Class take away 6

    For this class, we first started with presenting some of our previous assignments in class. The assignment was to create something while using the word "reuse". The way that we got the word was by "Bible dipping".  One person's assignment that stood out to me was how she reused some of her old clothes that she wore when she was 3 years old, to take a photograph of her daughter wearing it, effectively reusing it. When I went up to describe what I did, people seemed to enjoy it a lot more than I expected. I enjoyed the majority of the works that people made for the assignment, they were pretty entertaining despite having the word "reused".

    Later, we were told to get with partners and draw each other without looking at our paper. I started drawing immediately without any problems throughout, not looking down or anything. My partner seemed to have a bit of trouble getting started and accidentally looked down at the paper a few times.  It seemed like a lot of people in our class were doing the same thing, almost as if having some kind of fear towards doing it. After the exercise is over, we started talking about our experiences with it. Some people were like me where we just started getting to work without hesitating or looking down, others had trouble starting or completing these drawings. Our instructor discussed with us the reason why some of us were not able to easily do the exercise. The main reason was fears to different parts of the situation; whether it's a fear of failure, fear of being judged, or fear of offending the other person. I think one of the reasons why I did not have any fear of doing this exercise is that I realized about a year ago that (in a manner of speaking) college is the time for failure. It's better to make mistakes in college, instead of after we have real jobs. For this exercise, I knew there no way that I could make the picture look good, which is something I usually feel as though I need to do, without looking at it. Because I knew this, it was so much easier to just start drawing without any worries. Our next assignment is to do something with the drawings that our partners gave of us, to us. By something, I mean I don't remember and will have to check the assignment guide.

    Overall, a pretty good class. The talk about fear was pretty nice, and it makes me think that our fear assignment will be soon.

"Bible" dipping

    For this assignment, we are to randomly pick a word in a book and use that word to create something. If I remember correctly from class, we were given the word "redone" from a book that someone had. I'm not completely sure if we were supposed to pick a different word from a book of our own, but I thought that the word "redone" would be a good choice. The reason for this is that it had an important part in the Altered assignment, in which I will be redoing the cover of the book into something that I can enjoy. For something to be redone, it could mean to be done again in the same way, or to be done again in a different way. For the Altered assignment, I decided that the cover was one of the most important parts that needed to be changed, or in this case, Redone.

    I'm not going to say what the title of the book is yet, but it may be able to be discerned through my redone version. Here is a picture of it:

    The first thing that might be noticed is that part of the cover is cut out. This was the first thing that had to go. Part of that title was a summary of everything this book is NOT to me. It was something that I thought just needed to be removed from the book completely. Next is the two words at the bottom, "Leaf" and "Anger", with a marked out section below it. This is where the author's name was. Unfortunately, this book ruined my trust for this person; I wouldn't trust him with my life, with a quarter, and most certainly not enough to read another book made by him. I tried to make the two words look similar to what they might actually look like if the words were comprised of the object and emotion, but I'm not that good of an artist, so it's mainly smooth lines compared to jagged lines. I also added the word "Bouse" after the words "Like a". I had been watching an online game streamer with the name MaximusBlack, one thing that he would say a lot is "Like a Bouse", the word Bouse is kind of something he's adopted in place of the word "boss" though the meaning is relatively the same. It was kind of a spontaneous decision made since I had recently watched him and thought of it when I saw part of the title. At the top, where the words National Seller is, I crossed out the word "Best" which was in-between them and inserted some fancy handwriting of a word which is not quite as fancy. Lastly, I took a blue colored pencil and filled in as much blank space as I could. I like the color blue, so I wanted to see it whenever I looked at the book.

    While this redone version of the cover is most certainly not professional nor production level quality, it certainly appeals to me more than the original cover does. Some people might look at the cover and say, "What did you do to the cover of that book?" I'd reply to them, "I made it better." I imagine a response like that would make someone think either one of two things; How bad did the cover look before, or is this guy a fool to think that such a defacement could be better? To me, it doesn't really matter what someone else might think of it, this redone cover is superior in my opinion. My reasoning on that is not for the art style or the words and most certainly not the fact that the picture has fancy print near the top, but it's because when I look at it, it changes my perspective of the pages that lie behind the cover slightly. This redone version changes my immediate perspective of the book away from immediate bad feelings, to making me laugh at it and just think to myself "Yeah, that's much better than it was."

Class take away 5

    Today for class, we started talking about the Rules were made... assignment and what some of us did for it, some students presented them to the class on the projector. One of the students is a photographer and took some pictures of an object, then did something to break the rules for it. I don't exactly remember what rules he decided to break, but the image did look interesting. Another student was painting a model, but followed some of the instructions wrong. He turned what would have looked like a neatly polished figure into one that looked to have seen battle; bearing marks, scars, and looking tarnished.

    While both creations were made despite not following certain rules, they both turned out rather well. The same concept kind of works out with the piece that I made; although I did not like a single thing about it while creating it and shortly after, after a few hours I could find some appreciation in it. Beth had shown us a piece that she made one time while breaking the rules earlier in the semester. It looked very nice and I would not have expected any foul play to go about while she created it, based on the way the final product looked. It makes me wonder if anyone will know that the doodling that I did was done while I was in a furious mood? Maybe something will be a dead giveaway.

    At one point, we started talking about the difference in looking and seeing. We did not spend much time covering it, but it's probably the topic that I thought of the most throughout the class. The way I see it (see what I did there?(and there)), looking at something is a matter of direction, whereas seeing something is a matter of perception. Going back to before the semester when I first saw the title of the course, this remembered me that we're not only seeing things rather than looking, but we're seeing sideways. I guess that when I signed up for the class, I thought of looking and seeing as the same thing at the time.

    Overall, another good class. I don't think I said a single word until after class when I talked to Beth about looking and seeing, but I'm alright with that.

Rules were made...

    This week, we're doing a "Rules were made..." assignment, which is meant to have us break some rules that play in our creativity. One rule that I always have, in my creativity and outside, is to stay controlled and not angry. I'm breaking those rules. I've never let myself create something while being angry because I thought it would influence my creation in a way that I would personally not like. I prefer to make things when I am feeling calm and controlled so that I don't make something with any influences as to the way that I feel. I'm also doing a bit of a throwback a previous assignment, the doodling one. I was honestly a bit worried what my doodling would say about me, but now I'm doodling with a specific emotion influencing the way that I perform. I don't know what this might say about me, but at this moment I care slightly less than normal. I'm writing this blog while still in an angry mood.

    Let me start by saying that I do not like this picture. It's really chaotic with no sense of direction and to me it feels as though it has no purpose. I have no idea what is going on in this picture, I don't remember what I was thinking about when I made it, or what inspired any of the parts that seem to be present.

    When I decided to do an assignment like this, I thought of some repercussions that might result. This might change the way that some classmates think about me, Beth might not like that the assignment is another doodle as opposed to using software to break the rules, and I wasn't sure if I'd discover anything about myself when looking back on this, I would hope something good rather than bad. Despite all of this, I remember Beth saying something near the beginning of the semester that we can break some of the rules of these assignments, as long as we have reasoning to do so. This assignment is all about breaking rules, something I don't like to do ever if I can avoid it.

    Edit: 4 hours later, after the angry doodling time has long passed, I don't dislike the picture nearly as much as I did a bit earlier. I'm trying to think of what this picture looks like. It kind of looks like a setting of some kind. I find it a bit interesting now, but at the same time, remember how I felt while making it which still leaves me a bit cautious about it.

    Overall, I'm actually unsure what to think of the assignment. I did not really enjoy breaking the rules that I set for myself, but at the same time, I made something that intrigues me due to breaking the rules. It makes me wonder what more there is to discover about who I am or what I am as a person. Sometimes I am afraid of what the answer might be if or when I find it. Despite my fears, I still hold onto my beliefs. From then, until the end.

Class take away 4

To begin our class, we started going around the room to describe some of our 50 "What if" questions, and talk about how they can influence our final decision for the "Altared" assignment near the end of the semester. A lot of people had interesting ones, ranging from how they would destroy their books to how they would break down and rebuild them into something that they could love. For the questions I made, I wrote them all in one night, then did not look at them again until the morning when I woke up the next day. I noticed that a lot of my questions were about how much I... disliked the thing, rather than what I could do with it. I took it as a lot of pent up feelings towards it, not good feelings that is. While I did not make a question for it, I figured out that I need to change the cover completely in a way that will make me associate the thing with something else other than what it once was.

After our break, we began talking about rules and how they can be broken. Once broken, there is always a consequence of some kind. The main point of this discussion was to discuss how rules can be broken in a way that can be completely abstract or just different. Beth is a Photoshop expert, she decided that to provide a good example, she would break all the rules of Photoshop in order to provide an example. A lot of unofficial rules were made to help preserve image quality while editing in Photoshop, for instance, expanding an image can distort pixel quality and just make the image look as if it's a very low quality. Beth then proceeded to break every one of those unofficial rules that she could think of. At first, the image did look to be of rather bad quality; the pixels were stretched out, there was distortion in some odd ways, and it honestly just looked like a worse version than the original. But as Beth kept messing with it, a simple low quality image became an abstract piece that looked nothing like the original image. This tied into our assignment, which is to break rules that were made to be broken in creative experimentation (Provided that none of the rules broken are serious enough to warrant punishment by law). I'm a type of person to try and follow the rules as much as I can, so I'm not sure how this will go.

So far, we have not had a dull class in Seeing Sideways. I really hope it stays that way. Actually, to say that I hope it stays that way might imply that I don't want it to change, which is not technically what I mean. I do want the class to keep changing in very interesting ways, keeping everything the same each week would eventually become repetitious. Let me rephrase that statement; I hope the class keeps exploring new, inspiring, and fun perspectives each week.

50 What if...? questions

I may not have mentioned this before, but one of the required textbooks for the course is a book that we simply do not like, or even hate. For me, I really hate the book that I chose. The book is Peace like a River, by Leif Enger. This is supposed to be a really good book, but when I read it, there was not a single thing I liked about it. That is the least of my opinion about it and there's more from where that came from.

For an assignment, we are to make 50 What if...? questions about the book. So here it goes.

1. What if I had never read the book?

2. What if the title did not have "Peace" in it, which had nothing to do with my feelings while reading the book?

3. What if I tore off the cover entirely?

4. What if the book never existed?

5. What if I knew what I was getting into when I read this book?

6. What if the moment my 10th grade teacher gave me this book, I said that I would not read it?

7. What if I read this book again?

8. What if I punched myself for writing the previous question?

9. What if I crossed out the author's name on the cover?

10. What if I replaced the author's name with "Leaf Anger"?

11. What if I sealed the book shut so that it could never be read again?

12. What if I made a YouTube video describing everything I would do to this book?

13. What if I told the owner of the bookstore that I bought this... paper garbage from that this book isn't worth spending money on?

14. What if I tossed this book straight to the garbage?

15. What if I did not need this book for a class, but had it anyway?

16. What if the writer of this book got tippers from satan while writing this monstrosity?

17. What if instead of dog poop in a burning bag prank, this book was used instead of the poop?

18. What if back in 10th grade, this was not a required book, would I find it less infuriating? (no)

19. What if I covered every page with paint or something to erase every word of the book?

20. What if people could see what I saw in this book back when I read it?

21. What if this book gave me any moment of actual interest?

22. What if the main character of this book wasn't so infuriating to me?

23. What if every page I turned while reading this book didn't make me cringe?

24. What if the book was completely rewritten to fit a science fiction genre?

25. What if the book disgraced the science fiction genre?

26. What if the book was not so bad that I could actually remember the main story of it?

27. What if I had not purged my mind of the story this book tried to burn into my mind?

28. What if I could go back in time to tell my past self NEVER to read the book?

29. What if I actually liked the book?

30. What if I was actually paying attention when I wrote the stupid question right before this one?

31. What if I told the teacher after reading a few pages that reading the book would make me go blind, deaf, and stupid?

32. What if I started to dislike people raised in Osakis, Minnesota because the writer was from there? (that would be unfair)

33. What if I said that burning the money spent on the book was a better experience than reading the book?

34. What if I could actually speak to the author of this mess?

35. What if I stopped referring to this thing as a book?

36. What if this book was a mistake?

37. What if me reading this trash was a mistake?

38. What if I'm the only person who dislikes this putrid pile of tree death?

39. What if I had the choice whether this dung heap ever came into existence?

40. What if I could remove every copy of this disgusting puke fest from the face of earth and beyond?

41. What if I could summarize, in one sentence, all my thoughts about this waste of memory?

42. What if there are a lot more people that hate this swine scribbling as much as I do?

43. What if there is someone who hates this pile of stinking rubbish more than I do?

44. What if the author of this rotten plague was someone closely related to me?

45. What if I could rewrite this dumpster tier stack of papers into an actual book?

46. What if this sack of monkey crap became... no, disgraced a video game?

47. What if this flea bitten messenger of doom is a tool that brings the apocalypse upon us? (the fleas died shortly afterward)

48. What if I misunderstood this pack of diarrhea cased slime?

49. What if I understood that violation of decency completely.

50. What if I had more questions to make for this indecent, castrating, feeble minded, nauseating, infuriating, corrupting, fever inducing, refuse scrubbing, swill treading, failed excuse of a BOOK to provide more entertainment than a fecal encrusted POTATO!

This was the worst stack of papers with words that I've ever read. There was no peace while I read these insidious words that laid in wait behind the cover. Before I read this poor piece of defecation, I never thought that a book could actually make me mad, but it appears as though someone has shown me that it is indeed possible to hate a book this much. (I withheld all swearing to prevent that anger inducing anomaly of pure hatred to bring me down to it's level.)

I feel like I might be a bit harsh on this thing, but it's how I feel about it.

Class Take Away 3

On February second, we begun the class with some quotes that Beth pulled from each person in the class. There were no names put to the quotes so it was completely anonymous. I saw my quote up there and thought to myself "Yeah, I wrote that." There were some good quotes that Beth picked, they did make me pause to think for a moment. These quotes weren't chosen by the students, they were chosen by the instructor, which intrigued me.

After talking for a bit about the quotes, we continued on to discussing the doodling assignment. I personally have never doodled before, so I found the assignment a rather new but strange concept. We all had a chance to discuss the assignment and weigh in with what we took from the doodling. I mentioned how I've never actually drawn something without having a specific purpose to it, which sounds similar to my decision making process as a whole. It felt as though doodling had more of a meaning to the other students in the class than it did for me; I guess that because it was actually an assignment that perhaps it could have been a reason why I did not get much out of it. I might try doing another experiment with doodling some time in the future to see if I get a different experience.

I may not have mentioned our text book in previous blogs, so here it is. Our textbook for the class is a coloring book of our own choice. It seems strange, but I find the idea interesting. This leads to the next part of the class, which was talking to someone that we never met before, no more complex than getting to know the person. So I partnered up with someone, it turns out we're both very interested in space travel and possibly discovering new life. We had a decent amount in common, then when the time was up, we were to introduce our partner to the rest of the class. We both described each other rather well, and at the end of everyone's explanations, Beth said that she has no reason not to believe anything that we said about our partner. Normally I wouldn't expect someone to hear a story for a lot of people and say that there's no reason not to believe a single thing that anyone says, but her reasoning made sense.

For our next assignment, we are to take the book we will be Altering by the end of the semester, and write out 50 "What if...?" questions for it. 50 questions might be a pretty big number, but I have a few what if questions that I've been conjuring up for this book ever since it disgraced my hands and eyes back in high school. While I had this book, none of the 4 S's of creative thought were present. I can think of an "S" I'd love to give this book, but even that would be too much of a grace for it.

Polly Wolly doodle all the day?

Good afternoon, it's been a rather long weekend. For this week, our primary focus was to spend a half hour doodling. After watching the video provided by Beth Lykins, I remembered that I have never actually doodled before. I have only ever drawn on paper when I had a specific focus or a goal to reach and accomplish through drawing. What's more, we were introduced to the four "S" concepts in class last week; Synchronicity, Serendipity, Spontaneity, and Surrender. So I sat down and decided to start up a timer for 30 minutes, it was time to start doodling for the first time and with the four S's. Two minutes in, I had completely forgotten about the four S's. I struggled to put anything down on the paper to start the page, I felt as though I could not draw anything without thinking of it as a real sketch or drawing. After about three minutes, I decided to put on some music and just draw, whether I put a lot of thought into it or not. This was my result:

For the most part, I started at the top left, then randomized the rest of my drawing positions.  I am not very good at putting my creative thoughts down on paper, which is one of the reasons I'm taking classes such as this one. I know what each image is and how it was created in conjunction with my thought process at the time; but I really do not know how the creative process worked with the session of doodling. I can relate some of the doodles with the four S's discussed in class, but it may be hard to explain how.

Serendipity: The eye looking thing in the center of the page, they were lines and dots that I threw down while thinking about the galaxies and universe as a whole. I don't think it is by chance, but everything has developed in a way that is beneficial to life, and in our lives we are privileged to feel happiness. I'm rather happy that things turned out the way they are, but I'm open for some changes.

Surrender: Honestly, this entire assignment was a surrendering to me. I'm a mostly confidential person, I only talk when I feel as though I need to and I usually prefer to watch and listen. Having an assignment to doodle all my thoughts down felt a bit daunting to me, enough that I would delay it for as long as I could. However, there is a side of me that wants to release all the thoughts for someone to see. My "Confidential" self surrendered to my "Let it all out" self for a little while. Also, the pencil sketch is another example of surrender, but that's not important yet.

Spontaneity: The scribbles starting at the top left of the page felt very spontaneous to me. I was listening to music while doing this assignment, when I suddenly started writing down some of the tones of the music. I thought of tracing the note tones as the song played. I didn't like the first song after listening to it for a few minutes, so I skipped drew in a skip sign right after it, right after skipping the song in real life. This was probably the first spontaneous drawing I have ever made, all other drawings I've made were contemplated before starting.

Synchronicity: Here is where I kind of draw a blank, I honestly do not know if there is any synchronicity in my doodling. When I look at the marks on the paper, I don't feel a sense that anything really lines up in a synced sort of way. The only possible relations I can see are how the cross might look like the frame of the balanced scale, or that both "Protect" and "Defend" are written on the shield. I may not completely understand the meaning of Synchronicity, despite looking up the actual definition. I hope I can get get some feedback from the class and maybe a note from the instructor on what she sees that may be an example of Synchronicity. I feel as though my thoughts that went onto this doodle were more randomized than synchronized.

This assignment was an interesting concept to me but also felt like a challenge to complete. I'm not very good at portraying my ideas to the world outside of my mind, but that's something that I need to be able to do if I want to pursue my dreams. I'm glad that I have a class that requires me to step out of my comfort zone more than other classes. I'm also looking forward to feedback on my doodling. Maybe someone else sees this a lot differently than I do.