Nobody likes to present, and if you do, then that's good, but I’ve never met anyone who is 100% confident with presenting, especially in front of a big group of people. Recently in VAM, we had to do a big research project, and by the end of it, we presented it. I was honestly terrified, not because of the project itself, but by the presenting part, but at the same time, I enjoyed this project as it was something I enjoy and am passionate about. I believe the purpose of this project was to familiarize ourselves with almost every aspect of art history. Everybody had to do this project, and in the end, I think we all learned something.
I learned from my colleagues things that I would have never thought about researching by myself. For example, during the abstract expressionism presentation, I realized that there are different takes on this movement, from just splashing paint on a canvas to using soft brushstrokes. Still, it all means the same thing; it is intended to depict emotion. During the Baroque and Rococo, that period’s art is impressive and dramatic, but one of the most famous paintings from this era, “The Swing”, was painted by a not-so-great guy. From my college that did pop art, I learned that pop art was significantly influenced by ordinary things and by that kind of comic book style. The most successful pop artists were successful in advertising before they were full-time artists. In my presentation and just my project in general, I feel that I did well and enjoyed making my infographic and the research portion of it all. I feel like I worked the hardest, but at the same time, those were the easiest part of this entire project for me. I like doing that kind of stuff, so it wasn’t a challenge for me. On the other hand, I did struggle a lot with the presenting part of it all. I hate presenting; it makes me extremely nervous, especially the build-up to it, and it wasn’t that I wasn’t proud of my work or even my speech; it’s just that I don’t like talking in front of so many people that are a little forced to listen to me. But after a few panic attacks and a few restless nights, I finally did it; I was able to get up there and not completely break down in front of everyone. Fake it till you make it, right? I feel like this was a struggle because when I get nervous, I tend to talk really fast, and I had to make my presentation around five minutes long, so every once in a while, I have to stop myself and think about what I was saying. I don’t know what I would do differently, maybe just try not to freak out as much and just calm myself try to look at it in a positive way. Also, I would perhaps tweak my infographic a little more so that the order was more aligned with my speech. In conclusion, I think I did okay. I learned a lot about my movement stuff that for as much as I like the movement I never would have thought about researching like how it actually started, I also learned what I kind of already knew, that I enjoy graphic design, and it will probably be one of the things I study in university. I enjoyed making my vector graphics and just my infographic in general. I'm the kind of person that likes making the tiniest of tweaks to my work to make it look better. I also had fun writing my speech, not because I like writing but because I talked about something I genuinely enjoy and wanted to learn more about. So it wasn’t that bad in the end. I just hope people enjoyed my presentation, and if not, I’m proud of my work anyway.
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If I’m honest, I don't know what I’m doing. I’m about to start my independent project for the year, and honestly, I’m kind of scared. I don’t know what to expect from this assignment because it would be the first time I’m doing something this big; I’m mostly nervous because this will be a very personal project for me, and I just want to be able to do it justice. But I’m going to try my best because at the end of the day if it doesn’t exactly work out the way I want it to, it will still be a great learning experience, right?
For my project, I want to create a very close to my heart piece, a series of paintings called “Generations.” I want to paint acrylic portraits of my grandmother, mother, and sister while they were all around the same age, three completely different generations, to see where the future is headed. I’ve always tried to stay away from painting my family because they would actually see it, and I’ve always been scared I wouldn’t do them justice, but what’s a better way to get over your fears than just jumping right into them. I’m also not very sure how to go about this project. I know I need to start with my basic sketch, but I’m a massive perfectionist and tend to judge myself very quickly, so I’m a little stressed about a project like this. I have seven weeks to complete this project, giving me around two and a half weeks to complete each portrait which I believe should give me more than enough time to live up to my expectations of this project. If you're wondering why I’m doing a project that is going to bring me so much stress, it’s because I’ve recently discovered that family is very important to me and being an immigrant, I don’t really get to see my family as well as I’m not as close to them as I would like to be. So my initial thought for this project was to create a piece about humanity, surrounded by the idea of being human. Still, as I got to thinking, I realized that I wanted to do something that would mean something to other people but that it would mean something to me. There is no better way to show humanity than by how much they have evolved over decades of the world changing. Overall I'm very nervous but excited simultaneously; I really want to see what the final product will look like. There will be many challenges along the way, but I think I’m ready for anything. I have a good idea, and I just want to make something I can be proud of, so hopefully, it will all work out in the end. It’s no secret that goals are hard to keep. Anyone who has ever tried to make a difference in their lives has started by setting goals and things to achieve, but when it comes to keeping them, that's when the struggle begins. I am very impressed by people’s ability to achieve their goals. I set my goals earlier in the school year, and if I’m honest, I wasn’t very good at keeping them, but today I'm selecting new ones and hopefully, with a little more willpower, I will be able to achieve them.
It’s no secret that I don’t like to read, and honestly, it’s because I’m not very good at it, and I don’t like struggling with something that should be very simple and straightforward. I know that reading is an essential part of my learning. I know that if I never actually sit down and read, I'll never get any better at it, so one of my goals this semester is to read more and improve my reading abilities. I plan to set aside at least ten minutes every day for reading. I want to start with short periods because I also know that I have a short attention span, so I want to keep it real for myself. I want to start this goal specifically now because I know that we will be reading and doing a novel study later this year, and I would like to comprehend what I’m reading without much struggle. This is a long-term goal because even after the year is over, I want to get more into reading and read more rigid material. I will try to increase the amount of time I read in a day when I'm more comfortable with books, and that’s how I know I'm making progress. Another thing that is very well known about me is that I am a relatively shy and introverted person, which is one reason I struggle a lot with public speaking. I know that it's impossible to go through life without making a single presentation ever; I was just dreaming it was. So my other goal for this semester is to get more comfortable with public speaking. I'm not saying I will be perfect because I’m a realistic person, but I can at least try to feel like I’m not going to faint every time I get in front of a big group of people. It’s challenging to be completely comfortable with public speaking, especially when you’re like me. I’m going to achieve this by first becoming more comfortable around bigger groups of people and my classmates in general. I’m also going to talk to more people because when I know more about the people I’m talking to, it makes me feel more secure. I have a big presentation in VAM coming up soon, so I would like to complete my goal by that time. I won’t know I’ve made progress until my actual presentation, but hopefully, I will. I believe I’ve chosen these goals well because I know that these are things I’ve always struggled with and have always wanted to fix. I know that keeping these goals will be no easy task, but I will try my hardest. Life is full of things we would like to improve upon, so I know that these goals are essential, but let’s be honest, nobody has ever been able to fully achieve all their goals because there is always something new to work towards. I know I didn’t do great the first time around; I believe this was because of how hard it is to find the motivation to do things nowadays; hopefully, that won’t get in the way this time. Goals will always be challenging because if they were easy, we would have achieved them a long time ago. When watching the video, Rip: A Remix Manifesto, at first I was a little confused about the initial idea of the video but as I got further into the video I started to understand it. As the world evolved into the age of technology it became a lot more difficult for artists to have their creations acknowledged, especially musicians, that is where copyright came in because if they were going to work hard to produce music but weren’t getting paid for it then it was just unfair. I believe that their reasoning behind doing this is justified but I also believe that copyleft people are also just trying to ensure that ideas can be exchanged without having to worry about a big lawsuit especially for people that can’t afford it. If there is one thing that definitely stuck with me was the Remixer’s Manifesto: “ culture always builds on the past, the past always tries to control the future, our future is becoming less free, to build free societies you must limit the control of the past”. As well as this quote from a Brazilian man: “ originality is when you mix two things that haven’t been mixed.”
I wouldn’t say I’m either copyright or a copyleft because as much as I believe that people should be free to use other people's work to improve their work or even as inspiration especially since in a world that has been around for ages it has become nearly impossible to create something completely original. I also believe that artists deserve a certain right to their work and should be acknowledged for creating it. But I also believe that copyright takes things to the extreme as it means that we will all commit copyright fraud at least once in our lifetime, just by singing happy birthday we’re going against copyright laws because happy birthday doesn’t belong to the public domain. The only reason copyright laws are so complicated is that humans only care about money, the human race is greedy and selfish and as much as we create wonderful things we tend only care about ourselves, not the rest of humankind, not anyone or anything else in the world; and I’m not saying that all humans are bad but we aren’t as free to create anymore because of laws that we have created and we don’t have anyone else to blame but ourselves, we trapped ourselves because we were creative and that wasn’t right for the corporal minds in the world. When it comes to the idea of the relationship between media production and media consumption you can’t have one without the other. The more media production the more media consumption because people get bored easily so the more there is of one thing to keep you entertained the more time you’ll spend doing that thing like listening to music, people listen to music to pass the time because with music you can dance or sing or even have it a s background noise so that you don’t get bored doing work or an assignment for school. But not everyone likes the same type of music so music industries and artists create a lot of music in a lot of different genres so that people keep listening. On the other hand there is a limit to how much a person can create but the more media consumption the more it enables for more media production. Visual artists use other artists' work all the time but there is always a limit. As I have stated before it is nearly impossible to create something completely original which is why artists tend to take inspiration from other artists, take Pinterest for example an app that was created for the sole purpose of bringing inspiration to other artists as well as displaying your art in the process, everyone knows that when you post something on Pinterest there is always a chance another artist could try to recreate it or use it to create something similar. Artists even use references all the time especially when creating portraits and there is no issue with this because all artists need some inspiration when creating a masterpiece. But there is a point where everyone has to say that's enough because there is a difference between taking some elements from another person's work and plagiarism. Personally as an artist one of my greatest fears is to copy another artist's work which is why i'm always careful with my references and the places i take my inspiration from because I never want to take another person's work that they probably worked really hard on and probably spend a lot of time on and pass it as my own. It's no secret that I'm not good at setting goals for myself, either I forget about them and don’t go through with them or I just don’t know where to start or how to set a proper goal for myself. This is why when it came to writing my S.M.A.R.T. goals for this year it became a challenge. This year we had to come up with two goals, one for VAM academy and the other for our personal life, when I heard this, I thought no problem, how hard could it possibly be, but then I started to think about what my goals should actually be and I couldn’t come up with anything, especially for my personal life.
I thought about these goals for as long as I could, which wasn’t much because we had a due date on coming up with our goals. Originally I thought that I could make one of my goals about soccer because my indoor soccer season is starting soon, so maybe I could start training and improve my insurance for running so that I could improve my soccer skills. But then I realized that my soccer season is starting sooner than expected, so my goal wasn’t achievable in that time limit. So, I was back to the beginning. I thought that this time I would start with my academy goal. My goal for academy this year is to improve my painting skills, this has been something I've been meaning to work on for quite a while now, and I thought there's no better time to do that than now that I'm in VAM. I plan on working on my painting abilities on a small panel canvas every weekend hopefully for the next 4 months. I hope to use what I learn in VAM about art as a good stepping stone for my goal, and by the end of the 4 months, I want to paint one of my bigger paintings putting to the test some of the skills that I’ve learned by then. I’ll know that I have achieved my goal if by the end of the 4 months I'm happy with most of my paintings and I have improved some of my skills and techniques. I do hope that I will be able to keep up with this goal and that hopefully even after the 4 months I’ll get in the habit of painting more often or even working on some of other skills in art, like my digital art (which I have also been meaning to work on, but I don’t have a computer at the moment so I can’t really work on it). Anyway, with my academy goal out of the way I was still struggling with my personal goal. So I decided that I would keep it simple, something that I could hopefully easily achieve. When I was trying to come up with my goal I thought about what was it in my life that I could probably improve. Was there any little thing that I needed to work on? So I settled on drinking more water, which should be something that we all do on a daily basis but if you think about it, something as simple as drinking water is overlooked by a lot of people and when it comes to myself specifically, I have never been good at drinking water. I will normally choose any other drink except for water unless I have to. On a regular basis I think I would only drink around just one water bottle a week and that is definitely not healthy. I would get dehydrated easily and suffer dizzy spells often, but recently I decided to start drinking more water so I decided that could be one of my goals since it’s definitely something I need to do. I will start slowly by just maybe drinking one bottle of water a day (which might not seem like a lot but for someone like me it is) and then I will make my way by maybe drinking just half a water bottle more a day each week. I will know I have achieved my goal when drinking water hopefully becomes second nature and I’ll probably not be dehydrated anymore. I know that setting goals is an important thing in life, but I don’t think I only speak for myself when I say that actually keeping your goals isn’t easy,.on’t believe me? Then take a look back to New Year's a time where we all set resolutions( goals) on what we hope to achieve during the year ,and if you can confidently say that you have stuck to that resolution then I’ll believe you’re good at setting goals, but I know most people aren’t as much as we want to say we are. In the end, I know that my personal and academy goals are worth keeping and I’ll do my best to actually do them but I would be fooling myself if I didn’t say that there will be times where I forget about them. I guess we’ll see how it goes. |
AuthorJust a high school student making a blog Archives
January 2023
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