Printmaking Blog Post

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My element is Calcium (Ca). The atomic number for calcium is 20. Calcium was discovered in 1808 by Humphry Davy, a English chemist. It got it's name from the latin word, Calx, meaning lime. Calcium's main function is to strengthen bones. As you can see, my imagery is quite simple. I made a cow, which creates milk, which is the most common example of calcium. The cows eyes are limes, which is the meaning behind the root word (Calx). 
To make this I first drew a design on regular paper. Once I had a design I was okay with, I then transferred it to tracing paper. After, I used that to carve out the design on styrofoam. Finally, I printed the design from the styrofoam onto a piece of paper with different colors of paint. I kept trying with different colors until I got the ones I liked the most. 
Next time I would definitely try harder to create something I could be really proud of. But since I didn't handle my time well it came out like this. I enjoyed the actual printing process; putting the paint on the styrofoam and transferring it to the final paper. It was fun to try the different colors and see how it would come out each time. 

Q4 Art work

This quarter I feel like a lot of the art work we did had a lot to do with lines and shading. In the most of the art pieces I found myself shading a lot and adding different amounts of pressure to my pencil in order to create different shades. In my opinion I feel like the artwork that I enjoyed the most was the value drawing, I think you could really see how much I had improved from the beginning of the quarter. This quarter most of the art work was assigned and we could really choose our artwork and what we worked on. I enjoyed this quarter a lot and the different artworks created.


Atoms + Art//Beryllium//Sam Friedman

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My element's name is beryllium and beryllium's atomic number is 4. It was first discovered by Louis Nicolas Vauquelin, a chemist and pharmacist from the late 18th century. Vauquelin discovered beryllium in its oxide form in beryl and emerald. The metal was isolated in the early 19th century by two other scientists separately,Wohler and Bussy.

I got the idea to make this the imagery for my element from my research. The only things that used beryllium were machines for rocket science and adjustable wrenches. I thought that ajustable wrenches were something that the class and I can relate to better. I also thought that a wrench is something that we have more of chance of using the a spaceship.

The process that I went through making this print was first sketching and perfecting my design. Then I copied my design onto tracing paper. After that, I got my put my tracing paper and pit it backwards over my plate and carved my backwards design into my plate. I rolled my plate with paint and firmly pressed it onto a blank piece of paper.

If I were to do printmaking again, I would make sure my design was properly carved out onto my plate. I would also wish to spread my horizons and mix some colors for some unique results. Looking back on it, I would also treat my plate with more care and take my time while printing, so that the result does not look rushed. Overall, this was a fun project that gave me new knowledge and a new ability.

Q4 Art

This quarter featured an interesting idea of practicing one element of art for each assignment, and then using all of those skills to create one piece in the end. This has caused each piece of art I have created to be a unique experience.

The first piece of art I have created was a figure of a man in a suit and fedora looking out while shielding his eyes with his hand. I’ve heard the phrase, “suffer for your art,” before. If by “suffer,” you mean, “became highly uncomfortable by the surprising number of photos of people either naked or scantily clad on that website,” then I have suffered for this piece of art. In fact, I just chose one pose to reference and tried to draw it from memory to avoid glimpsing any more nude photos that could mentally scar me. That aside, I created two versions of “Figure of a Suit Man.” Noticing that the examples I saw in the assignment didn’t focus too much on facial features, I gave him sunglasses in the first one, and the second one, I just obscured his face with shadow. I also decided to swap the shades of the pants and shoes in the second version. I also took the opportunity to practice shading/making shadows in my art.

For week 2, I drew a phoenix. It was only supposed to be an outline of a phoenix, with small details like an eye. However, at Ms. Hull’s suggestion, I colored it in. I used orange yellow for most of the body, orange for the chest and wings, and red orange for the tips of the wings. I also added some shorter lines going off the outline on the neck, chest, and wings to give the appearance of feathers.


My next art piece is exactly what the title implies: a bunch of shapes and colors. I spent an hour messing around with circles, squares, and different colors and seeing what I made. I would have done it longer, but I was experiencing technical difficulties when I tried using it on Day 2. Some of the more noteworthy pieces were one featuring the outlines of circles and squares that took on a blueprint-like look, one where I put rectangles in larger rectangles to make it look like they were stacked on top of each other. There was another one where I used a similar strategy, but I used all the colors of the rainbow instead of fire colors.

The Dragon and the Bird was drawn to show the illusion of space. I went for showing off size, drawing the bird as a tiny speck to show how massive the dragon was compared to it. I tried drawing the dragon’s hind leg in the picture, but it came out awkward, so I drew it so the tail was obscuring the hind leg. This piece of art also helped me practice drawing backgrounds as well as eyes and folded dragon wings.

The hardest part of the Vegetable Still Life Recreation was deciding where and how to incorporate the textures. I could think of an idea on how to incorporate some, but not all, of the textures into the piece. For example, I used the first texture, which consisted of simple lines and dots strewn about, for the texture of an orange’s skin. I also used the one with vertical lines stacked on top of each other to represent tree bark, and the alternating vertical and horizontal lines to illustrate a checkerboard-patterned tablecloth. I also tried to use the textures in the vegetables themselves, like the onion half, as well as the scenery.

I decided to recreate an image of a shaded sphere on a table on the website, since it seemed like an easy project to practice on. I shaded the sphere using the method practiced in a past shading practice assignment, where I used four different tones of shade: light, semi-light, semi-dark, and dark. I used the strategy of mapping out each shaded part, erasing the borders, and then shading it in.

The final piece that incorporates all of the skills practiced in the previous assignments is known as Griffin at Sunset. It is tied with The Phoenix and The Dragon and the Bird as my favorite project of this quarter. I was going to draw a phoenix at first, but I decided to practice drawing a different mythical creature. I used each skill in the order they were learned as I drew the picture. First, I drew the outline of the griffin. Next, I added things like the eye and feather detail on the lines. Then, I added the wing and other body details. I drew out the background, making the tree and castle smaller than the griffin to give the illusion that they were farther away. I then added texture to the griffin’s feathers and fur, the castle, the tree branch, and the leaves in the wind. Finally, I added shadows and color to the drawing. I also colored the parts where the sunlight hit lighter than the rest.

Element print

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For this project, an element was given to me, to which I had to create a print. This element is Caesium (atomic number 55). Caesium is a factory element, usually used as a drilling fluid. It also has uses in electonics, electricity and chemistry. The idea for my print comes from its name, meaning "heavenly blue". My print portrays a heavenly-looking angel blowing on a factory, as if giving it life an room to spread like a dandelion, since Caesium is used most commonly in factories. To make this print, I was given a stamp. After making my design on tracing paper, I flipped it over and traced it onto the stamp so the words and images would not be backwards. I rolled a well-distributed amount of printing ink onto the stamp and transferred it to paper. After the print dried, I tore the edges to create a deckled edge. Following that was the matting process on construction paper. If I were to do this print again, I would not procrastinate as much as I did and instead would do more test prints to get a solid print. The initial design was the most fun part of the process. I let my imagination run amok in this project and let my creative mind take the wheel. I think mt final design was very lovely. 

Week 8 - Link

This quarter, there were many different yet similar pieces done. While doing the pieces for this quarter, I noticed that most of them were much more time consuming than from what I could compare to the last quarters. The assignments were very flexible in terms of how you created it and what it was. Many of the assignments were free hand structured. In attempt to do good work, I tried out different techniques like tracing, different styles like straighter lines, and more. I would say that my favorite assignment was on the computer when we could do whatever we wanted. This was fun because we could use a lot of different colors and different shapes. It did not necessarily have to be anything specific, which was a nice break from our other assignments. For these assignments we did this quarter, I noticed that we did a lot of sketch-like drawings. This was very fun to do since I could test myself and how steady my hand is. Overall, I would say this was not my favorite quarter, but it was memorable.


Q4-4 Slideshow, Blog, Artist’s Statement

Some of the art that I created for this quarter were all drawings. The drawings weren’t hard, but it took lots of patience. I usually traced my drawing before outlining them with a dark pencil or Sharpie marker. The inspiration for these drawing came from recreated artist pieces that I found on google. One of my favorite drawings that I have created was the Line Drawings. My line drawings took the most time and I was more detailed when drawing them.

The one main material that I used for all of my artwork was a pencil. I also used charcoal to add different shades on grey to my artwork to make it more realistic. Outside sources for shading was different shading form images and website that I searched on google. I used the charcoal during my studio time because it can get real messy at times. Then I used color pencils to bring my art to life and less dreary and dark.

One of the many things that happened while creating my art was that I learned how to expand my horizons. My previous artwork was focus around the saem ideas for each quarter. As for this quarter, I looked at examples that seem harder for me to design in order for me to explore different art techniques. I would like people to know that the process of creating my artwork was a challenge because I don’t like drawing mostly. So I got over my discomfort and excelled from it.

Q4 Reflection Of Art Creations

For this quarter I have created very passionate drawing. Starting from figure drawing and getting down the bases of the drawing a body. Next with line drawing it creates stories without picking the pencil and thinking about it. The digital drawing was a new concept for me because I never really thought that you can create art with it. I really like how we combined everything we learn and created to make one whole drawing. 
When I think of art I feel like you need to have a lot of passion because it's being patient for realizing all that stress. That's why I love art and being surrounded with amazing, talented artist it motivates me. I also enjoy looking at their creations because I know it was hard work and it was unique. 
Like I previously said drawing takes time and having the right tools like different types of pencils for drawings is essential. For example, for value drawing its best if you have HB pencil and then add darkness with HB4 and/or adding layers in your drawing. 
This time I had in class I enjoyed even though I didn't use it correctly, I was more worried about other work due the next period or the next day. But when I got home I would spend on my creations for about 30 minutes to free my mind. Also this year I was able to get to know about Ms. Hull more and have conversations on whatever come up to my mind or hers. Even when we had art class in the lunch room and playing with her son for the class period. These times like those you can't take back. I'm really going to miss art class and Ms. Hull!!!  Also an appreciation to my mom for encouraging me through this whole year, it's crazy it's a year. Thank Youu

q4 Artist Statement

This quarter, we did many smaller one-week projects as opposed to projects that took more time. The first week, we had to draw figures. I found this intimidating because figures are very complex and I had never attempted to draw a figure in an interesting position such as the  ones that were presented for us to draw. I began to draw a ballerina with her hands extended in the air. I practiced for the big drawing by doing smaller figures using loose circles and shapes, which made me more confident in my art abilities. The final product was pencil on a large paper, and I think I executed it pretty well. For week 2, we did line drawings. I found the line drawings strangely relaxing. I used blue pen for this drawing and ended up making three of them because they took less time. Using pen for a drawing was scary at first, because mistakes are very evident. I liked the whale that I made the most.

In week 3, we made digital drawings. I never did this before, but playing with color schemes turned out to be very fun for me. I loved my use of similar shapes and primary colors. This one was particularly hard because my progress was not saved online, so I ended up having to redo everything after it got deleted. This helped me because now I know that the experience is stressful, and will be more careful to save my work next time. In week 4, we did a space drawing. After learning this last year, I found it pretty easy to execute this drawing. I drew a room with furniture, and I think that it went very well.

In week 5, we did a texture drawing. This was by far my favorite drawing of the year. I loved practicing with the different textures using pencils. The website we used to practice textures was a great guide, and I had a lot of fun while also learning about textures. We went on to draw fruit, which I also found extremely fun and I loved the final product. Week 6 was difficult because we did not have any classes, so I had to do the drawing on my own time. I did not put in as much effort as I would’ve hoped, and if I were to do this project over again I would invest more time into this week. Our last week was an element of art project, in which we had to incorporate all of the skills that we learned this quarter. This was also one of my favorite projects,  because I loved the creative license that I got and I loved the final product of my drawing. I drew a bird and used colored pencils and regular pencil. I loved the final product of this.

I think this year has helped me grow a lot as an artist, and I have learned things that I will take into my later life. Many skills I learned were completely new to me, and expanded my creative mind. This quarter, and advanced art as a whole, has been an amazing experience for me.  


Boys Ultimate Takes Fourth Place at States

The Boys Ultimate team travelled to Pittsburgh over Memorial Day to compete in the PA State Championships. The team - with ten seniors - had high expectations going into the weekend, with hopes of a state championship on every player's mind. 

The weekend started well, with SLA dominating pool play. Their first game was against Hampton HS, and the Rocket cruised to a 15-3 victory. Crosstown rival Masterman was next to fall, as SLA again cruised to a 15-3 win. The final pool play game saw SLA facing off against perennial western PA powerhouse Franklin Regional. SLA came out firing in the first half, going up 8-3 at halftime before cruising to a 15-9 win. In all three pool play games, all 20 boys on the roster played and contributed, meaning that SLA would have fresh legs going into Sunday's quarterfinal match.

SLA faced a very difficult draw through the championship bracket, facing Pittsburgh city champs Pine Richland in the quarterfinals. SLA played their best match of the season against Pine Richland, dominating a very tough PR squad and catapulting themselves into the semis with a 15-4 win. This set up a semi-final match against the nationally ranked North Allegheny squad. The game was a see-saw battle, with both teams taking one and two point leads, before the 19th ranked North Allegheny finally was able to end the SLA Rockets dream of a championship with a 12-10 victory over the boys. 

While the boys were disappointed to miss a chance at the finals and a state championship, the team's fourth place finish was the highest finish ever for an SLA Boys Ultimate team! The team graduates an amazing group of seniors -- Asher Swartz, Charles Velazquez, co-captain Eli Block, Jamie Polson, Johnny Saldivar, Jorin Gerveni, Malachi Johnson, Nate Little, co-captain Saamir Baker, and Sam Dennis graduate as the most successful team in the team's history. We wish them all the best of luck on and off the field, and we'll see everyone next season! 


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Art 2- Final Slideshow

This quarter in art, I learned many different, useful skills. 
This first assignment was figures. I did three different figures, drawing inspiration from dance. The first is a ballerina. The second lady is just sitting. The last on I lady is dancing modern. 
The second assignment was the lines assign,net, where we got to choose from different options. I chose blind contour as my first one because we had previously done it and I enjoyed it. I did a blind contour of a water bottle. Thes second was a gesture drawing and the final one was a planar analysis drawing of a woman. 
The third assignment this quarter in art was where we had to use a website and use colorful shapes to create an art piece. I started off by trying to make a robot face, and from their it transformed into its own art piece. I added bubble and many things as such. 
Next, is my space drawing. I wanted to do a city, drawing inspiration from where I lived, Philadelphia. I included the streets, sidewalks and tall building to match with my theme.
Up next is texture drawings. I drew three different cups, all incorporating the different textures and shadings i learned from the link in the assignment. 
My next piece of art is my value drawing assignment where we were given the option to draw still life, so I drew a still life of two objects.
Last is my elements of art piece, where I took all of the things I have arend this quarter and put them all into one peice of artwork. You can see textures, and shadings, colors and shapes, everything I learned this quarter.
Overall, this quarter in art, I have many great takeaways that I can use in the future. 

 

Printmaking - Malcolm McCreary

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  • ​My element is Iodine, and has the atomic number 53
  • Iodine was discovered in 1811 by the French chemist Barnard Curtis. The usage of Iodine is mainly medical, reducing thyroid hormones, and killing fungus, bacteria, and other microorganisms such as amoebas, there's also types of iodine that can treat radioactive accidents. 
  • The greek origin of Iodine, or, iōdēs translates to "violet colored", which gave me the idea to make a flower "a violet" that had crystallized traits considering that iodine in solid form is like a chunky crystal.
  • I started with making sketches of crystal-looking flowers, I took samples of the shape of Iodine to try and make the chunkier or more crystal-looking petals. 
  • If I did this again I'd try to focus on making sure there wouldn't be creases or folds in the styrofoam print so that things looked neater. 
  • My favorite part was actually printing the designs since I've always enjoyed printmaking and getting to see how your design turns out. 

Justine Koffi/ Indium in Phones




My element is Indium and the atomic number is 49. Indium was discovered in Germany by german scientists. Ferdinand Reich and Hieronymus Theodor Richter founded it in 1863. The scientists were actually looking for thallium in zinc ores, but they found an indigo line in the samples spectrum. That is why they named the element indium.


Indium can now be found in transistors in a lot of technology, It can be found in phones, computers, televisions, and more. That is why i chose a cell phone to be my image for this project. Indium isn’t that abundant and it isn’t found in that many things, but a cell phone is one of them. I was going to do a television at first, but I thought a phone would be more interesting.


I made three sketches, a phone, a tv, and a computer. All of them looked pretty basic, but I chose a phone so I can decorate the lock screen and make it more interesting. I made four prints, surprisingly, all of them turned out great. I’m keeping two to myself and two to Ms.Hull. I should've made it more colorful, I wanted to do like an ombre, but I didn’t.


Overall, I liked this project and how hands on it was.


Q4 Art Reflection

During the fourth quarter of art we learned about all the elements of "art." Line, shape, value, form, texture, and color, we had seven different assignments each of which to highlight one of the elements. Me personally I never really sat down and just admired art but once I learned about all the different elements I now find myself just noticing when the elements come into play in the real world. For each of my assignments I just searched through google and found an image that reminded me of myself and the tried to replicate it. I really enjoyed this quarter it showed me the finer things of art like how the smallest detail would make the biggest change.

Week 8 - LINK • Artist's statement

Through this last quarter of the year in art class, I have created; Line drawings, Texture drawings, Illusion Drawings, Value Drawings, Figure drawings, and Digital shape drawings. All of the above are the elements of art, and for our last assignment, that is just what we created. We took of the elements of art and put them into one picture.  

 Week 1, we created 8-10 figure sketches, and a final figure drawing in addition to the sketches. A figure drawing is drawing of a person, we a drew people from the provided pictures on canvas. One of the most challenging parts of doing this assignment was trying to make the limbs of the person that I was drawing proportional to éverything else. Sometimes the shoulders were wider than the hips or the legs were too short/long. Being that we don't draw figures that often it was definitely a struggle to make my human look relatic. In the end my figure looked more like a cartoon character than an actual person. However I took away accepting that my drawing needs work, and with practice my work will get better.

Week 2, we created 8 drawings, including pictures of anything, as long as each drawing incorporated different types of lines. One of the most challenging things about doing this assignment was making my drawings look creative. One thing I took away from line drawings was that lines can actually be complicated, believe it or not.

Week 3, we created a digital drawing with shapes. One of the most challenging things I took away from creating a digital drawing out of shapes, what making my final product actually look like something. In the sense that my digital drawing doesn't just look like a bunch of random shapes, in random places. One thing I took away from this assignment was learning to create a drawing that only contains shapes. It is something that I don't normally do, so it felt a little weird.

Week 4, we created an illusion of space of drawing. One of the most challenging parts in this assignment was picking witch illusion I was going to draw. Making sure that whatever I chose would take up all the space on my paper. One thing I took away from drawing my illusion, was even if you pick a ¨Simple illusion¨, making your illusion look the way your illusion is suppose to look like.

Week 5, we created 21 texture sketches, and then a final texture drawings. One of the most challenging things about this assignment is making the different types of textures look like what you were trying to draw. If it didn't, it would just look like specks of random dots. I definitely spend a good amount of time making sure everything exactly how I wanted. One thing I took away from drawing textures was, if your texture isn't clear, that determines how your picture will be perceived.

Week 6, we created a value drawing. A value drawing is a drawing where you can see the difference in how the light is hitting certain objects. Which would require you to shade certain parts of your drawing. One of the most challenging thing about this assignment was making sure I got the direction of light right. Because the direction of light lets the viewer know the setting of you drawing. One thing I took away from my value drawing was that it is fairly easy to shade, you just have to make sure you catch every detail of what your drawing.

Week 7, which was mention briefly above, we created an elements of art drawing. One overall challenge was incorporating all of the element that were already hard to draw individually and create one picture out of them.  


Ghost World

“Mark! Mark! Wake up!”

He groaned as he was shaken by his colleague and  friend, Alex. He finally sat up on his bed, fed up with the saking and asked,

“What is it? What’s so important that you had to wake me up at-” He looked at the clock. “-Four thirty in the morning?”

“I woke you up because there is something you need to see. It’s not exactly an emergency, but you need to see it before it’s too late!”

“What is it?” he replied in a more interested voice.

“You need to see it for yourself, but I can understand if you’re too tired to come to the observatory!” he said in a sarcastic tone.

“Alright, fine. Let me get dressed first and then we’ll head to the observatory. Okay?”

His friend smiled, and left the bedroom with a chuckle. Mark undressed himself and replaced his pajamas with a pair of khaki pants, a tee, and a lab coat. He put on his boots and went to refresh himself in the bathroom. Ten minutes later, they were on their way to the observatory to see what Alex wanted to show Mark, and let’s just say, it was strange.

When they reached the observatory, they got out of the car and went inside.

“I haven’t moved the telescope ever since I found it.”

“Is it really necessary to do a guessing game Alex? Just tell me what in the world you found, alright?”

“Ding Ding Ding! You guessed it! I found another world, or a planet, rather.”

He received a disappointed and annoyed look from Mark.

“That’s it? I thought this was going to be bigger than that! We find exoplanets all the time. What’s so special about this one? Is it another hot jupiter, or another water world, or perhaps even a diamond world?

“How about a rainbow world?”

Mark looked p at him in surprise. “What? Did you say rainbow world?

“Yeah I dd. When I first saw the planet, it showed a red tint and glow in it’s atmosphere. Thinking it was another rogue planet, I moved on. However, hours later, I decided to take another look at the planet since I wasn’t finding anything else and the planet glowed a blue color, and it was bigger.”

“Wait, so the planet changed color and it got bigger?”

“Yes, but I figured out that it was getting bigger was because it was coming towards us.”

“Mark swung his head  to face his friend. “Is it going to hit us?

“I can’t tell. My calculations show that the way that this planet is moving is completely erratic. Why don’t you take a look for yourself.”

He climbed up the steps to the telescope and peered into it. Dots of twinkling lights were everywhere the eye could see. Mark looked through the telescope for a solid ten minutes until he finally stepped down and said, “I can’t find the planet you’re talking about.”

Alex stared and laughed. “You’re joking right?”

“I think I should be the one asking you that. Mark crossed his arms in front of his chest, waiting for an explanation.

“I swear, I saw the planet.”

“Well, if you did, it’s not there anymore.”

“Let me take a look, but I don’t see how it’s possible to miss it.”

Alex climbed up the stairs and stared into the telescope. “It’s right there!”

“What?!” Mark quickly climbed up the stair again and pushed Alex out of the way to see through the telescope. Again, he stared into the telescope for a long time, but still couldn’t see any sign of the planemo. “I still don’t see it Alex. Are you sure you see a planet?

“I’m being serious with you. How can you not see that. It’s glowing yellow now!

“Ugh, you must be delirious.