Art Blog #1

Sunday night, 9:22 PM, and I just started to do this art blog thing we have to do every week. Will I call this procrastinating and waiting till the last minute? Maybe. I usually don't go to sleep until at least eleven o'clock even though I say to myself everyday that I will go to bed at ten. Well, that is my objective everyday, but I fail that objective every single day. Good for me? Ha.

Okay, enough of my nihilism, on to art. I will like to take you into a little journey of how I chose my concentration this year. Well, first of all, one big thing you really need to know about me is that I am asian, and that I am proud of my race (even though I make racist jokes all the time). Consequently, I like to reflect that in my art projects. For example, I drew a social commentary piece called "How to Identify Asians" last year (notice the horrible grammer). For reference, http://lhs.loswego.k12.or.us/z-mcbrides/Art%203/social/10/index.htm here is the picture on Ms. McB's page. Also I like to make my art works as asian as possible, so I can state a voice and show my style on my pieces of art work.

So this summer I went to my art teacher's studio thinking about what I should do for my concentration.  I know that I will do something REALLY asain and reflects my own culture, because that's me. For all those people who know me, I have a brother who took this class a while ago and did his concentration on Taiwanese color, so I know I cannot do that again since it will just be copying his idea. I went through books and books from my art teacher just to have an idea of my concentration. I initially thought of the 12 zodiac signs in Chiese culture, but I scratched it since it was not completely my idea (I actually got the idea out of one of the books). Without an idea and frustrated, I took some books and paper home trying to figure it out.

Then one day while walking on the streets of Taipei, a temple fair (廟會) was going on. Something clicked in my head. I stayed there and watched the fair as it went on, and I saw this:

then something REALLY clicked in my head. I said to myself: why don't I do something like this? So I raced home and took out the papers and some pictures I found in the books and started drawing. I thought: well I cannot just draw the whole thing since it will just be copying, so why not just the head and the hat to show their power and complexity of their figures? So I quickly finished one, and really liked the idea and continued on to the others. Sadly I don't have the pictures of my processes on these art works. Bummer. I finished a total of eight of them, and you can see them if you want during art periods. That's it, that's my story of my adventure to finding my concentration.

I know this is a lot to read, but this might be the only long post you might get from me this year. Thanks for reading.

Oh, and since none of you can read Chinese, I am going to write a word in chinese in each of blogs I make this year just to (maybe) tick you guys off. You can guess or just ask me in class the next day if you are dying to know what that word means.

Word of the Blog: 藝術