I got into the work I did because of the assignment list, some of the work I enjoyed more than others. for example, I hated the self portraits, but I loved the choice art work. This quarter, my goal was to do work that I enjoyed and have fun while doing it. Last quarter, I tried to do all my work and just get it done and over with. But, this quarter, I just wanted to enjoy my artwork for what it was, which is why I didnt complete al of my assignments. I felt as though me enjoying my work, and putting my best work out was more important than rushing though and not being proud of what I was doing. In essence, quality was more important than quantity.
During the course of my work, I make decisions as I go. If I feel as though I need to use a charcoal pencil instead of a graphite pencil, then I switch . If i feel as though I need to use a marker in a pastel drawing, I will ask Emma, or just go with the flow and either love it or regret it later. I always use the same type of paper, but when I choose my themes, I have a very awesome technique . I put the thought in my mind of what I am suppose to come up with as a finished product, and then I start with a pencil, and just go to town with that piece of paper. My goal for next quarter is to not oly get all of my sketches and drawings finished, but to also enjoy my work.
Although I am not working on anything right now, I am always thinking about how I can transfer my thoughts, emotion, and inner self into my artwork. I want to be able to transfer me emotions into my artwork, but for people to be able to appreciate and understand it.
A poetry book by Eryn James
There’s no gorgeousness in guts,
No elegance in intestines,
No loveliness in lungs,
I'm ugly,
This is not what I look like
I wear these rags called skin so you people can't judge what
matters,
Although you say you don't,
I feel your judgment unpleasantly trickle down my spin,
I feel those eyes like broken glass piercing my bones,
Don't judge what matters,
Judge this body,
This face,
These limbs,
These cloths
But my insides are delicate,
One quick tongue can cause earthquakes in my ribcage,
My bones have become brittle,
I used to give away my organs like sunshine,
To be used as homes for the egos of boys who only knew how to love
painfully,
I used to suffer so that I could feel necessary,
So much hate and misery has tumbled down my insides,
My heart now made a jigsaw puzzle,
My lungs smoky from the disaster of my pride being ripped from the
walls of my esophagus,
I've been broken,
To be reassembled by duct tape and plaster,
Explaining why I can only love in pieces,
Elucidating on why I’ve decided to not further occupy my bones,
Some days I feel like if I love,
My whole body
will shatter into insignificant shards of a faceless woman.
Tell Him
If I can have just a moment of your
time,
I'd like to ask you of a favor,
See there's this boy,
Who deserves a lot more than he's
bargaining for,
And I think I can help him,
Could you just tell him?
There is no need for him to hide his
feelings from me,
He doesn't have to shackle his emotions
in the chambers of his heart,
No need to stand in the shadows,
I promise to take good care of him,
I promise to make bad memories fade,
There's love here,
There's honesty,
And trust here,
I don't want him to be scared,
Tell him not to be afraid to be
vulnerable with me,
Tell him to shed his skin and become
flesh with me,
I swear I wont steal from him,
I wont take his heart and leave his
cavities bare,
Tell him I'm not like those blood
seeking creators he once called girlfriends,
Having no hearts of their own,
They stole bits of his,
Instead,
I will give him everything I have,
The last breathe in the basement of my
lungs if he needs it,
And ask for nothing in return,
Even though he feels unworthy of sincere
affection,
I will lace my love around his neck like
diamonds,
He deserves me,
Tell him that he deserves me,
He deserves salvation,
I will be his salvation,
Tell him just because his heart has been
crushed,
Doesn't mean that I can’t be amazed at
how beautiful broken can be,
Everyone has their own understanding of
an abstract being,
To me,
He fell apart gorgeously,
Tell him I adore his brokenness,
I know he wasn't built to be perfect,
But he's amazing just the way he is,
A man with such a beautiful,
Honest soul,
Little patches of impurity,
But he's human,
And I'm a little upset that he thinks
he's found his backbone in wrinkled bed sheets wreaking of a cacophony of
forgettable one-night stands and girls perfumes,
Tell him I'm unique,
I promised I'd be waiting,
And I am a woman of my word,
I hope this truth descends onto his
ears,
But if it doesn't,
Promise me you'll tell him.
She, Moon
Dark,
Shadows gone,
Cloaking all,
She,
Be Guidance,
Be Blackness,
Be Scary,
Be Nice,
Her skin,
Blankets all,
Stands guard before man,
She be tough,
She be rough,
But smooth on eyes,
She is moon,
She always there but always away,
I neglect her,
Eclipse her,
Not there but not invisible,
I will wait,
Catch up with her on her next cycle,
When her insecurities can’t stand between eyes and she,
When daylight
doesn't scare her away.
I Was Born
I was born of Philly,
Of the neighborhood homeless man,
Of philosophy,
Of never sprouted roses afraid to bloom in spring,
Of soul food,
Of "down south" in my kitchen,
Of my brothers recording freestyles on cell phones aspiring to be
the hottest thing out of Philly
Of fear,
Of broken homes and broken family but family none the less,
I was born of hatred,
Of soft screams in distant bedrooms,
Of shushing,
Of secrets stowed under my breasts,
Of breaths,
Of strength
Of will power
Of crisis
I was born of G Clefs and music notes
Of pictures and cd covers
Of portraits
Of tattoo scriptures at 14
Born of tears and memories
Born of sorrow
Of joy
Born of best friends and betrayal
Of summer time and newness
Of leading and leaders
Of the dry tape that was supposed to be strong enough to hold a
mother-daughter bond in place
Of the cement that never set to hold a childhood together
Of sisters and brothers
Of porches on sticky summer nights
Of street lights
Of pity-pat card games for quarters
Of poverty
Of my siblings distant dads
Of my father
Of cartoons and fairy tales
Of reality
Of the gap between now and forever.
Of never ending
arguments with big sisters
I was born of
the future and impact the past has shed on it,
I was born of
creations,
Dear Dad,
Somethings been telling me to write you a poem lately.
I’ve been running from my testimony on the person you are for me
ever since puberty.
Maybe it’s because some days I don’t remember why I love you so you
much,
Maybe it’s because all the reasons your so important to me have been
stifled underneath my teenage years,
But something is telling me it’s time,
Dad I know you are no hero,
Your simply a man with enough regrets and mistakes to fill a grave
yard,
I understand that you never meant to hurt me my sisters or my mom,
And that you just realized that life was too short to sit in one
place for a long time,
But we wanted to live too,
And I’ll be honest,
When I was younger,
And stricken with the fear of my friends finding out that you didn’t
have the super man complex that I allowed my imagination to design you with,
I tried to shovel enough miles in the middle of our relationship so
that I wouldn’t have to face the truth,
But now,
I’m growing up and learning that despite other peoples judgement of
you
We have an unbreakable camaraderie and kinship that other people
might not comprehend,
It’s funny how you never told me what type of man I should look to
marry,
And I just thought that I’d want him to be just like you,
But I didn’t fully understand who you were,
But then,
Someone told me that when they looked at you they saw the definition
of a real man,
They said the way you carry yourself is the way only a man can,
With your Adonis like build and Zeus like mentality,
I want my husband to exist like you,
But something told me that if i said that to you,
You’d disagree and tell me how hard your life is,
I know that life is hard dad,
And there’s not a day that goes by that i don’t think about how much
pain you have to dwell in,
I know that the pain I have to encounter to write a poem will never
equate to the agony of post dialysis treatments,
But I don’t know why Allah choose you to carry this sickness,
That some days forces you to feel like tomorrow isn’t even worth the
trip,
But on days when your rationality skills are lacking I am willing to
give up my sanity to deliver you salvation,
Because I have no idea what kind of cataclysmic behavior I will
display when your gone,
I owe you,
And their isn’t any amount pens in this world that I could milk the
ink out of to repay you,
I know what you sacrificed for me dad,
Copy A Master
5 photos:
I chose these 5 photos because I thought they
were the best out of all of the 200 photos. I thought my lighting was good, my
angle was good, I thought where I took the picture made it more admirable.
Clear object:
This was the same assignment as last quarter accept this clear object
had to be bigger than the last. For this clear object I chose to do a clear
vase because I wanted to mix it up a bit to see what I was cable of doing.
I thought the vase was
harder than the regular glass because making the actual vase shape was
difficult, because a vase shape is awkward. The outline is straight but yet
there’s that little curve that I always got wrong. Also the vase had two
circles at the bottom of it so I tried to separate one circle from the other so
it didn’t look like 2 random circles in a vase. To make the picture come alive
I also tried to add white in the picture so it would look like the sun is
reflecting on the object, and would make it look like actual glass.
From my current work I
believe the last clear object was easier, because I didn’t have to outline the
exotic shape of a vase. But overall I am still proud of my work.
Edit Photos:
I chose to edit these photos because I
thought out of all of my photos these were the ones that needed work. The
pictures that I took were wonderful, but some of them were to dark to even see
that it was a photo so I decided to put them into photo booth and see what I
could do.
As I edited the photos I realized there were a lot you could
work with, but I pretty much just focused on making the photos look like actual
pictures. And on some I just changed the format of the photo, which I realized
was enough to make it look like the way I wanted it to.
From my current experience of working with
photo shop, I believe I was ok with it, but now I realized that you can do a
lot more on photo shop than just changing the size of the photo. The hardest
part about this assignment was figuring out how I should make the photo,
because there were so many things I could do with the picture.
The ocean:
I chose to draw the ocean
because I like the way the blues would go from lights to darks and darks to
lights. It looked like a fun challenge that I was really excited to do.
Throughout
this project I used pastels, because I figured that it would be easier to blend
the colors and create nice fades. But as you can see for the top layer of the
ocean I chose to do a dark blue that would separate the surface of the water
from the bottom of the ocean. To separate both of the blues I added white to the
top layer to make it look like the reflection from the sun, and the bottom I
just did a plane, simple light blue, which I blended with a little bit of
green. As I was going along doing this project instead of just doing a stroke
and rubbing all the colors together, I pretty much treated the pastel as a
marker and began filling in any white spots as much as I could. And for the
bottom of the paper and for the white I used a technique called cross checks I
believe its called which would make the picture look a little uneven so it
would look more realistic.
From
my current work I believe my progress has grown. I believe I have learned a lot
more about fading objects, and blending colors together. The most challenging
part about this project was making the ocean look real. I really wanted the
ocean to pop out of the picture, which was a very difficult thing to do.
For this project, what had to be done was finding a picture online that interested me and drawing it. This drawing was to be copied and mastered in order to make it look exactly like the original. For my drawing I felt as though my drawing looked like the one I chose.
For this assignment that I decided to do was "the persistence of memory" by Salvador Dali. The reason that I chose this picture was because I really felt like it was something that I was able to draw. I saw the picture as something that was very inspiring. My interpretation to this was that time is something that can either be used wisely or not. Throughout this assignment, I felt as though the time that I used for this assignment was not used as wisely as it could have been. It shows that a person has to persistence with their work as time passes by if not a person can end up taking long to do the things that have to be done and wasting time. I worked on this picture by first drawing it and then coloring it with coloring pencils. I attempted to shade this well, but although it wasn't my best piece of work it was the best I could in the moment with a limited amount of time. A future consideration that I would do is making sure that I shade better and use either oil pastels or paint the paper so that the color is more vibrant and looks better in terms of the shading and quality.
I largely focused on this assignment because I was a very camera shy person before this assignment. I decided that I wanted to take a challenge, therefore I decided not to omit this assignment. From the 200 photos I took, we were told to take 5 pictures and edit them. When editing these pictures I did different effects that would make my pictures look cool. Being so that I also wasn't good at editing this assignment was beneficial to learning how to do so. I didn't only take pictures of myself, considering that many of the pictures were of my surroundings as well. Since, I didn't like taking pictures before this project I decided to take 5 pictures of myself and edit them to put on the blog. The edits resembled my life and my feelings in some terms from the stages I went through throughout doing this work. Below I decided to post the before and after pictures.
