imaging symbolise how our climate changes over time.

Since I have started my board with dry media, I decided to experiment with wet media for my next artworks. I tried producing new artworks that are also connected to climate change.
I'm not really good at painting and drawing face features such as the nose and lips. I tried what I could during the time, but not my best :p

These three artworks connect with the pieces above, continuing the topic of climate change through thermal imaging paintings.

.


Next, I tried producing some digital artworks. My next artist inspiration in my artboard Shepard Fairey. As an artist, Shepard Fairey started his career rather unique and uncommon. Fairey shared his artworks illegally on the street by doing graffitis, once of his most famous work earlier in his career is his logo artwork for famous brand Obey.

As you can see, Fairey is now focused more on propaganda and politics type of artworks.
Shepard Fairey is known as "the guy who did the HOPE Poster for Obama's Presidency".
This poster inspired me to do my own version of the poster. So I decided to do a poster of Vladimir Putin and Greta Thunberg (I have dedicated a separate blog talking about these posters, please check them).

I was originally planning to also put a text like HOPE on both these posters. With Putin being NOPE and Thunberg as being HOPE. The message I want to symbolise through them is that Putin is a politician with such high power. However, even though he has that, he prefers to not do anything regarding Climate change. Compared to those people who are like Thunberg that even though they don't have high powers like Putin, they choose to care and do something. As you can see with the artworks, the two have opposite backgrounds that symbolise their two different sides.
I was also considering using Trump instead of Putin, but I just really can't stare at the mans' face for a long period of time, so I didn't do it.

 In order to continue the propaganda, politics, climate change, feminism and colour red themes going. I decided to do another poster, but this time it talks about the urgency of climate change.

Earlier in the year, bees were reported one of the species that could be endangered once the effect of climate change worsens. As pollinators, bees support the growth of trees, flower and plants that serves as food for us. In other words, they're one of the most important species in our ecosystem.

*I was inspired by this picture when I saw it while scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed.

I have tried different colour schemes with this artwork. I did the first version of the poster by using colour yellow as the background. However, this version didn't end up saving properly and I wasn't able to retrieve the document. So I re-made another one but with different colour schemes.

I did this artwork whilst playing and experimenting around
with Photoshop at home. I wasn't able to record my
progress as I finished this in an hour

This poster continues my climate change and colour red theme that has been going on my board.

**The circles behind the bee was supposed to connect with the circles next to it on the picture above. But in the end, I did not use the circle cropped artworks, where I'll put the HOPE posters originally. But I tried copping the posters, it pretty much cropped a big portion of the artwork and I did not like that. So I did not use it.

The next artwork I produced was once again connected with the theme politics. This time decided to go local, therefore used the Beehive in Wellington. Which ironically connects with my bee poster.
This poster is once again inspired by Shepard Fairey.  I tried to achieve this kind of style by Shepard Fairey on my poster.
- The ripped pieces of paper
- Colour schemes

I HAD A TOTAL OF 10 DRAFTS OF THIS ARTWORK

I continually did some refinements to this artwork every day. I drew the beehive by hand, and when I finished it, I had to think about what I wanted to do with it. When I finally got the idea, I figured this artwork symbolises how the system/government can be broken or injustice. This connects to the idea of climate change and political posters where politicians with high powers do not care about what's currently happening, which makes the system "broken". The glitching effect symbolises this. I got most of the text by going through the stacked newspapers and magazines in the art room. I used Photoshop for this artwork.

This is not the best thumbnail sketch but all I was trying
to draw here was a kid that was raising her hands. Kid raising her
hand symbolises how much she's free and happy.
But in reality, the kid's future is going to be polluted
and hard. Due to the fact that we didn't bother about
climate change in the earlier years where we can still reverse
its effects.

Also here are some thumbnail sketches regarding the circle
cropped political posters. The eyes were supposed to be in
my board but I end up not doing it as I really can't connect
it with anything apart from the black n' white posters for feminism.

Since I have started using cut-outs from newspapers and magazines. My teacher suggested to use a draft from the beehive poster and make another artwork out of it.
A really good idea snapped in my head when tried laying out in my head every piece of artwork I have created.

I wanted to connect this new artwork with Greta Thunberg and what was happening locally in Aotearoa. Which was at the time was about the Youth Parliament **please check a separate blog post regarding the YP**

At the time I was seeing some negative comments online about Greta Thunberg, saying she's just trying to make a show with what she's doing. I have a really opinionated side regarding this topic, that's why I chose to do this artwork.

I chose to rip the artwork to make meanings. The black n' white version of the piece
symbolises how this shell or outer layer of politics is so negative when it comes to young people.
As politicians see the youth as too naive and wouldn't be able to make adequate decisions.
But in reality, it is not true because if it was, why is Greta Thunberg had to do what
she had--which was starting a movement--when all of the "adults" in the government have all things in "control".
  Then the colourful inner part of the politics is covered/curtained which the youth can be a part of.

HERE IS MY FINAL ARTBOARD!!!
The rest of my artworks are now inspired by Barbara Kruger. Those 3 little pieces of artworks--beside
the Beehive refined--are originally her artworks,. Instead of copying it completely, I added some climate
change commentary on with the texts. 

I miraculously got through this board. Not going to lie, there were some times where I didn't really feel inspired and do any art. And that shortened the amount of time where I could work on my board, so I felt somewhat rushed when we started Term 4. I'm really proud of this artboard, all my passion through art was poured into this board. All of the stress and mental breakdowns are all worth it, I guess?

I'm hoping that it would get excellence but I don't want to get hopes up too high. What was more important was I got some really good experiences and life lessons from this years' art, and I hope that I could apply it somewhat in my life really soon.

L1 Unfamiliar Texts: Non-Fiction Activities

1. Vocabulary Work

• Scooter

- Lightweight, two-wheeled motor vehicle, that has a resting floorboard.

• Intricate

- Very complicated and detailed.

• Fete

- An organised outdoor entertainment that is mainly held for charity.

• Incomprehensible

- Not able to understand or to follow

• Estimated 

- Rough calculation or approximation

• Recruited

- To sign up, enlist

• Invaluable

- Extremely useful, irreplaceable

• Denied

- Refused, Declined, Rejected

• Campaign

- 1. a series of military operations that aims for a certain goal
- 2. working in an organised way, towards a particular goal

I predict the story is going to be about some who wants to enlist in the military since he/she was a kid
because of the words, recruited, denied, and campaign were used in this short non-fiction story.

Write down two memories you have for the time when you were ten
a. I remember singing to Avril Lavigne's songs that are probably waaaay to inappropriate for my age
b. At this age, this is probably where I discovered my big fascination with space

What ideas do you think this piece might include
This piece might include something with military
This piece might include something about how different children spend their time as a kid.

What things would you expect to be a concern of to a sixteen-years-old student?
It depends on what kind of upbringing the child was raised. But for me as an example of a sixteen-year-old student, I am mostly concern about how we treat our planet with all our waste and rubbish that can have a long term effect on humanity.

Thinking about the title and your predictions above, what do you think might be the main purpose of the speech?
The purpose of this text could be about how a ten-year-old spends his/her childhood that the sixteen-year-old is trying to tell.

First Impressions

Write down one thing we are being encouraged to do as a result of hearing this message
The speaker wants us to make us aware, realise and informed on how other ten-year-olds spend their childhood.

In this task, we want to look at each paragraph and summarise the idea
Paragraph 1; Memories  of things the narrator did as a child, list of what Juliet lost at the age of 10
Paragraph 2; A memory/flashback of the narrator face painting experience at the local fete, and compared her experiences to Juliet's kind of face painting
Paragraph 3; The narrator compares his/her thought of music compared to Juliet which was used for war instead of having fun like the narrator.
Paragraph 4; List of the narrator's happy experience of play fighting, list of Juliet's experiences of war
Paragraph 5; The narrator wants us to realise that not all children are blessed with a normal life like Juliet.
Paragraph 6; The narrator wants to raise awareness that not every kid have the same privileges and chances in life to live a normal life.
Paragraph 7; The narrator summarises his/her feelings and thought about what Juliet and other children are going through, she also mentioned about donating to Child Soldiers International to give them a second chance to live like a normal 10-year-old.

Summarise
In no more than 3 sentences write what this piece is about
The piece is about a child named Juliet who is, unfortunately, has been recruited as a child soldier in countries like Congo and Afghanistan to fight in wars. The narrator of this piece talks about her experiences as a normal child and compared it to Juliet's experiences while she's at war. The narrator's main message here is to raise awareness with what child soldiers are currently experiencing and invites the readers to donate to Child Soldiers International.

The writer/narrator wanted us to teach about child soldiers because she wants to increase the awareness of people about them, and encourages to donate to these important causes. 


Explain the purpose of the technique (listing)
To make an impact. To tell the audience what are the things that are affected abduction of child soldiers. Also to show how unfair what people are doing to these children.

Evidence from the text
"At ten years old Juliet was taken against her will, from her family, from her friends, her education, school and community"

Explain the effect
This makes the audience feel empathetic towards the children, because of the long list of examples.


Explain how this and/or other language features help you understand the speaker's attitude towards child soldiers. You might consider:
1. what the overall purpose  of the speech is

The speaker's overall purpose in this piece to inform people that child slavery is still relevant in our current time. The author's attitude towards the topic was she determined. We see this attitude when the speaker uses the technique of personal pronoun when she says "I will also leave you with a challenge"

Composition Evaluation

Personally, the composition task is the hardest part of Level 1 Music.  Since I was sure that I'm not pretty good at playing chords and make them work out, I decided to group with Cameron. Cameron and I have been playing together for quite a while now in various tasks. I and Cameron were looking at different themes of the composition such as Pop, Love song, and even a sad song. However, we faced different obstacles along the way, such as figuring out the melody and lyrics. Writing lyrics for a song is a way of telling a story, and it could things that are close to your heart/personal. So we have decided instead of writing Pop/Love song, we decided to write a Worship song instead.

Cameron is a very skilled pianist. After he figured out all of the chords and instruments, he sent me the recording and I tried to find a melody that suits the song first. After a day of just humming to the song, I found a melody that suits and asked Cameron for his opinion. We both agreed, with it and I got into the writing lyrics immediately.

I based the lyrics that I wrote with my experiences as a follower of Christ. However, I still considered that people have different beliefs. So I made the lyrics really more about my experiences than telling people to believe the things I believe in.

Luckily, we got low excellence for this composition. We didn't get the full mark as Mrs Beer suggested that we should've made a bridge in the song, instead of just repeating the verses and chorus. We still had fun with the assessment and we learned some new things. Now we have to do a second composition and I'm looking forward to share it in my blog! 

Music Composition

Here is our first composition!

Art, Term 3, Week 5 (Greta Thunberg)

Greta Thunberg

I have now finished this artwork which I started at the start of term 3. I was planning to finish it before week 3 but I got stuck for a while and took me 4 weeks instead. It took time to finish this artwork because I was thinking about how can I connect it somehow with my board. My original plan for my board was going to be about mostly feminism, but now I have added topics like Politics and Climate change that I'm really passionate to talk about. I'm planning to connect this artwork (Greta) and to Vladimir Putin somehow. I thought about making a statement about politics that limits the power of young people to make a change...and that's why their backgrounds are the opposite, which signifies that they're on different sides. Where Greta who is trying to change how politicians about climate emergency.

Now I am going to do wet and dry media like watercolour and lithography.

Come Together - The Beatles ( Second Solo Performance Research)

Abbey Road is the eleventh studio album released by The Beatles on October 6, 1969, with Come Together as being the opening track of the album. Come Together was written primarily by John Lennon. Come Together was originally going to be used for a political campaign for Timothy Leary, who advocates about the exploration of therapeutical psychedelic drugs under controlled conditions, planned to run against Ronald Raegan for the governorship of California. The title came from Leary's political slogan  'Come Together, join the party'. Although the campaign itself and the song for Leary didn't work out, it inspired the band to finish Come Together as their own piece of music and released it. Unfortunately, Come Together is the last opening track The Beatles have ever recorded. However, it still remains in a very special place in our hearts as one of the best songs of The Beatles.

Art Ideas; Term 3 Week 2

This week I have decided to use Greta as my subject for my next poster. I chose Greta as my subject because. Greta, a 16-year-old girl, is the one who started the movement of students striking/protesting against Politicians to declare climate emergency in their countries. Greta started striking just by herself, skipping school every Friday with the hope of politicians will hear her voice. Other people started joining her every Friday and it snowballed from there. News stations started interviewing her and went international. Students from all over the world—including Aotearoa—started to organise various strikes against their respective Parliaments and Governments. On March 15th students around the globe struck all at once called SchoolStrike4Climate. People from different walks in life also joined these protests. In Aotearoa, people struck at the Beehive to send a message to the government that the young people care about the future of our land, to let them know that the older generations are not the one who's going to suffer from climate change, it is them.

I am also planning to do a poster of Chloe Swarbrick, a member of parliament for the Green Party, who is also trying to bring the voice of young people in the Parliament.

Music Solo Performance Evaluation - Jump by Van Halen

Picking music as a subject is the best! What other subjects can you perform playing songs, instruments then enjoy it and still get a good grade for it?! Well, music can be stressful at times too when you're only 1 lesson away from recording/performing. But once you get you're desired grade, it all pays off!

For our first solo performance, I performed Jump by Van Halen. The song showcases a whole lot of different skills on the drum kit. Just like anyone, I found it really hard playing it the first time I got the music sheet, but with practise, perseverance and the help of my drum teachers, Joe and Tim.
By the way,  I recommend anyone who is interested in learning how to play instruments to sign up for itinerant lessons in Hornby!! Since Year 10, I signed up for Bass lessons, Vocal lessons, Drum lessons for this year and last year. These lessons are so affordable unlike outside of school lessons where it costs 100s of dollars. 
I gradually learned how to play Jump by heart because of my itinerant music lessons. I even practised at home, but because I don't have a drum set, I practised with my pillows and drum sticks (and it works!)

In the end, I got excellence as a mark and luckily I didn't have to resub. This solo performance made me realise that I shouldn't bother thinking about negative stuff like "Oh, I can't do this because it's really hard", and facing situations that are totally out of your comfort zone can be rewarding sometimes. Now, I have volunteered to Mrs Beer to play this piece at our UC gig that is coming this August, and I am looking forward to it. :)

Whole Performance video <----- link

Animaker: A Hidden Gem

Animaker is a site, where you can do cool 2D animations, presentations and even infographics (just like PowToon but even cooler!!!) The tutorial was quite long and full of info, but watching all of it was worth it. In Animaker, I was able to edit the character's emotion, change its actions like running and such. I can also change the background, and even add music! I've heard Animaker once before but never used it. If I knew this was this cool I would have used it with every presentation we had to do in school!

I really enjoyed learning and playing with it. Hopefully, I could use it for our future internals, homework, and more.

www.animaker.com