$5=Dionaea muscipula (Venus flytrap)

So I was walking through Farmer’s market with my mom and look!! I bought a dionaea muscipula. Isn’t it cute? I never took care of a plant before (I don’t even take care of Mickey that much! horrible I know..). My mom thought I was crazy (: The lady told me all I need to do is give it sunlight and water and eventually it’ll get bigger and bigger, oh yes!! Something so precious for only $5? <3

The Radio Protector -65days

A couple of the many, many sketches:

The final project:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jxvy7W9bqo  
Radio Protector- 65daysofstatic

I absolutely loved this project. For this project, we had to pick a song that was nonlyrical and create a 2D artwork that represents the song but it had to be abstract (no symbol, nothing recognizable), black&white, materials: gesso, ink, charcoal, graphite. When Lee first introduced this project, I had so many songs in my head but Radio Protector was the first in line. I chose this song because it has three different stages but the piano is about exactly the same all through the music and because it’s amazing :]. To me, this was one of the many projects that if you thought way too hard, it’ll make it very messy and hard to follow, especially following my song. 
     There were times when I got frustrated because I didn’t know if I was reading it wrong and I had so, so, many ideas I wanted to use.. something like that. But I drew what I felt the music would look like. I used ink just because I love the medium and I understand it better than the rest (I also used gesso and charcoal). The song was long so I decided to make the width lot longer than the height, emphasizing it. My favorite part of the artwork is the one in the middle with all the splashes representing the drums and each block, piano notes. 
     What I learned from this project was being able to understand visual language.. not just by my own eyes but also trying to understand the artist and how he/she understands it (during the critic review). I also like knowing what the audience felt through it and how they interept things. If I could go back and do this project again.. I wouldn’t! I’m satisfied with the outcome.

Google images Mylar

Just my luck!!
I don’t know where my mylar drawing went
and for some reasons hobbylobby & michaels don’t have mylar. but whatever

This project was okay? I didn’t get anything at all from it.. just bunches of layering and trying to fit it into one composition and trying to blend the images to match the tone, i think. I felt that we were given way too much time to do this project, one studio day for tracing everything.. That’s a lot of time. I didn’t see any challenge in this either. I guess I trace faster than most but knowing me and art, I do things a lot faster subconsciously. Anyways, I didn’t understand much and it was just kinda not really a project to me but just tracing since I personally didn’t learn anything.

Google images “STAR”

Google images: searched for “star”.

Diebenkorn Credit cards

(My scanner isn’t working for some reasons and my mom took my car this morning so therefore I had to take pictures of it..) Credit card sketches of our Diebenkorn-like. I personally don’t understand much of why we do this.. because after all for our Google mylar project we didn’t have to use our sketches but the actual printed photography, since we had to trace it, but that was just for me. But the most that I can get out of it is that the sketches makes it more simple and not having to focus so much on the details?

Diebenkorn-gboro

We had to take 10 Diebenkorn-like photos of Greensboro (b&w). I didn’t like taking these kind of pictures.. I didn’t even use them when we started our Google images mylar project because 1) I didn’t know we had to print it 2) I didn’t know we had to bring them. I think I was absent (sick!!!!!) the class before. I borrowed my friend’s camera so that was the fun part.

Books!

 

 We had to pick random five books from the library and make notecards that represents it. It was time consuming but I absolutely didn’t mind, at all! All the books except one were either depressing, serious, or the authors had a hard life. Although most of the books weren’t all happy, it was positive in its own way. I wanted to protray what the books were about, by meaning I didn’t want to add humor, sugarcoat it, etc especially for Lead Pencil, Polish Short Stoires, and Bells in Winter. I’m sure the authors were very serious when writing these books, especially knowing what they all went through in their lifetime!  For Expressive Japanese, it was all about expressing your feelings in Japanese through everyday conversations in different situations (examples: “I’m inlove with you but my parents won’t let me marry you”, “Should I go to school today?”, “Give me a ride to the grocery store”). This main reason why I chose this book was because I’m part Japanese (but I like being Korean) so it was fun reading this book, though I doubt I’ll ever go through those kind of conversations. I learned all sorts of words and sentences, it impressed my parents (: I didn’t scan Beyond Good and Evil? and the insert since everyone already saw that.. The book Beyond Good and Evil? was my least favorite because I never been excited or into politics but just reading the introductory part, I learned so much about how simple words from the president can change just about anything/everything. It was the strongest book out of the five.
     If you’re lurking around, I hope you enjoy these cards and feel the same aura I felt about the books. I didn’t want to put back the cards in the books because I worked so hard but I felt like I should..

     Honestly this project is the one I’m most proud of.

Diebenkorn drawings

It wasn’t too hard trying to find this drawing out of everyone since I remembered the score (haha). This was so much fun, even though I was quite sick for the longest time ever! I was never good at chess/checker (I don’t remember which one is which). But other than that, it was great meeting Leslie and having fun while losing. I felt this project wasn’t about PLAYING chess.. I felt this project forced me to look at my mistakes or maybe I’m thinking too hard. Lee really wanted us to press on the charcoal really really hard so it’ll be incredibly dark. So I also thought the purpose of the project was to understand tone as well.

This was all kinds of fun and craziness and frustration! I enjoyed this project because I sat at another table (not that I don’t love my original seating) and met new classmates. My partner was Leslie. It was crazy and at some point I was frustrated because I was sick and I guess because the picture didn’t look exactly like the original artwork.

As said before, this project made me think a lot! I never really worked with charcoal, except in high school. And to be honest, eversince this project, I actually like using charcoal! My partner and I switched places everynow and then so both our insights were drawn on the artwork. One thing I learned from this project is that even though me and Leslie are both looking at one, same, original artwork, we are thinking of how to draw it in our own ways, if that makes any since. It was difficult trying to ”copy” the original artwork but during the process I understood how to use charcoal more and the tones of it. 

 But I had loads of fun, which matters the most. heh.

2d wood floor sculptures

We had to choose a certain amount of wood blocks and create 2d floor sculptures. I’d name the classmates that was in my group if I knew the names.. I’m sorry. In this project we layered blocks of woods. The purpose of this was to create composition of some sort. I didn’t like this project too much. I guess it was because I didn’t really get a lot out of it. And I also guess it was because my creativity-level wasn’t the same as everyone else. I just couldn’t think so creative about arranging wood blocks. Every group was so creative which drived my inspiration/motivation to be more creative.. I tried.

plexiglass layering paper sculpture

I think I would of liked this project more if we weren’t limited with colors and had more time to think.. but then again that was the challenge of the project. In my group it was Ali and Erica. We chose random colors and tried to work it all together. Someone said it reminded them of Saved by the Bell (TV show) and it does! haha but it wasn’t our intention, I don’t remember (it was awhile ago!). I wished I enjoyed this project more because I loved the idea of using glass and layering, giving more depth into it. So I didn’t have too much fun, but I learned how much effect layering can do. If only we had more time to experience more, maybe next time.