Class take away 6

I found it interesting that we took a day from class to do whatever we enjoyed. To have three hours out of the day to ourselves for doing our most enjoyable activity gave me the opportunity to not stress, and just relax and breathe for once. Compared to most of the semesters I've had, this semester is supposed to be a time that I have a lot of time to recuperate from the rushing I've been doing in the past years I have been in college, and give me a chance to practice animating. I am taking two classes that I very much enjoy, and have a lot of free time to work on what I love doing the most, which is drawing. I need to get back into coloring and painting to fully accomplish what it is to love art, and I have been wanting to practice some more on animating since I am just starting out and learning how to animate. Taking time out of the day to do what I wanted really helped me relax, and in relaxing it helped me build a lot of ideas for what I want to draw, color, and paint next, and gave me the time to think about where I want to go with animating and what I want to do with my animations.

Class Take Away 5

I read the assignment for our altered book and bliss, and I have already begun thinking about what I want to do for both assignments. I have already thought of picking out a what if question to follow for the altered book. Then I saw that we are to look at some of the what ifs from our classmates blogs. I feel that looking at some of my classmates blogs will better help me with the ideas I came up with in my what ifs for the altered book assignment. I am looking forward to the bliss assignment just as much as the altered book because I am interested in having three hours to myself to do what ever I enjoy doing the most. Maybe in these two assignments to come, I will refine my creative spark and keep it going so that I never let another year or so pass without me doing what I love most, drawing and painting.

50 What if questions.

We chose a book that we did not like, and slept with the book under our pillow to later come up with fifty what if questions of what we could do to the book to make it positive. I chose my old algebra II/trigonometry book because I had struggled in that class for about five years until I decided to switch majors. Algebra II/Trigonometry was a prerequisite for a major I was interested in pursuing after high school, and even though I received help with the problems in the book, none of it was getting through to me. Since I could not understand it, I began to hate it (sadly, a natural human response), and this was the start to me not liking math. I used to love math previous to high school geometry and algebra II/trigonometry. I did not sleep with the book under my pillow because it was quite uncomfortable. I did sleep with the book at the end of my bed. I think the reason for us sleeping with the book nearby is to get a feel for the book. It made us think more about the book and why we feel intimidated by it, and it was easier for us to dream about the book. For me, the main thing on my mind when thinking of the book was the what ifs. I focused on what I could do to the book to help me like the book more. So here are the fifty what ifs that I have come up with over the week.

1. What if I burn the book?
2. What if I turn it into a flower?
3. What if I rip out the pages and shredded them?
4. What if I burn the book and saved its ashes the garden?
5. What if I shred the book and use it for fertilizer?
6. What if I color the front and back back of the book with markers?
7. What if I outline the picture on the cover of the book?
8. What if I outline each diagram in the book?
9. What if I select a few story problems from each chapter of the book, and turned them into one story?
10. What if I paint the entire book front to back?
11. What if I paint the cover of the book in purple?
12. What if I paint the cover blue?
13. What if I paint the cover blue and purple?
14. What if I paint the cover blue and purple with some other color I like?
15. What if I draw on the cover?
16. What if I draw something I like on the first page of each chapter?
17. What if I select a diagram ever three chapters and turn it into a drawing?
18. What if I paint all the five hundred fifty-three pages not counting the answer pages in the book?
19. What if I paint every page from front to back in the book?
20. What if I only paint the answer pages?
21. What if I paint the index pages?
22. What if I paint the table pages?
23. What if I take each table and turn it into some kind of drawing?
24. What if I leave the book alone and do nothing to it?
25. What if I stare at the book for thirty minutes for five days?
26. What if I throw the book into a wall?
27. What if I turn the book into a scrapbook?
28. What if I use the pages of the book to dry wet surfaces after cleaning?
29. What if I leave the book out in the back yard with all the snow?
30. What if I leave the book in the back yard when the snow melts?
31. What if I leave the book in the back yard and the dogs find it?
32. What if I set the book and leave it with one of the dogs?
33. What if I scribble all over the book and make a drawing from the scribbles?
34. What if I leave the book in the attic and forget about it?
35. What if I sell the book for the same price I paid for it?
36. What if I sell or give away the book?
37. What if I shred the pages and use them as kitty litter?
38. What if I used the pages to create a paper mache?
39. What if I write the answers from the back of the book under the problems they answer?
40. What if I answer each problem with a drawing of an animal?
41. What if I answer each problem with a drawing of a landscape?
42. What if I try to balance the book on my head?
43. What if I try to balance the book on my head while thinking about a difficult math problem?
44. What if I try to balance the book on my head to create a story about algebra II/trigonometry?
45. What if I create a story about how algebra II/trigonometry made me feel about math?
46. What if I throw the book in the trash?
47. What if I try to solve all of the problems in the book to the best of my ability?
48. What if I write next to the problem what I do not understand in solving it?
49. What if I write the book questions?
50. What if I write the authors questions of what I do not understand in the book?

Class Take Away 4

The book "This is not a Book" was passed around in class today. I found it interesting when looking through it. I liked the page that said "This is a Trap". I found it funny because when I'm on certain social networks, I always see these funny little posts, or memes, that have a so called "trap" in them, and in the comments there's a meme about the main post or meme being a trap. I have no idea how to really explain it, it's all computer stuff, so... yeah, but it is funny the first time you see those memes. When I looked through "This is not a Book" in class today, I wanted to take the book home and participate in the things that were in the book. The content in the book was intriguing because it tells you on different pages what to do on that page. I look forward to finding "This is not a Book" and acquiring it for myself, and playing the little games inside with some family and friends.

Bible Dipping

We picked out a word from a book, and that word was "opportunities". I created a short flash animation of what I think when I think of opportunities. It is a little cliche, but I see a door opening, and on the other side of that door there are many roads going each way. Each of those roads leads to many different opportunities. 

Class Take Away 3

I was intrigued by how many of my classmates had a similar struggle that I had with the doodling assignment. Our similar struggle was that we felt we needed structure, and in doodling, there is no set structure. What I mean by we felt we needed structure is that we meditated what we wanted our doodles to look like; we wanted to sketch them into drawings instead of making marks on paper or  digital marks on the computer. We had really cool drawings that came out of our doodles, which I saw as us creating something out of spontaneous marks that had little to no meaning. What I have learned from my peers yesterday is that we can create ideas from "scratches" on paper. After I had finished my doodle, I regained the want to draw everyday day, and I plan to start my day with a quick doodle to warm things up so I'll have ideas by the time I'm ready to draw.

Polly wolly doodle all the day.

Thirty minutes of doodling was a little harder than I expected because I wanted to draw more than I wanted to doodle, but I cleared my mind to let my pen move across the paper without thinking about what the pen was doing. The whole time I doodled I thought a little bit about the definitions of synchronicity, serendipity, and spontaneity. I could not focus on synchronicity and serendipity because I could not get a full understanding of their meanings. I mainly focused on spontaneity because in the doodle I kept making spontaneous line movements. Most of the time I was doodling, I was just out in a daze looking out of my window watching traffic go up and down the street.

Then when I looked back down at my doodle, I started thinking of spontaneous line movements. As the minutes passed by, I found myself getting a little bored because I was running out of space for my spontaneous line movements, and I wanted to start drawing from the doodle I had.

This is the end result of the doodle.

This is the finished piece that I saw coming to life from the doodle.

Even though the shapes in this drawing have no real meaning to me, I remember them being created from spontaneous line movements across paper. I thought I was making some sort of flower, but they didn't turn out looking like flowers. They are just pretty cool looking geometric shapes.