Sigh... Oh Art Class...Why Do You Hate Me So?

Sigh.... Journal what can I say? I actually don’t know. This entry may give a little insight into why I named this blog My Beautifully Twisted World. Well today we began to actually stipple our drawings with a pen. I shouldn’t probably say WE seeing as I didn’t have my drawing. Nope...Kyle Skerritt did not walk with his drawing. As usual I swear that I meant to pick it up; I even had my drawing pencil case with my mechanical pen in it. But today I decided to put my drawing and my picture in my art portfolio and carry that to school and I completely forgot to pick it up. Before I continue any further I actually just want to do a back-track on how many times that I’ve actually left my drawing materials home. I just finished checking…and awkwardly enough it seems that I’ve only forgotten my drawing utensils TWICE! You can check it for yourself if you want to make sure, but as far as I can tell I’ve only done it twice, THIS TIME INCLUDED. Well I’ll have to forget that for now I guess. Either way Miss informed me that she was “fed-up” of us always leaving home our materials most of the time (like I said, check it if you want and see for yourself) so she put me out of class for the two periods. So I stood there at the door for a long time and then she told me that she wanted me “out of her sight” and so I moved from the doorway and strayed down the Form 2 block a little and in front of the Form 2 block a little bit more. Finally, it was at the time that I realized that Miss was not giving notes or speaking to the class but merely checking everyone’s drawings at her front desk, so there was absolutely NO PURPOSE for me to be there. So I walked towards the basketball court. I stayed there a while and looked at some guys play football and then returned to my station at the door “out of sight” only to be informed that Miss was now making me write an account of where I’d been for all that time. I was obviously in trouble for keeping out of Miss’ sight. Well that was the not-so-good part of my art class (it isn’t always pretty) but on the other hand I did get a good idea of how I should go about doing my stippling by observing the other students. And as usual even if I didn’t get to do it in school I worked on it at my house. It is a long an gruelling process I must admit... especially for the darkest areas because there I had to make small dots very close together. Yes... it was frustrating. The splotches were caused by an ink spill but I think I worked around them pretty nicely.  You can see it here actually. By the way I think that my work sometimes looks a lot better when it’s done at home seeing as I’m not being rushed or being bothered (except for the splotches); Just an observation.

P.S. Don’t forget that I can’t draw.



So here it is... my stippling...with the ink blothces and all.



Stippling My (censored) Maybe I Should just SMILE.... :D..... :(

What is up journal? It’s me…you know…Kyle. I’m here Coming back to tell you the usual story of chaos and mishaps due to the ART PERIOD. Well like I promised the last time, today we did start our pen and ink drawings. However…I didn’t bring my pencil sketch to school. I had every intention of doing it but somehow when I was walking out my door I forgot my sketchpad and my photo at home. I actually don’t like saying forgot maybe the term ‘teleported itself out of my hands and into my room’ is a better name for it. But whether it teleported or was forgotten (we’ll go with teleported)  here I am sitting at my desk in school wondering how in the world I managed to neglect my drawing utensils when I so direly needed them today. The deed was done so it really didn’t make sense to fret over it. Miss gave us a little note on stippling.

Stippling

This is also known as pointillism and is the creation of tonal values using different quantities of dots, different spaces between each dot and the pressure with which these dots are created. I assumed that we’d be using this method when we were going to start drawing with a pen.



So once this note was given and I wrote it down I witnessed as the other students set about finishing their pencil sketches, getting expert advice from Miss and then doing the pen part of the sketch. Seeing as I didn’t do my drawing in school I will now proceed to leave my school environment and tell you what I did at home. Well first of all like I mentioned before it is extremely hard to grid your picture to your sketchpad paper. If there were twelve blocks on your paper and your picture just happened to be twelve centimetres long then, WHOPPI FOR YOU! But mine wasn’t like that; so I was in a serious mess for half an hour. When I finally came up with the right measurements to grid out my picture I proceeded to number the rows and columns like a chessboard. You would find this extremely helpful to do when drawing because you can get an EXACT sense of where everything goes as though they were co-ordinates on a map. After I did all of this I began drawing my uncle’s face. I started from the base go up to the ears and I then began working on the facial detail a little before I finally began working on the hair and hair line. But you know what irked me Journal? Do you really want to know what got right underneath my skin? Of course you do! Did you think I forgot that you love tormenting me by making me write in you? Anyway what got me annoyed was the fact that no matter how hard I tried or what angle I tried drawing it from… I could not draw my uncle’s one million dollars star boy smile. Now you have to admit… it is a nice smile right? EXACTLY! But leave it up to me, Kyle Skerritt, the anti-artist to mess it up. I got total for it though…as you can imagine…that was a complete surprise. But nonetheless I’m happy that I got the mark. Look at it for yourself, do you think I messed up?

 

So here's the pencil sketch that I drew(un-penned) once you look below this you can see the actual picture and compare them for yourself.

So as you see for yourself I definitely DID NOT capture the smile...come to think of it...I didn't capture A LOT of things...

Now here is just the example of the numbering that I was telling you about... and COINCIDENTALLY you can also see the mark that i received. Like I said for myself... WOW!!















 









This Was HORRID!! (23/05/11)

Well Journal, I telling yuh, de stress I does have to deal with some times seriously outrageous yuh know! Today we were supposed to start drawing using pen and ink, (I already know the look on your face… how in the world do you DRAW with a pen) it definitely wasn’t what we were taught when we were little. But no matter if I drew on a wall or on the TV with a PENCIL when I was 5 years old, today I was going to have to draw with a PEN! Well the first thing that you need to know is that a ballpoint pen and a mechanical pen are the best pens to use for ink drawings. This is simply because of the fact that they have free flowing ink and that is mainly what you want when drawing( imagine if yuh pen stick on yuh while yuh drawing yuh face… hard lucks for de fella that that happen to! Your face would probably come out looking like a shaky and blurred gorilla head). Miss asked us to bring a photo to school to draw, I brought my passport photo from when I was about 8 or 9 years old; little did I know that it was way too small. Miss told us that we had to grid our picture with the same amount of squares that we had on our sketchpad paper or to proportion (if I had 140 squares on my sketchpad paper I could either grid the picture into 70 squares or 280 squares but NOT into 71 squares).My sketchpad paper was gridded the night before and I now had to find a NEW photograph to use. Now as you’ve probably noticed (and if you haven’t then… WOW!) I didn’t actually start drawing anything today so really what I’m doing here is showing you guys the troubles that I faced and the ways that you might be able to avoid them. So I got a picture out of the school newspaper and began gridding that. Now the first thing that you want to do when gridding your picture is to know whether your downscaling it, enlarging it or putting the exact same number of squares. The last one is the easiest but that also depends on the size of the picture. So I tried doing this but I couldn’t get the exact proportion to enlarge it to, because the length was odd and the other was even. Also it was pretty hard to get the ratio correctly and find the right measurements on my ruler. What also really did not help me was the fact that my ruler is slightly bent and so my lines were being drawn slanted!! All in all, just remember what I’ve said here and know that I completely failed in my quest to grid my picture. Don’t worry the next journal entry will be all about what I did and how I drew the picture. So thank you for reading… and big balls!!(Just watched Wipe-out)

I CAN'T DRAW!! (pastel painting)

So today we began drawing a still life using pastel paints. Before you here about all of this important information Journal. Just remember… I CAN’T DRAW! I always feel the need to remind you of that just so whatever I say isn’t too surprising to you. I want to keep up with current events first. Remember that collage thing that I was telling you about? Well I completed it and named it The Setting Sun. Nice right, well I got 22 out of 25 for that one. Remember my still-life drawing? Well Miss checked that one and I got 17 out of 25 for that it. It was one big fail and you can see that for yourself. So now that we covered the recent events we can focus on today.

     Miss told us that there are two types of pastels, oil and chalk pastels. The one that I was to be working with was going to be chalk. She said that the best surface for working with pastels is a slightly rough surface to capture the particles and help the colours blend. She gave an example of this using a red and yellow chalk pastel. Just like she said the particles did blend to create orange but she also pointed out that there were some places in the shade where there was an optical illusion taking place, where one colour just covered the next to look like orange; it didn’t actually mix with it. Afterwards she did a quickie drawing to demonstrate how we should go about drawing our fruits. She mentioned that most all fruits have a hint of yellow in them so that would be our base colour. Afterwards she applied red to the yellow being careful to leave out the highlights. The shape of the apple was beginning to appear and she added hints of blue where there were supposed to be shadows mentioning also that it substituted black. After all of this I didn’t get enough time to finish my drawing in school so I have to finish it at home. You can see it right here actually. What do you think?

WARNING: Remember PLEASE that I don't have the ability to draw!!
For some reason I also get the feeling that oil pastels are really just crayon. They have the same type of application on paper even though the paper has been textured and the pastel collects in certain areas just like a child's drawing tool. Maybe oil pastel is just a fancy way of saying CRAYON.

Collage and Still- Life (it tasted great!)

Greetings once again my journal. Keeping to my promise that I made yesterday, I’m writing in you at the soonest chance that I got; after chemistry home-work and Spanish revision was finished. Today in art class we drew a still-life just as Miss had on the agenda. Before we actually go down to business Miss gave us the definition of collage and she also gave us a few tips to help us while making a collage.

Collage

A collage consists of using materials not usually associated with each other and sticking them onto a flat surface, to create a composition.

Here's my collage ( it's supposed to be a setting sun) just in case it wasn't clear

I thought that this was pretty hard to do if that is what it meant I had to do. It basically means that in a collage I should use pieces of pipe with pages from an old magazine; use materials totally in contrast from each other. Or at least that’s what I took it to mean.

Back to the still-life, I chose an apple as my still-life which surprisingly came as a challenge to draw. I really wasn’t expecting it to be so intricate but, as usual, that’s what drawing is about. We started at around 11:00 a.m. and Miss told us to stop drawing at 11:35 a.m.  Things to remember about drawing are to always discern where your light is coming from. Also when you are shading a circular object you should be mindful not to shade as straight lines bout rather in 360 degrees circles so as to not stray away from the true nature of the object and to give it a proper three-dimensional look. Another thing that Miss reminded us about was that when our outlines for our drawings are too dark and sharp looking we should soften them by lightly passing an eraser over the outline.


And this is my Still-life apple and like I said... it tasted great after I drew it.



Thursday 26th April (Back to Work)

Hello Journal. You know what I like to think about you and I. I hate you and you have absolutely no feelings for me… that kind of makes me your enemy but that also makes you my carefree non- opinionated friend. So in the end we’re friends I guess. I don’t really have much to talk about today seeing as this is the first Art class of Term 3. Miss gave us our agenda for the term. She told us about things like pen and ink drawings, still-life… oh! That was it; I forgot that we were pretty surprised in class when we found that out. I didn’t particularly like my performance last term so that’s why I’m planning to do everything early, on-time and with my best effort. Which is why everyday that I have art I’ll make sure to set aside some time to write in this journal on the same day; that is actually the important part about that plan. Not waiting for the closing of the term to write a whole journal seems like a positive way to start my plan of E.O.T.B.E.

Welcome to my work

Hello people, ladies gentlemen, boys, girls, animals, aliens. Whoever is reading this I say welcome. You are now reading my first blogpost on my blog which is named right above this post so I won't mention it (that's right, just direct your eyes upwards it's not that hard). Anyways the origin of this blog came as a result of my Art class in Hillview College becuase my teacher requested it. Hence if you see alot of journal entries at this site, at least you know why. I'm not very sure what will become of this blog when the term is over but for now. Enjoy it! Read about all the things that I do in art class and all the things that I've learnt and maybe you too might gather some kind of knowlege from my posts. So thank you for reading this far and if you like this post then... just keep going.