Q1 Art Portfolio

I painted a wall tile, and made a fall wall hanging and a self portrait using colored pencils. I painted the tile with a purple dragon with a black eye and a dark blue background. This is actually a version of a doodle I like to do. The only two differences is that the tail does not usually curl like it does on the tile, and the eye is blue in the doodle. For the fall wall hanging, I drew two leaves falling through the air. The background is light blue, which symbolizes the sky. The self portrait was particularly difficult to figure out. I do not consider myself to be good at drawing people, so I decided to go for a style similar to the kind seen in Japanese animation, or anime. The pink on my face, just below the eyes, is supposed to be blush. The variety of different colors I used in the background of the self portrait is purely a result of me running out of colored pencils.

My main process of arting starts with me making a rough draft of the art in my sketchbook, and then making the good copy on a separate piece of paper. I developed this method during this art course. I spend most of the time in class working on my art, unless I felt I had nothing to do. This mainly happened on the last days of work, since I did not want to get too much of a head start on the next assignment. I usually like all art materials the same, but I prefer colored pencils over crayons, because I like the way art made by colored pencils look.

I learned that when more time is spent on the artwork, the final product will turn out better. Before, I did not consider myself good at art, but the art I have done before was always done in less than an hour, compared to the four days spent on these projects. I’m a new artist, but I hope my art is good enough to be noticed.


Art Q1


In quarter one of advanced art, we created three different art pieces. The first one was painting one a ceiling tile that would be placed in the school. The second was a fall wall hanging where we were instructed to draw something that reflect what we related to the season fall. The third was a self portrait. All three of these examples can be seen in the slides below my post. 

Most of my art pieces were inspired by my adoration for seasonal men's fashion. For the first project, the ceiling tile, I think the hardest part is actually deciding what you want to draw because you only get to do one. So I chose a bow tie. To me, the bow tie represents a form of fashion that is old but never dies. After taking a look at for a while I started to realize that the bow tie looks like an hour glass. Which kinda to me represents its' timeliness. 

If you choose to take something away from my art work, let it be this. My art represents who I am and what I'm about. I appreciate a good sense of style. I tried to have my art reflect on how much fashions means to me. I'm not the best artist but I know that even if I'm not great, I still was able to express what I love in one way or another. 

Art Work Q1

This quarter in art class was really fun and I really enjoyed creating these art pieces. I got to use different tool and materials, like very different types of paints, charcoal and other materials necessary to get my end result. While using these materials I also learned new techniques such as how to hold charcoal in order to create shading using pressure, or how to use different colors to create ombre-like, effects.  Now as for my art I had different inspirations for each art piece. 
    My very first art piece this year was the ceiling tile. For me, this is the most important art piece that I have created so far this quarter. For one, my inspiration behind it was the dreamer's act movement. Around the time that this assignment was assigned Trump had removed the Dreamer Act and many immigrants were left with nothing and all they could do was fight for their rights. I am Latina and I wanted to show my support to the thousands of Latinos that had been hurt by this, so I painted the word dreamers on the ceiling tile. I also painted a moon and stars to show that to them the stars and moon are the limits. As long as one fights for what they believe in anything is possible. I wanted to create an ombre-like effect so I used the two colors of the sky, light blue for daytime and dark blue for nighttime, and created an ombre-like effect as well. Throughout this whole art piece, I used paint as my main material. I felt very proud creating this work of art.
    The second work of art that I created was the fall wall hanging, this assignment was one of the more easier ones and an assignment where I had one image in mind. For this assignment, a typical fall scene was the inspiration for my artwork. When I thought of fall I thought about the leaves falling and the time change. I tried to create a theme throughout all my artwork so for the sky I also created an ombre-like effect like I did for the ceiling tile, however, I went for warmer tones. The main material I used for this drawing were color pencils. I had fun creating this drawing. 
    The final art piece that I created was the self-portrait. This was one of the longer and harder pieces. I really had to learn new techniques and work with materials that I had never used before to create this piece. For one, I had to use charcoal as one of the main materials and at first, it was very hard working with it but after I learned how to blend it to create a nice effect with it. I made the self-portrait by using a picture of myself as a guide. In pictures and everywhere else we have shadows, so one of my major struggles was creating these shadows in the portrait. I learned how to create shadows by using different pressures on my materials and learning to press harder or lighter when needing to create different lightnings. I also tried to use the theme of ombre again in this drawing and I decided to do it in my hair. I used black charcoal to make the ends of my hair much darker and then blending it out and making it lighter in the roots. In the end, I had an art piece that resembled me. I was very proud of completing it.  
    I had lots of fun in this class. It was a very joyful environment in which I felt like I could always work in and have focus in. All three of my art pieces were created with much work and inspiration. 

-Cristina-Valenzo 

Q1 - Art Portfolio

This quarter I wanted to focus on my shadows, and trying to shade in a way that will give my artwork a more realistic feel. For my ceiling tile I wanted to experiment with painting skin tones and playing with light. The fall wall hanging was a collage that was created out of mixed media. I used paint, markers, and colored pencil to make it, and in the same vein as the last, tried to figure out how to add undertones to skin with the painting and turned out making it very emphasized and exaggerated. For the charcoal portrait, I worked a lot on shadows and trying to understand how to manipulate charcoal on the page. Because I spent most of my time playing with shadows I didn’t have the time to make the features look extremely similar to my own so the portrait did not turn out to be a perfect rendition of my own. Lastly, the watercolor fruit bowl was more playing with the colors and experimenting with the paint.

Artist Statment

This quarter my art mostly focused on painting. I am more of a sketch artist than painting. I really wanted to improve my painting so this quarter I used water colors and paint for the ceiling tiles. My art work was more colorful than even before. The shapes and ideas I used were different to me because they looked more realistic than my usual art. I tried a new type of art which gave me room to grow. I definitely think with more practice I will get better at realistic art. I was not so proud of my self portrait. Using the white on black paper was challenging. The shading was harder to use and it just made the face look less realistic. I think next time I will stick to black on white paper. I really enjoyed the ceiling tile because it came out nice and you can see the effort I put into it. 

Slideshow & Artist’s Statement - Emmett Tsai-McCarthy

Artist's Statement:
The main inspiration for my artwork is anime and manga.  I've always loved the style of anime, and I've even adopted a few of the techniques used in the medium.  Another inspiration would be animals.  Not real-life animals so to speak, but fictional animals/creatures that have real-world inspiration.
I mainly like to use pencil, but I have used pen on multiple occasions throughout my sketching career.  I do want to change my habit of drawing in pencil for the sake of honing my skills in different mediums and to give my sketchbooks more "color".  Speaking of color, this marking period was the first time I've actually used multiple colors to fill an entire page on my sketchbook.  I can't exactly remember any other time I've used different colors on more than just a character so this was new territory for me.
I spent most of my time doing the assigned art project during our "studio time".  There was the occasional point where I took a break and did homework, listened to music, and/or read a book.  When doing work outside of "studio time", on the other hand, was very annoying.  It wasn't because it was hard to draw in the conditions (since I finished most of my work in class) but it was because it was such a nuisance to take a picture of my art pieces.  The lighting would always be bad, sometimes using Snapseed (a photo editing app) would make it look worse, a whole bunch would go wrong basically.  I would mostly put the blame on my phone since it's such an old model and its functionality grows weaker and weaker by the day.
One of the most important things an artist wants a viewer to understand is all the hard work he or she put into making their masterpieces and I hope you see that in my work.  So please enjoy the slideshow!

Quarter 1, Final Project

In quarter one, I created a variety of things, those things being: Fall wall painting, Self portrait, and Ceiling tile. Many of these projects consisted of; paper, pencils, paints blank canvases, pictures from online, and the imagination. My process of making these pieces was much more than just following the instructions and using the right materials. It was about drawing something that related to me, and meant something to me, while still following the directions. In addition that, if a picture did not have meaning, it was then part of my job to find meaning in that picture, and make it meaningful. Which included editing, and re-drawing.

Each project out of four in total, I learned from. The ceiling tile taught me perspective. How even though you see one thing, not everyone is going to see the same thing you do, but instead something totally knew. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing or a good thing, itś something we do naturally. The fall wall painting taught me, to not let myself down. For the fall wall hanging, I took one of the easier ways out, and did a quick 2hr drawing, and submitted it. Which was fine, but didn´t get me the grade I could have gotten because I took the easy way out. I told myself not to take the easy way out, and to the drawing last minute, but I ended up doing exactly that. The self portrait taught me, appreciate myself more. When drawing my self portrait I had to pay close attention to details on my face and clothes. At first I didn't like it at all, but soon I like it. I realized the things that I would call my ïmperfections” aren't imperfect, they are parts of who I am and they are perfectly me.

I feel that art is more about the youself within then what you see on the paper. It's about the process that counts, when you look at the picture you can't see the process that was gone through, you only see the finished product. The behind the scenes process, including influences is what produces the meaning of your art piece. Art can teach you many things about the art itself but most importantly it can teach you about the world around you, it can even teach about you. However art means different things for different people, honestly art is what you make of it.


Q1 Art Portfolio - Mekhi Granby

In Quarter 1 of Senior Art, I created four pieces that showcase my abilities with different levels of art. In the process, I developed a level of comfortability with: watercolor, hand painting on untraditional materials, sketching, coloring, and expressing myself through art. Some of my most important sources of ideas for art come from cartoons and animation. I love the multiple styles, incorporating my take on them is fun. My preference in materials are those I can make make mistakes on, I’m a visual learner and find myself best grasping information through experience. I spend my time in the studio creating pieces that satisfy myself in the moment and display my emotions at a specific time. This quarter, I gained confidence in my art and learned to accept that my version of perfect isn’t always necessary. I’m my biggest critic and a perfectionist, (with my creations) during this quarter I realized that when trying to make things better they can get worse. I would like people to know that tons of effort and time go into every piece of art I create. I work until I’m happy with the finished product and put all my energy into making something that myself along with others can appreciate.


My Q1 Art Portfolio

The art I have created in this quarter was really an accomplishment. I feel like as the more classes I take in art the more I get better at being a artist. The art piece that I am most proud of would most likely be the ceiling tiles because It was something I enjoyed doing and loved the outcome. Also with one of the ceiling tiles a piece got broken off but I got my way around it and made that into part of my art work and it was just great.

Quarter 1 Art Work

In this quarter, I created a Beatles album cover for my ceiling tile, a leaf wall hanging, and a self-portrait drawn with markers. My ideas for art come from my passions or favorite things. When sketching ceiling tile ideas, I drew tiles that related to my favorite foods, bands, and people. For my fall wall hanging I incorporated a leaf I took from my favorite place, the shore, and got inspiration to paint it with bright fall colors, since my favorite season is fall. For my self portrait I was inspired by one of my favorite decades, the 80s, and tried to draw with colors and styles that reminded me of an 80s arcade floor pattern.


To create art in this marking period, I used different concepts and techniques for each assignment. With the ceiling tile, I tried to use a focal point on the Beatles, and blurred out all the background characters of the album cover by using wispy strokes of many different colors layered on top of each other. For my fall wall hanging I used the design concept of a painted leaf with warm gradient colors, and then I made it shiny and preserved both the leaf and paint by coating it in vaseline. Within my self-portrait I tried to show myself fracturing or “coming apart” at the seams of my sweater, by switching into warm colors and lines that all went in different directions, clustered all around each other. Something I learned about painting this quarter is that the finish of paint seems very rough without water mixed into it, because when I tried to stretch a certain color as I painted my ceiling tile, I noticed that with water mixed in, the paint went on so much smoother. I had not known this before, and it showed me some new aspects of painting.


For this quarter I used a variety of tools and materials to make my art: scissors, pencils, markers, colored pencils, string, tape, glue, paint, water, and paint brushes. Each of these materials either helped me physically draw my images, or enhance my artwork by cutting it apart or taping pieces together. I spent my time wisely in art, working every possible second I could to get my works of art done, and I even came in the studio at lunch for extra time to finish my ceiling tile. I made sure to be efficient with my time, and I finished most of the assignments before their due dates, but still put in hard work and effort to make my pieces with high quality. I would just like to leave people knowing that when I make art, almost every piece I do has some greater meaning or represents something about myself. Nothing about my artwork is ever simple, because a lot goes into the background thinking process to complete them.


Systemic Poverty: A Black Man Story - Zaire Williams

                                        Systemic Poverty: A Black Man Story 

Slavery. Segregation. Systemic Poverty. The influence of these events has been critical of the modern “black man” considering the unemployment, drug abuse, and murder rates that have appeared as a result. Black people have been viewed in a  negative way and still is, being called ghetto, trash, worthless. In movies, music, games and even in reality, “the hood” is often used. In these things most of the time it is heard from an African American male. Why is that? But first, what does the term “hood” mean? A lot of people would say it means neighborhood for a shortened version, that’s true but it’s much deeper and serious than that. The concept of “the hood” is a problem because it’s seen as a place for the ghetto to live, a place for uncivilized people to stay away from humanizing people.

The hood is a place where the majority of the population is African American, living in a poverty-stricken place where families live in peril day by day trying to better their lives. As I stated in my source “(“Differenecebetween.net”),  “Hood” and “ghetto” are places where one does not want to live, and it’s hard for black men to get it out of them. For example, Ice Cube song “Why We Thugs”. This is a great example because throughout Ice Cube’s history he’s been through and experienced “the hood”. In his intro, it states “Yeah, every hood’s the same”, and throughout the song, he starts to explain what he means by that. The U.S government establishes gun shops and liquor stores into these poor neighborhoods, then the world wonders why people living there become thugs and gangsters.

     What caused “the hood” to develop?  Based off the U.S. government.org, during the 20th century, there was a policy to segregate the country making low-interest mortgages available to families through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). African American families at the time were legally entitled to these loans but were sometimes denied these loans because many of the black neighborhoods throughout the country were labeled “in decline”. Meaning black people could not get their loans to pay off good houses. After the end of World War II, the government supported white families with loans to move to suburbs, while black families were evicted from their communities to build highways. Since their homes were labeled “in decline”, the government forced these families into federal homes called “the projects”. To continue building “these projects” many more African Americans households were destroyed. As it was said in “Wikipedia/Racial Segregation” “Because these properties were summarily declared to be “in decline,” families were given pittances for their properties, and were forced into federal housing called “the projects”. To build these projects, still more single-family homes were demolished.” This is where it all began, the whites in power created their own way of living, taking care of “their people by giving them more money than they needed and placing them in great homes and neighborhoods. Meaning “the hood” is a problem because it’s a space that Blacks have been forced into by white policy While they divided African Americans from the whites, placing them in urban areas with nothing but their families with no money or work. As time moved on, it became a generational poverty, the black neighborhoods remained poor and were provided with guns and drugs and no education. It got worse and worse each year, blacks were exposed to new things and used it against each other causing more crime and white Americans deeply implicated in the “ghetto.”

    Therefore, these stereotypical names all come from the wealthy white people who look at the black community as senseless “low-life” human beings. A place that they think don’t care about their education and only wants drugs and crime. But in reality, they’re the ones who really care and have been chasing for education and wealthiness for generations, and most of the time couldn’t make it because the government doesn't want to see the black community succeed. A great example for that is back when Donald Trump was running for President. When he was Toledo Ohio, Trump stated “ The violence. The death. The lack of education. No jobs. We’re going to work with the African-American community and we’re going to solve the problem of the inner city”. We’re going to bring safety back. You can’t walk out the street, you buy a loaf of bread and you end up getting shot. So we’re going to work very strongly with the African American community.” Just like Donald Trump, wealthy Americans want the world to see them as people who want better for this community, when in fact they create the inequality and problems, white institutions maintain it and white society condones it.

When asked, slavery, segregation, systemic poverty is what caused the black community to be forced to live the lives they were given with unemployment, drug abuse, and high murder rates, having it harder for them to succeed the way they want.









Works CIted


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_neighborhood


http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/27/politics/donald-trump-ghettos-african-americans/index.html


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_United_States


http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/culture-miscellaneous/difference-between-ghetto-and-hood/


The Demonization of Black Men In America


When babies are first born, the grown ups there to raise them often already having an idea of what they will be. These expectations are based off of the parents talents and personalities as well as what the parents do. As a result, They are never given their own identity until the early ages of adulthood because they are told that they can not do necessarily everything that they want because they are still minors who are undecided of who they are or want to be. The same thing happens to a lot of minorities and for longer amounts of time because they are not raised the “ideal” way. It sucks to have to be seen as someone else because someone set an example before or because it happens that someone might be “judging a book by its cover”. Unfortunately, the situation is similar and common for Black males. In addition to family expectations, they face the limiting stereotypes presented to them outside of the home. This stereotype loop, perpetuated by the news media, causes them to be demonized by the rest of society.


The media in America infamously identifies and calls out Black men as if they are a strange species that no one can control. The reason that these ideas of Black men are even imaginable is because the government has allowed them to be, by believing the stereotype themselves. On television news, they are not usually seen as news anchors, or even commercial spokesmen, but criminals. Michael Myers from The Huffington Post called out one of the biggest news stations for their demonization of Black men.

One blatant example of the discrimination of Black men happens to be from tv show hosts who usually sit down and invite celebrity guests on their show to talk about problems and situations going on in the world. Bill O'Reilly has gone as far as blaming Black men for majority of the violence in America."The media will not spotlight that much of the violent crime in America is being committed by young black men. There is a violent sub-culture in the African-American community that should be exposed and confronted."  Having a platform as big as Fox News broadcast that type of language was appalling. Fox allowed him to shame Black men as a whole with no repercussions. Black men are hardly ever given the chances or opportunities to become something other than the stereotypes they are given. If the tables were to have been turned and a Black man blamed White men for most of crimes in America, they definitely would have been penalized and made to issue an apology to his peers. Other Fox Show host such as Tomi Lahren and Megyn Kelly has even ridiculed the Black Lives Matter movement by making fun of the senseless murders of innocent Black men by police and other “higher authorities.”  This movement was made to let people all over the country know that they valued Black Lives, and they were going to make sure that they could do as much as possible to prevent as many unlawful deaths as they could. The intentions of the group were never to make a certain group feel better than the other, but more of a motive to bring people together. By criticizing that moment and the injustice it seeks to address, the Fox host totally disregarded Black families who have lost their loved ones to police brutality.

Prevalent racial name-calling not only happens on national news channels, it also happens locally as well. The majority of the stories covered on the news are in a negative light rather than a positive one. So if the news station is in a predominantly Black area such as Philadelphia, people would see Black men plastered across the screen for supposedly committing numerous crimes. One blatant example of the discrimination of Black men happens to be from tv show hosts who usually sit down and invite celebrity guests on their show to talk about problems and situations going on in the world.

One significant difference is the way Black men are portrayed on the news for crimes versus how White men are portrayed. When a Black man’s face is plastered on the news for a crime, people will often see mugshots from previous arrests, pictures of them throwing up (what are called) “gang signs,and so called evidence from their social media accounts linking them to the crime. When a White man commits a crime and is less likely plastered across the television screen. you will see his graduation photos, family photos, and casual photos of him. America’s media uses these photos to show the world the image of scary Black men because they don’t want to see them as anything else but that.

Black men are categorized as these evil things and then told they do not qualify for certain positions and jobs when in reality the people broadcasting these stereotypes on the news are at fault. America’s news media institutionalizes the stereotype that Black men are demonized monsters. The media victimizes innocent people nationally, and seeing these negative images starts to make people think that Black men are really these evil beings. But Black men play so many roles:  fathers, husbands, sons, lawyers, doctors, teachers, psychiatrist, humans. By not seeing them in their true positions, you are allowing them to fall true to their stereotypes and not be the best person that they can be.