Drip Painting

This is my other art series using drip paintings. I made about 12 of the small paintings and I decided to combine several of the paintings with a common theme. I know the green doesn't match but I purposely intended the painting on top to stand out from the others; this was a common theme in my previous series as well. I feel as if this piece is very spring/summer related, excluding the center piece. It makes sense now that I think about it because I love spring and summer, mainly because I love warm weather. With the warmer months of the year finally approaching, I'd say this piece is very fitting.

More Plans

Well I finished my splatter painting combination. I won't post a picture of the finished product because it's the same as the previous picture I posted except it's mounted on paper now. Now that the splatter paintings are complete, I'm focusing on my drip paintings. I'm essentially doing the same thing with these paintings. I'm arranging the paintings on a board to be mounted. I still have to work out which paintings I want to use and how I want to arrange them. The majority of my paintings have a theme of red inside them so I will most likely include the majority of those paintings since they fall under the same scheme. I will post more details about this project as I figure out more.

Splatter Painting: The Result

I've created roughly 10 splatter paintings, possibly more and I finally decided what I want to do with them all. After examining my paintings, I noticed that they have a light vs dark theme. I also realized that two of my paintings had both light and dark themes. So, I decided to mount my paintings. I will keep the light paintings on one side, the dark paintings on the other and use the two paintings with both light and dark themes as transitions paintings. I decided to mount the paintings so it would mimic splatter paintings on a large scale. This is only the paintings in the set up I want them to. I am still in the process of mounting them. I am using mounting tissue which is essentially double sided tape. At the end, when my paintings are mounted on the board, I will frame the large painting.

Pollock at MOMA

On Friday, STAC went to MOMA and for the first time, I really enjoyed going to a museum. I usually find museums boring and dull. But since I found a new found joy in splatter/drip paintings, I had artwork to look for. I found myself near Jackson Pollock's work for the majority of the time. I would find myself staring at the enormous splatter paintings for over 20 minutes. I could not even begin to explain why I observed the painting for so long. I got lost in the painting and my mind was set loose to think about everything and anything. My only wish is that I could have had a closer look at the paintings so I could look at the brush strokes and the have a better perspective of the texture of the piece. I hope to add more texture to my splatter paintings as I continue experimenting with it.

Acting Discussions

Discussing the acting is more difficult than the acting itself. We have started analyzing scenes again in STAC and I once again realize talking about acting is challenging. Subconsciously, everyone has something they want when they are speaking but since it's subconscious, we don't really realize what it is we want. So, as I was analyzing a scene from The Rainmaker by N. Richard Nast, there were certain parts of the scene where identifying File's want was puzzling. Sometimes, people do not want others to realize what they want and they hide it. File, I feel, does this during the scene sometimes which makes it difficult to pinpoint what exactly he wants. One can't make up what he wants, but there also does not need to be a right or wrong. As long as the want fits the parameter of the moment, it's acceptable. What I will have to do is get better at analyzing wants and start to notice what I want when I speak so I can better analyze it in a script.

More Paintings!

I experimented using inks in my paintings and this is what turned out. I really like using ink because the color is much more rich and a lot thicker than water color. I can't really say if I am "improving" as I do more paintings but I do know I am truly enjoying it. It's a lot of fun and it's peaceful for me to do.

Fourth Quarter Project

I've been having a lot of trouble deciding what I want to do fourth quarter. I know it has something to do with acting. It needs to as I need begin training for college auditions next year and for professional acting. I have had many moments of acting naturally the past year but I need to make sure I do that all the time. Part of my problem is, I have no idea how to do that. The times I have done it, I have no idea what I was doing. So, for fourth quarter, I need to figure out what I was doing so I can do it each time I have to act.
For STAC Art, I know what I'm doing. I'm doing drip/splatter paintings. I am practicing on a smaller scale first and then I will purchase a large canvas and make the painting on a larger scale. I'm not sure what size I'd like yet but I still have sometime to figure it out.

Fourth Day of Charcoal Drawings

This day I was experimenting drawing my face with charcoal drawings. I got easily distracted and started drawing faces I felt were more interesting/entertaining to draw. I'd say my favorite one is the face in the middle row farthest to the left. Why you may ask? I don't know. That's the face my eyes are drawn to first. He doesn't look very amused and looks like death in a sense. This was probably one of my favorite days of charcoal drawings; drawing silly faces was quite entertaining.

Third Day of Charcoal Drawings

This day I only had time for one charcoal drawings but this is probably one of my favorites. Ever have that feeling where someone is watching you? I get that feeling all the time and this drawing represents that. Often times, you cannot tell who is watching you or from where so I decided to draw one giant eye that constantly has a vision of everyone all the time. There are certain areas to avoid this line of sight and others where you fall directing into "the trap."

Second Day of Charcoal Drawings

 The charcoal drawing to the left was an experiment I had. I noticed that I could use the charcoal residue on my fingers to make fingerprints and I really loved this idea. I rolled with it and ended up creating a stampede type of image just by using my fingerprints. This charcoal drawing was especially fun because I was able to simply press my fingers into a piece of paper rapidly and have this interesting pattern turn up.





This charcoal drawing to the right using a similar style. I continued using fingerprints to indicate a person's movement. This drawing represents the various paths people have in life and how there are some obvious options you can take but there are less obvious options that people do notice but don't take because it's a path that hasn't been explored before and sometimes people don't want to risk treading new waters first.

First Charcoal Drawing

This is one of my first three charcoal drawings. Unfortunately, I cannot seem to find the other two. The first three drawings revolved around a similar scheme of weather. Weather severely effects my mood and when I drew this some weeks ago, there was constantly snow or rain. Quite frankly, I was getting sick of it so I decided to use the frustration I had from the irritating weather and put on paper for my first ever charcoal drawings.

Timing

Timing is very important. I don't just mean timing on stage either. Of course, the timing on stage is extremely important so you can make sure the punch line is heard or make sure you do not get hit by a moving piece of set, but timing in your every day life is also very important. Time management is one of the top things people struggle with, especially modern day teenagers. Teenagers tend to cram so much into their schedule that they cannot complete all their work to their fullest potential. A lot of it has to do with modern day society and what is expected. But people nowadays need to realize is that not everyone wants to be like the rest of society. I'd rather do less activities and focus on them and have the product be great than do too many activities and have their products turn out badly. The experience is the most important part of any endeavor so make the most out of what you are doing.

The Disney Trip

For the past two days, Herricks High School's Music Program was invited to Disney to perform and we were able to work with Disney's clinicians after the performance. One of the more valuable things I learned from this workshop was voice analysis. The clinician had the choir listen to several songs from musicals to analyze what type of character the singer was. We analyzed the choices the singer made to personalize the role. For example; how enunciated/pronounced a person's constants would indicate the high confidence of the character, most likely the character's arrogance. The dynamic variations of the character, without paying attention to the lyrics, can tell us what the character is going through. How lightly or how shrilly a character sings indicates a character's personality as well. This workshop taught me how much I can get out of just the vocal of a song. Without seeing the acting or blocking, you can get a fairly accurate assumption of the character singing the song and a fairly accurate assumption of what the character is going through.

Security

Some people do not realize how important security is. In our day and age, security is a rapidly developing feature. With technology constantly improving, our security measures increase but unfortunately, robbers are also improving. Computer viruses and other cyber attacks are becoming more and more prevalent in society and people need to take extra caution while using the internet. It's such a powerful device and people take it for granted. We need to realize that although it is extremely helpful, it can also be extremely dangerous.

Drawing

Drawing is definitely not one of my strong suits. It's not something that I enjoy doing. I'll do it when if I need to but it's not the number one thing to do to relax. We've been drawing more in STAC and it's alright. I let my mind wonder off and it's distracting, in a sense. Using a grid definitely gave me a better result in my drawings. It's not something that I'm going to focus on in life but it's definitely goes to show you how some training can really improve your skills.

Loss of Internet

My internet service went down for most of the day today, I got it back about a half hour ago or so, at around 11:00pm. A day without internet was definitely an interesting one. It made me realize how dependent I was on the internet. I use the internet every single day for school work of all kind and not having it made doing my work today extremely difficult. I will have to make up some of it tomorrow since it's already so late, which is fine, but what really fascinates me is how the fast technology is advancing and how our dependency on the internet is increases. It makes me wonder what we'll depend on in the upcoming years.

And Then There Were None Update

We are now less than two weeks from opening night and the show is really coming along. People pretty much have most of their lines memorized and now we are no longer limited to staring into our scripts. The set is built and we are working with that. We're starting to use our costumes and later on in the week we will have sound and lights. I truly enjoy playing Judge Wargrave as he is such a different role for me and I cannot wait for opening night.

And Then There Were None

So, rehearsals for Herricks High School's production of And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie have begun. I got the role of Sir Lawrence Wargrave, or Judge Wargrave. This role is quite different from the roles I received in the past. Wargrave is evil and a much darker character than the characters I have played in the past. I usually receive the role of the boyfriend, love interest, husband, or the man from the military. Judge Wargrave is no where near those type of characters. I'm excited to play a role that's different, it provides a new challenge and a new experience. Overall, I'm looking forward to another great show!

Overworking

Being a diligent worker is something truly great but overworking yourself is the exact opposite. Sometimes, I overextend myself beyond what I can handle. I try doing a lot of activities and work all at the same time and it eventually gets to me. It all becomes stress. So, I've slowly been learning how to lower the amount of work I do so I can get to place where I don't feel so stressed. Wanting to do a lot is fine but how much you do at the same time matters. It makes the difference between enjoyment and illness.

How Being Sick is a Nightmare

So, I have nasopharyngitis once again, but to a lesser degree. Long story short, this is a viral infection of the throat and of course, I'm not allowed to sing when I have this virus as it makes the virus worse. It has been about a week since I have done any singing and it's torture. When you have such a passion to do something and you're unable to do it, it's as if a part of you is missing. I went to see Newsies the musical this past Friday, and I wanted to sing along so badly but of course I couldn't because I can't sing. I should be able to sing in another week or so but it is definitely not easy not being able to sing.