Paris Attack Artwork

Mrs. Rose assigned us a task asking us to find artworks responding to the Paris attacks that happened on the evening of November 13th, 2015, killing at least 128 people. I was extremely shocked to hear about this tragedy as I am sure many people around the world were too. Immediately, people started using hashtags such as #PrayForParis #PortOuverte and #jesuisParis to show their support for Paris. Social media outlets such as Facebook created a filter of the Paris flag to put over your profile picture and Tumblr changed their icon to show sympathy for Paris. Also, major cities such as Toronto, New York, London, Washington, etc. lit up their famous tourist attractions with the colours, blue, white & red to show their respect for the lives lost that night.

This made me wonder why this type of reaction didn't occur when the same thing happened a couple of days before in Lebanon when there was two suicide bombings in the capital, Beirut, or anywhere in the Middle East for that matter. The media was not nearly as responsive to these attacks as it was to those in France.

So I chose this art piece as a response to the crisis. 

Jerameel Lu is a very talented pencil artist & posted this image to show his disapproval of the media's response to the tragic attacks in Paris. He wrote on his Facebook page, "this piece is only against the almost unequal treatment of the world media on every terrorism attack." The world media only focussed on the attacks in Paris when the same thing happens in the Middle East on a daily & there's no filter on Facebook to show support, or no alternation on the Spotify front page or special hashtags used. Where's the international outrage? When it happens in those countries it’s a page 8 news in a C list newspaper, when it happens in Western countries it’s front page for years and years to come, and there are anniversaries for it. It just doesn't seem right to me.

#prayfortheworld

You are a book

Our first project this semester was to create a book that represents you. At first I was going to create a book that showed all my interests, favourite songs, quotes & movies, but I thought this idea was too plain, so I talked to my art teacher and we discussed some possible ideas of what a book can really be. After we talked about it, I decided to go with making a sketch book and sketch different drawings of the different times in my life. Since I'm not exactly comfortable with sharing my personal life with other people, I thought I would make the sketches symbolic to represent each part of my life. To help me with deciding what to sketch, I kept thinking "if I needed to get a tattoo to symbolize each time period, what would that tattoo be?" So this made me really think hard and decide what I should draw. 

Here are my sketches:

 

Series Idea

My idea for this project is to get three canvases and paint one picture using all three canvas.

My inspiration for this project came from a picture I found on Google that I thought looked super neat!

Here's the picture:

I am thinking of painting a sunset for the background and blending it into each canvas. I'm still deciding on which colors to use for the sunset, but this will help me with my blending technique. Once i have my background done, I think i'm going to paint a silhouette of some sort in the foreground. 

Salvadore Dali Response

When I watched this video, I was really confused as to why Salvador Dali would say such a thing, because he is an amazing painter. I think what Salvador Dali really meant when he said this was that intelligent people go too into depth when seeing or thinking about something. Therefore, they have too much going on in their mind and are not able to produce a beautiful piece of artwork because they overthink it. And someone who is a bit "stupid" is able to create a great piece of artwork because they don't think about it. It comes mainly from their imagination.

Salvador Dali, is an incredible painter. He should give himself more credit, and use a better choice of words when explaining why he's a good painter.

JR Art Analysis

When I typed "JR art" into Google images, this picture immediately caught my eye. There are so many different displays of women's eyes/facial expressions. This project by JR is called "Women Are Heroes", and celebrates the heroism of women living through hardship. JR's intentions for this project was to focus on the crucial roles that women endure in societies, and who find themselves victims of street crime, wartime, sexual assault, and religious and political injustice. This project takes place in Brazil, India, Africa, and Cambodia.

"I was interested in women because I realized in the projects I'd done before – most of the time in the kind of places I was going to – it was men on the street, but it's actually the women who are the ones holding the community together." - JR

What I really like about this artwork is how each woman shows a different expression and their eyes tell a different story. You can tell many things through a person's eyes whether it be happiness, sadness, or anger. The women in the photographs all show these various emotions, and have encountered many personal burdens.

JR's artworks always send a powerful message.

Here are more pictures from this project:

Lucas Blalock Analysis

In class, Mrs. Rose showed us a video about an "artist" named, Lucas Blalock. She also asked us write down what we thought about his art work on a sticky note.

Here's what I wrote:

I think Lucas Blalock's artwork is quite strange, I honestly don't think his art should be considered valid artwork. Basically, all Lucas does is use basic Photoshop tools, such as the eraser tool, brush tool, and clone stamp to modify pictures and calls it "art". I personally think that his pictures don't look very nice, Lucas just takes random objects out of his pictures, and adds lines and scribbles. Anyone can take a picture and scribble on it and call it art.

Keith Haring Response

"I am me. I may look like you, but if you take a closer look you will realize that I am nothing like you at all. I am very different. I see things through a completely different perspective because in my life I had experiences that you didn’t have, and I had feelings you didn’t have, and I’ve lived places and seen places and experienced life from a completely different point of view than you have. I may be wearing the same shoes and the same haircut, but that gives you no right to have any preconceived notions about what I am or who I am." - Keith Haring


I strongly believe in Keith Haring's statement about individuality. Everyone has their own personal experiences and should have the right to express whatever it may be in their own way. For example, no one should be limited to one specific idea of what art should be. People have different backgrounds and experiences that they are able to express through art. So telling someone there is only one right way of art limits their individuality.

Also, every person sees, thinks and learns differently. If you give someone who is a verbal learner a piece of paper with visuals and examples but don't take the time to explain what you just gave them, it could leave the person confused and frustrated. Not everyone learns at the same pace or at the same level, but that doesn't make them any less smarter than the person sitting beside them. Everyone has their own unique way of understanding and learning. So how could someone test a bunch of different individuals and expect to get the same level of results from everyone? That's because you can't.

Our individual personalities makes us who we are, and makes our position in the world special.

Criticism

Mrs. Rose showed us a video in class about an art teacher who had no background information on his students' art work, but he would still explain the meaning of the art as if it were his own. It was really interesting to see the descriptions he came up with.

What does this tell us about the importance of context?

This tells us that it is important to have some knowledge or background of the context to be able to fully understand. Otherwise, we would just be judging the artwork only on appearance alone, which would make it hard to appreciate the true art piece.

How would you feel if Gabriel discussed one of your artworks using the Mirror Crit?

I think it would be really interesting to see Gabriel criticize one of my art works because his opinions were very genuine and honest. Although his criticism could be offensive at times, I would also use it as constructive criticism, and apply it to my next art work. I don't think I would like for someone else to interpret my art work because I would want people to know the true meaning behind my art, and not base it on what someone else thinks.

Do you understand your own work well enough to have it criticized? 

I believe I understand my own work very well, because I normally don't paint or draw anything with a deep meaning behind it. Most of the inspiration for my artworks come from things that I already saw, such as an outdoor scenery at camp. 

What would you learn by having your work criticized?

By having my artwork criticized, I would get to hear other people's opinions on what part of my artwork they liked the most and what they liked the least. This would help because I would use this constructive criticism to improve my future artworks. 

 

Pottery

This year in art class, I decided I wanted to try working with new materials. The first thing that came to mind was pottery since I have never experimented with it before. After kneading the clay, I went to straight to the wheel and started on my project. I knew what I wanted to create, because Christmas was soon approaching, and I wanted to make something for my grandma that would be useful. Since my grandma is a smoker, I thought I would make her an ash tray, because not only could she use it everyday, but it was also something fairly easy that I could make. This is how the ash tray turned out after it was put in the kiln and glazed.

Japan Art Mile

In our class, we are doing a collaborative project with Japan. The theme of this project is to paint half of a mural with what we want to leave as our legacy while Japan does the other half. When Japan sent the mural, they also sent a box full of treats and other goodies. Many of the treats were green tea flavoured which I thought was super cool because Canada doesn't have those types of candy. My favourite treat in particular was the green tea Pocky sticks. They were delicious.

For the start of the project, we had to sketch ideas of what we thought would look good on the mural. For my sketches, I chose to draw outdoor sceneries and Canadian wildlife.

Since I chose not to work on the mural, I decided I would work with Somre on a painting of our own. We started with brainstorming ideas of what we thought we should paint. Since we liked the totem pole in one of her sketches, we thought it should be in our painting. 

We did a quick sketch of a sunset, teepee, bear, totem pole, and bird.

Next, we painted a rough copy of our idea. I painted the background and teepee while Somre sketched the totem pole and bird. We didn't end up painting the bear, because we thought the painting would look too cluttered.

Finally, we did our good copy of the painting. We went with an aboriginal theme for this paining by adding a teepee, totem pole, and eagle, since that is part of our legacy. I am very pleased with how our painting turned out.

Cross Curricular

For our cross curricular art assignment, we had to pick another class that we are in, (other than art, obviously) and create a piece of art work that represents the class we chose. For me, I decided to pick biology because it's one of my favourite subjects in school. I had to brainstorm different ideas of what I wanted to do, and I ultimately came up with the idea of drawing a basic illustration of how the cardiovascular system works. I started off by drawing a character that looked like it would be in a children's book, then drew a simple diagram of the heart and labeled it. 

I like how the finished look turned out.