Bad news or good news first? Let’s start with good news first.

The good news is that I finally created another piece! I’ve been busy lately and haven’t had the chance to do another piece – but I was in a circumstance yesterday where I only had my ipad on me and there were issues connecting to wifi. Luckily, procreate works without wifi too so I was pretty lucky that way. I wasn’t expecting much at the start – it wasn’t like I was wasting my time since I had nothing to do. I liked how it turned out, messy but simple at the same time.

I like this artwork as it portrays a character I made whilst writing a novel. I’m definite that my novel writing is far from what others would call “good”, but it’s one of those pieces where even I get hooked in reading what I wrote! It’s so cool to be able to go like, “OHHHHH” when I read a really good part of your creation. I mean, it’s THAT good. Plus, it’s so rare (in my opinion) to be able to feel that way from something you’ve created. Moral of the story is that I don’t come across these kinds of things often.

Originally, I did not plan to render it AT ALL. I was just expecting a rough draft that I wouldn’t come back to, but once I started on the face, I just continued. The rendering is really messsy such as the clothing lighting is super duper off – I put the shadows on the wrong side. I was going to create another lining of the character, but got lazy and just used my original sketch. I like the background, it really portrays it as simple and is really contrasting to the character. It wasn’t how I imagined it, but perhaps even better. Overall it took me around 1.5-3 hours to complete it. I like it a lot so I would give it a 8.5/10.

As always, I have included a video for more evidence.

Now for the bad news

The bad news is that I still have no reply from Ms. Serfozo or the expert. I assume it’s because they’re both very busy and don’t have the time to view it. I will remind Ms. Serfozo during art tomorrow.

This is all for today, see you on wednesday!

After my numerous attempts to contact Ms. Serfozo in hopes of finding some artists in the area, she finally had some news! She has around 3 or 4 artists whom she thinks may be a good fit for my project. Some of them don’t specialize in watercolour specifically, but they do have a lot of different types of styles that I find very interesting. I also am not specifically improving on my watercolour, but art in general. I am having some difficulty with finding some questions worth their time, so I do need to improve that. For now, I am going to create a google doc to write a draft email.

Draft Email: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XhwZOCGkcURPIZixBAqo0CVDakbOj7Z2MBnvX6g8M78/edit?usp=sharing

I think this email sounds pretty formal. This is how I normally format my emails, so if I am making a HUGE mistake, then I’m sorry. The main problem right now is the questions. Some of them are a bit too specific, where as others are not specific at all. I also don’t know what the art teacher thinks of it, so I will also send it to her too.

Last week, after Genius Hour, I had a moment to ask Ms. Serfozo if she could introduce me to some talented artists in the area. She had a list of a few people I could contact, but she couldn’t find the list so she told me to wait until this week. Unfortunately, I’m afraid she may have forgotten as yesterday, when we had a double-block of art, she didn’t approach me. I am a bit confused as to if I have to take a lesson, which I think would be wasting time and effort for the artist and I. I think the best form of communication for me would probably be through email. I will ask some questions about art to the artist. Since my project has a very broad goal, I don’t really know what to ask. Some questions aren’t good as you can search it on the internet, and this isn’t a interview either. I think this project was extremely self-led so it doesn’t really make sense to ask an expert. I shall brainstorm some questions on the spot:

• What kind of watercolour paper do you use? What paper would you recommend for beginners?
• What’s your most favourite form of art?
• What are your thoughts on watercolour?
• Would you recommend watercolour as an art medium for students/beginners? If not, why?
• What kinds of watercolour materials would you recommend for intermediates? Any particular brands?

I feel like a lot of these questions are super mainstream and are a waste of the artist’s time. Consultation with a friend can help make them better.

Final Project

Last week, I worked on a little bit of my final project. Unlike what I did for most of the year, which was watercolour, my base was acrylic. I really needed to use up all my acrylic because it was taking up space. I tried filling up the space that I haven’t painted with acrylic, but ended up making it look super bad. I plan to hot glue some watercolour paper with watercolour on it onto the canvas and to add some 3D aspect to the piece. I want a back-up for if it fails.

The back-up

As I explained next week, I had an idea to make a deck of cards out of watercolour. I feel that it would be an accurate representation on what I learned in the weeks before, and I’m pretty excited about it. Because of it’s small size, it would be great to bring ot school and pass around. I am pretty busy these few weeks because of festival preparations and new year’s festivities though. Ideally, I would like to complete both of these projects before the presentation.

There’s officially 5 weeks left of Genius Hour #1. Over this time, there are a few things I must complete:

• Find an expert that can help me improve
• Create a final project(s) that will demonstrate my improvement over the years
• Compile all the evidence I’ve had into a slideshow of some sort
• Create a timeline? Something that can show some timestamps regarding artworks, changes in genius hour plan, etc.

I will add more to this as I go.

Recap

On the first week of this genius hour project, I decided to go with a improvement in digital art. After 2 artworks, I decided that this is maybe not the best idea. I found that it took a lot of time jumping through the different layers, and I wasn’t very familiar with the brushes. It took a tremendous amount of time, which, at the time, worked, but I was later going to become very busy. In order to have continued, I must have had to have an extremely well-managed time. I also lost interest after a while and noticed that watercolour was a very fun art medium to work with. Not only that, but I had all the materials required to do it, and it took way less time as I was more familiar with traditional art. Now, instead of an apple pencil and an ipad, I use brushes, paint, paper, etc.

Expert??

I have no idea what to do with an expert. At first, I wanted to find the school’s art teacher, Ms. Serfozo. But, Mrs. Englot recommended that we should find someone outside of the school building as that would challenge our skills to be able to have some real-world knowledge. I haven’t done anything yet, but I have some things considered:

1. I used to go to a art place called 4cats. They have excellent sketchbooks but after a quick search on the internet, it was found that they may or may not have closed down. I also looked into it and it seemed that they worked more with pottery and clay than paint. Either way, they would be very far from where I live, so my parents would probably say no.
2. Find one of my old art teachers, but it would be awkward as they both teach in mandarin which means that i would have to translate and that may take some time. Also because it is difficult to contact them again as I haven’t been taking any art sessions recently.
3. Find Ms. Serfozo and inquire about any art people she knows. That way, I can be backed up by saying that Ms. Serfozo has recommended me/them and maybe I can possibly be able to reach some people with a lot of art background

Those are my ideas for now. This afternoon, during options, I can ask Ms. Serfozo about that and see what she says. If I’m lucky, I will be able to recieve a phone number or email. If not, I will have to resort to plan b.

End Project

I think an end project would be great to finish off this project. Not only would it take more than 1 week, but it will help me document my project more immensely and that it would signal as a wrap-up for this project.

1. I was going to think of doing mixed-media, and that it would be cool since it could show all of the mediums I’ve worked with
2. I will also show some mix-media from before.
3. I had a previous idea, which I mentioned a few posts ago. It was about creating a card deck. I could do 4 cards every week or something! It would be great to work on proportions, bordering, and colours. I plan to use watercolour paper to make the cards, instead of actually painting on cards as that would be difficult.
4. Something involving a canvas? I’ve tried before and it has failed miserably…

Compiling EVERYTHING.

It just hit me that I could include art projects from when I was younger. As in when I just moved to Canada and went to those community center projects and stuff. I hope that a showcase of stuff when I was younger would really signify what I have come from, what I used to do, and what I do now. Not only that, but the showcase on a slideshow would be a great memory for me to keep.

Finding EVERYTHING.

In order to document and take pictures, I must find them. Luckily, I know where most of the stuff is, unless something changes drastically from now until February.

Timeline?

Yeah, that’s going to be hard. I will only do it from September 2022 – February 2023. I’ll draw it on paper because I’m too unfamiliar to create it on computer.

Overall

I guess I did lose interest over time on digital art. I hope I won’t give up on it in the future, if I do decide to try again for the third time. I’m not sad that I did, as it would have been harmful to my eyesight too. I just didn’t have the most crucial material required for it: Time. I’m excited for the next project as I will have more time cleared out after May. If all goes well, this project will end off well.