Portrait without looking + portrait looking

 In this lesson we did two drawings of the classmate we had next to us, in my case I had to draw Laura's portrait. First of all, we had to draw the portrait without looking, so he had to follow our instinct and draw it, without knowing what exactly and where we were drawing it. While I was doing it, I was looking at Laura, trying to draw with the pencil all the features that I was looking at that time. It was a fun experience, I hadn't done it before and it was quite challenging as it is not as easy as it may seem. I admit I used my finger to mark where I was drawing previously so I could know where I was, as I lifted the pencil every time I had to draw a different feature. Here you have the final portrait: 

Later on, we had to do the same thing but now we could look at the drawing, so we would be able to see the difference. Thus, here you can see the other creation: 

                                     

By looking at both drawings, I can see I was not that far with the first one, knowing that it was difficult and it had to be done quickly. 

Hybrid

The elaboration of this drawing was directed to create an element, composed by two diferents objects included in a first brainstorming. The brainstorming had to include ten ideas related to our hobbies or things that we liked from which we had to choose five afterwards.
This hybrid created comes from two of my hobbies: music and football. The music concept is represented by a pan pipe and the football concept was represented by, no less than, a football ball. In order to create a new shape, I played with the different shapes: the pan pipe has cylinders which some of them are ended with the black figure (hexagon) that appears to the typical image we have of a ball of football. Apart from that, one of the ends of  the pan pipe is kind of round as to represent the round shape the ball has. Additionally, the cylinders have no straight lines, their lenght is represented with long and curve lines.
Once I had the shape, the painting part was about to start. One condition that we had to paint our creations was to use well the shadows. I decided to go with warm colours to attract the attention of the people looking at it. The shadows were build by using dark colours from that spectrum and also black (as it might be expected); and the ligthest colours to represent the lingth coming from one of the side of the picture.

Finally, to finish this work I needed to find a cool and attractive name: Bougan, which comes from the words: bounce (related to the football ball) and pan pipe (from here the last two words were taken), the g was chosen to be better to pronounce it. The name was also painted with the same colours in order to get the attention of people. In addition to this, it was stuck with sellotape to create the sense of being in 3D. The creation was first called Flall by combinating the names flute and ball; however, I changed it to create more attention.

Here you have some other pictures that show the process:

 

                                                   

Reading Heike Freire: Arte infantil y transformación social + Conference+ Reading El dibujo infantil y adulto

READING: Arte infantil y transformación social

From this reading I extracted many significant ideas that I found quite important to reflect on. Here I present some.
First of all, the field of artistic education is coming to its extinction, since people misunderstand in what it consists, undervalue it and do not comprehend the relevance of offering children a decent artistic education. Art does not only focus on the aesthetic and beauty of things, but it also promotes emotional regulation and creativity. Art also involves the intelectual, physical, afective and social dimensions. Art is a source that helps us to understand our world and ourselves, to create our lives. We are on our right to express anything we want freely. So why don't we take it seriously and trasmit it to children? As an aspect that got my attention, many artists like Miró or Picasso have taken the inspiration from children's drawings! That is amazing but at the same time sursprising, why did they do that? What did they find interesting in their creations? What is really shocking is that there is a kind of connection between childhood and art, a reciprocal one indeed. Children have the essence of art, their art is pure and real, nothing has come across their art, no influences such as prejudices or specific opinions. That is why many artists get their inspiration from children's art, it hasn't been polluted in any way. Thus, our job as teachers would be to guide them, motivate them and help them in their process of creation, and, of course, do not intervene in the process, just let them draw freely, let them feel their emotions and create through that feeling. "Art by itslef does not evolve, what really do are the ideas people have, which change along with their ways of expression".

CONFERENCE

From the conference, what I really learnt was that we don't have to bring the nature to the classroom if we have the possibility to bring the students to the nature, since it's senseless. Nature, in fact, has a huge impact on our lives, it promotes the sense of community and it motivates emotions to emerge. That is a topic that has been discussed for a long time: do we need to teach students how to deal with emotions? The answer is YES, not only because it gives awareness about how we really feel, but also because it helps children to develop the emotional intelligence and emotional competence, which can be a meaningful aid for them in the future. 

Reading: El dibujo infantil y adulto

Related to the Heike Freie reading, in both it is explained that we have an innate capacity to draw, to create art. For children drawing is the expression of their perspective of how everything works. However, what this reading adds is that "drawing can also be a communicative source, help us to sole problems, visualise our ideas, analise them, criticise them, improve them, create new ones and share them with others". Images have also meaning, it might not be explicit or easy to understand it first, but involves some ideas. As it has been proved by many researches, sometimes is easier to memorise or remember some concepts and here images come to rescue us! In an image one can include differet concepts or just one, the thing is with just one look we can get the main idea in an easier and quicker way than by words. Thus, teachers must include visual support, encourage children to use drawings, since it may help them to study, express some ideas that maybe they cannot still express with words, among other uses. 

MACBA Museum: Exhibition of Melanie Smith

The work Farse and Artifice of the English artist Melanie Smith arrived at MACBA. On the 3rd October of 2018, we went to her exhibition which was formed by different stages. Here, I'll highlight some aspects about some of the works we had the chance to see. In her works, she tends to mix fiction and reality, between of which there are no barriers. Apart from that, she plays with the concept of abstraction which, she believes, is utopic and she reflects also on the absurd. 

First of all, we watched her film called Aztec Stadium: Malleable Dee in which a work of Paul Klee appears. The action happens in the Aztec Stadium of Mexico, where the artist moved out. Students from Secondary Schools show their papers that create a major picture, a work. Smith collaborated with Televisia in order to achieve the final product. With this performance, she wanted to express the idea of group, everyone constructs the images which represent the reality and the fact of deconstructing the picture shows the reality. For her history is cyclic. In this work, she plays with the self (own) and the globalisation wich represent the modernity, shown for example with the Cocacola sign. 

In addition to this, we went to a different section of the exhibition in which we found a TV playing a salsa dance video in which we could see a cuban man dancing and teaching a woman (who wasn't Smith, but who represented her). This video was meant to express the shock between cultures and it was accompanied by different elements related to the culture or the environment we can find in that country, such a palm tree. This creation reminded me my culture from the Val d'Aran, since we also have traditional dances and I know it can be difficult to teach those dances to people sometimes. It also recall my experience in the USA school exchange programme, because I know it can't be much easy to adapt yourself into the culture.

Moreover, the next work confused me, not only because it had different ideas and objects mixted that between some of them there wasn't any connection. What really got my attention was an ear, gigant ear appearing in the work. Then, I kind of understand from the guides explanation that it was meant to be strange, artificial and exaggerated; although I did not understand anything at first. 

These were some of her works, mainly the ones that surprised me the most, whether it was because of its elements or because of the way she presented it. 

From this museum visit, what I'll remember is the creativity of such a modern artist, her capacity to use different sources, not only the expected ones like paintings, sculptures, among others, and be able to combine them to show people how she understands the world, which is kind of impressive and difficult to acomplish.