Slavery

In our past history, we have had trouble with slavery; particularly targeting African Americans. The reason Americans did this is because they thought people from Africa were different from Americans. This all seemed to be based on skin color. Some people thought that Africans didn't have much to live for in Africa and so they brought them to America for a different life as servants. Not all Americans agreed with the slave market. People like Abraham Lincoln didn't agree with it and many other citizens didn't either. It was a few years before Lincoln signed a bill to stop slavery and he was later assasinated. It doesn't seem right that someone would be killed for doing something that was right. In some ways Lincoln was a "slave" to America in that he can all his time to America to try to make things better just like many of the slaves did. He really shouldn't have died for it. I just don't think it's right to get mad at people who do good things for their country or others.

Graphic Design Project

In our Humanities class, we are trying to figure out how to take pictures we've drawn into Photoshop. Right now I'm having trouble with this because my pictures are overdrawn, because that is how I draw. I'm not able to use the Magic Line tool and so I can't work with the details of my drawings. Once I am able to get these into Photoshop, I then have to paint them which I think will be equally hard. I need some tips on how to work with Photoshop so I can use my original drawings. Do you have any ideas?

I found this one site called Photoshop Help, but it didn't seem to address my issues: http://www.photoshop-help.com/ except for the following information:

"Photoshop Painting and Editing Techniques
Press shift while dragging with any paint or edit tool to draw a straight line..
Always note the opacity in the Option palette while painting to avert mistakes
Press a number key to change the setting of the Opacity, Pressure or Exposure slider bar in 10 percent increments
Consider making a new blank layer and paint there. Paint separate pieces or objects. This will allow you to make opacity adjustment in the Layers palette. It's also easier to erase unwanted areas.
If you're retouching with the Clone or Healing Brush tools, it's essential to zoom in very close to the area you're working on and use a small soft brush.
Always note what your foreground and background colors are. Check the tool box near the bottom for the two large squares. Click inside one of them to access the Color Picker. Play with it awhile and get familiar how the colors can change.
In the toolbar click the curved double arrow to switch the background to foreground. Type the letter X and that will switch the colors too.
If you want the color to be black and white then type the letter D and you got it.
Go to Window> Swatches and the Swatch palette will come up. Click on a square and that color will be your new foreground color.
Go to Window>Color and the Color palette will come up. Click around on the colors and drag the sliders a bit and you'll see that the foreground color in the toolbar changes with you. Have fun, you can't break Photoshop. "

I'm interested in learning how to use Photoshop better because I believe that art can convey things about history. Just think of all the paintings of Presidents or great battles. I can imagine a painting about the atomic bomb that would show a mushroom cloud and the grass as the city. Paintings can be used to teach people things about history so that perhaps in the future millions of people might not be killed by war.

Hate and Killing Doesn't Work

Back around the World Wars, Japan wanted to get in a conflict with us. I don't like conflict because it doesn't solve anything. Bombing a country doesn't solve any problems at all. I think it makes much more sense to try to come to a peaceful solution and not blow people to smithereens. Why didn't people broadcast their message over the radio and try to come to a solution instead of everyone fighting each other and trying to get revenge. I don't like this kind of thinking because people die this way and I think it's important that live and contribute to the world.

As a reminder in order for the US to end the war, they used two atom bombs which forced Japan to surrender. The Japanese wanted to keep their emperor in power. The emperor broadcast over the radio that he was going to resign and so the war ended because the soldiers didn't have anyone to protect anymore. I think it's ridiculous to sacrifice all those lives just for one person, even if he is the emperor.

I don't think it was good to get Russia and America involved because Germany was influencing Japan. Killing is not the answer. It's wrong to end millions of lives.

Guernica

The Soviet Union were friendly with the Nazis for a while, but that alliance didn't last for a long time. Trotsky, who was a friend of Frida Kahlo's, worked with Lenin and Stalin to form Communists groups. He was exiled to Mexico where he was assinated. The person who exiled him was the leader of the Soviet Union. Germany betrayed the treaty they had made with the Soviet Union and that's why their alliance fell apart. Then the allies helped out. I wish I understood some of this better so I looked online and found a few articles.

• http://www.diplom.org/Zine/W2003A/DziedzicLeake/1900_FG_alliance.html



• http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_Treaty_of_Alliance_Between_Germany_and_Turkey

I understand a little bit better what happened leading up to the World War, but I'm not sure how all this affected the art world. I know what happened to Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera with Leon Trotsky, but I would be interested in hearing from others who could explain how artists have been affected by war.

Picasso was affected by war and he painted Guernica which is one of my favorite paintings. Guernica is one of his most famous paintings and his largest. It was a Cubist painting showing how terrible war was. It represented the city of Guernica which was bombed during the war because it was a very easy target. Picasso was very devastated by the bombing and war in general.

Picasso inspired me and has affected how I paint paintings.

Making Paints

I am learning how to make paints. I am learning the formulas and numbers. These are hard to understand but you have to understand the formulas in order to work with the chemicals. I thin it will be easier to make things once I understand the formulas. I am hoping to learn about the materials and how to use them in the right way so I can eventually make paints on my own. I would like to make paints for my own paintings. Right now I don't feel like I really understand the formulas mean so if anyone out there has a great way to understand these, please respond to my blog and let me know.

It would be easier to figure out how to make certain colors like red, blue, white and yellow if I understood the chemical formulas. I found a few web sites that talk about making paints, like
http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Library/2036/art/pgpnt.htm but most of the sites talked about making paints for kids' projects and I want to learn to make paints for my paintings.

If you have any suggestions at all about this subject, please post ideas, tips or information to my blog. Thanks.

Turning a poem into a puppet show

I turned one of my poems into a puppet show. It was super fun. What I had to do was look at a poem I had written about finding a needle in a haystack and all the things you can do with a needle and a haystack. I thought it would be fun to re-enact the things you could do with a haystack and with a needle. I made puppets and props.

I had to make the poem a bit different for the puppet show because I decided to have a painter as the main character and I needed to have a way for him to express his feelings about haystacks. I think it turned out really well, but I also think I might have done some things differently. For example, I think I should have made the puppets a bit better by making them mechanical instead of out of poster board. I also wish I had the materials to make a miniature easel and a real haystack and a real needle. But I think the poster board ones worked okay. I think people got the idea I was trying to convey which was all the different things you can do with a needle and a haystack and how it might change your life.

How do you think a needle and a haystack could change your life? Please comment on my blog and let me know. I'm very curious.

Frida -- the movie

Tonight I watched the movie "Frida" with Selma Hayek as Frida. It was a wonderful movie and I learned a lot about Frida. Frida had a lot of troubles in her life; although she managed to get through them all. I had no idea that life could be so hard for an artist--all that travelling from her country, Mexico to the United States and Paris. It also must have been very hard to have been a Communist. I can't see how she was able to live with Diego and all his affairs. With a couple like them, I'm not even sure why they got married. But they stayed together, but their love was a indestructible bond. Love is the only thing in the world that is truly immortal. That is what I learned from this movie--that love is the most important thing.

Frida and Diego seemed like they were meant for each other, even though they cheated on each other and often argued with each other. Their bond was so great that their anger and affairs couldn't separate them. I found that amazing. What do you think?