Sunday, January 29, 2012

What Enslaves You? Part 2

The limitation that I picked to create something with is Time. I chose this one because I feel that this is a limitation I deal with every day of my life. All of my projects seem to come down to how much time there is to complete them. Being that I am very bad at dealing with procrastination I felt that I needed to make something that would show my frustration with my ability of being the worst procrastinator in the world. Every time I have a project to complete I wait until the last second to do it. I almost feel a sense of entrapment from this because I can't figure out a way to defeat it. It's just part of who I am, so I've learned to deal with it. Below is what I have made in Photoshop to help show how I feel.

What Enslaves You?

1.  A project that I have done in the past that was very exciting for me was when I painted a mural on my boyfriend's living-room wall. What happened was I had made a painting for him for Christmas that year and it was the first time he realized that I had some artistic talent. After I gave it to him, he asked me if I could paint that same painting on his wall at home. I was definitely up for the challenge and I had never done anything like that before so this is why it seemed so exciting to me. I love trying new things and being able to have an entire wall of my own as an untouched canvas was AWESOME.

2.  When I first started the mural, I thought that it was going to look exactly the same as the painting I had given my boyfriend for Christmas. It turned out that a lot of the details I had put into the painting, didn't show up on the wall. It still looked really neat, but by the end of painting for two weeks I decided it "looked good enough" so I left some of the details out. Plus, we had people coming over all the time to hangout and everyone said it looked "done" anyway.

3.  Limitations that forced my project to change:
     - Money. Being that I did not have a paid job the summer that I painted the mural, I couldn't spend a lot of money on paint, brushes, and things that might have made the mural look better.
     - Size. The size of the wall was a bit different than the canvas I had painted the original painting on. I had to distort the painting a little so that it would fill out the whole wall.
     - Time. Spending two weeks doing nothing but painting the same thing really made me feel burnt out, thus resulting in not caring enough to add certain details.

4.  With the bead, limitations that immediately popped into my head were to not do anything that seemed too easy and making sure that whatever I did with it was a safe thing to do. The first idea I had for the bead was to make a movie about it venturing around town, rolling down hills and stuff. But because I am a procrastinator, I waited too long and it ended up snowing a lot outside so this wouldn't have been possible anymore, therefore the weather became a limitation for me. Another thing that set a limitation for me with the bead was that I felt I had so many possibilities, so I couldn't decide what would be sufficient or accepted as a project.

Monday, January 23, 2012

CLASS 1-23-12

What stood out most to me from class today was talking about expectations. People were talking about having high or low expectations verses realistic expectations. In order for me to experience something to the fullest, I try to not have any expectations at all. By doing this, I find it easier to make judgements about things after I have experienced them and it also helps in order to not feel "let down" all the time. I feel that having high or low expectations on something is almost judgmental in a way. By having these expectations, you are assuming that something is going to happen or be a certain way. I like to look at life as having experiences and then rating those experiences after they have happened...not trying to rate them before they even exist.

Group Role

I was in group one today and we decided to have group two write down their favorite quotes from movies and then put them together to make a cohesive story. At first we talked about not making them do anything, then we mentioned just making them do whatever they were going to make us do. After discussing it, we decided we wanted the people in the class to be more interactive so this is how the movie quotes idea came about. Once we went back into the classroom and told group two our idea, they didn't seem too happy about it so we decided to do the activity all together as one whole group. We ended up passing a paper around the room and had every person write their favorite quote. After this, we passed the paper back around and each person read off a different quote than what they had written down. I feel as though this activity did get the room talking a bit more.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

"I have a bead on you..."

When we were first given this assignment, I had no idea what to do with the bead that we got in class. I started thinking about things that I would like to do and it came to me that I wanted to make a painting. I hadn't dug into my paints in a really long time and painting is something I absolutely adore. So...I decided to paint a canvas with the bead. I went with an abstract painting and I ended up having the bead stuck to the canvas after it was all finished. It took about 2 hours to complete the painting, but it was worth the time and I enjoyed breaking out the paints again. Below are some images of the final product!





Monday, January 9, 2012

CLASS 1-9-12

After having our first class today, I learned that this is going to be an experience. This class will be my opportunity to learn more about myself and what I am, or am not capable of. It will only be what I make of it. I am excited to begin because I think this will be my time to break out of my comfort zone and not have to act like a zombie in class all the time. I love the idea of what this class has to offer, and I believe there should be more like it. I also highly believe in Beth's grading system...being that points shouldn't matter, but only the effort and personal growth is what matters. Breaking away from the fear of having to earn "points" gives me a wonderful, refreshing feeling after being in college for nearly 5 years now. After having class today I feel as though this will be more of an adventure, rather than a task.