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For my Capstone which is essentially your final project as a student at Science Leadership Academy @ Beeber, I created a poetry magazine that consists of various poems from seniors all around the school including myself. This was something my advisor Mrs. Turoff came up with since I’ve shown a passion towards poetry since the day I arrived at this school. It was my very first mini course and I’ve even had my poems published before, so suffice to say that I’m a pretty good poet. I started off this project at a rocky start because I kind of didn’t want to be remembered as the one who wrote poems. However, when I tried to change my capstone I hit a rock and realized that this is something you would really need to put deep thought into and create with a passion of your own. Don’t just do it because you have to it should be something you are proud of doing. The final product isn’t something I myself am too amazed at, but I learned a lot by going through this process. Even though I won’t get this opportunity again, I can still guide the students of tomorrow who will be doing their own capstones. The process is unlike any other Spanish 2 project or Bentum assignment, you must really know and be passionate about what you want to do in order to complete this capstone.

The art piece that I’ve choose to draw for my quarter 4 is a picture of Chadwick Boseman looking at the observer wearing a black suit with yellow leaf designs. In this piece, I wanted to communicate that a mixture of generations. For Chadwick is very famous now, while the art style he was drawn in was popular in the 1950’s. For this project, I simply used color pencils to fill in his skin color and suit. I also used a very bleeding ebony stick to color most black things in the picture like his hair, eye, or eyebrow. The latest work I’ve done was a draft of what I’ve just completed (Nothing special).

First, I outlined the entire drawing in pencil. Next, all the black areas were colored with the ebony stick. Lastly. Everything else was colored with color pencils. The Artist I studied is named Alex Katz. The special techniques the artist uses is fact that his art is not very detailed to the point of real life, but the person in the end is recognizable. I even learned a new technique of shading in terms of Katz’s art style (Which is coloring different areas of his face with a darker shade of brown).

In this artwork, most proud of how similar my mine was to the actual artist’s. If I could change something about my work, I would use a different material of coloring the black areas because the ebony sticks bleed a lot and if you brushed against it, it would get everywhere. In conclusion, my was difficult to make because of materials used and art style my artist used, but I think this was an overall successful art piece.

Ali Mohammed

Ms. Hertz

My project for this assignment was Image editing. I am doing image editing for a second time in this class because I want to learn more of how to perfectly use the online tools for editing. For my image editing I used Pixlr https://pixlr.com. I used three images from the internet. Pixlr is simple to use, it is not such a complicated and hard, and it has different tools options such as eraser, color picker,  marquee tool, sponge tool etc… The whole purpose for using these pictures was to give a big picture of the corrupt political system in Eritrea and the immigration. The first picture is about one form of torture in the country. The punishment that is described in the first image is  of a person who is after beating and torturing for hours then the hands were tied on a tree. It is a tyronical type of a torture. The second picture is also almost the same and the third on is a picture of Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia. It is reported that Ethiopia received about 120,000 Eritrean immigrants among them are soldiers, children, women and men of different ages and places from the country, and their reason for fleeing from the country is that they could not tolerate with the punishment and cruel life in the country because of the ruling party. The party which is leading Eritrea is known for violating human rights and committing Major crimes against the people. The united nations reported that the government is one of the worst government in our world today is the Eritrean government for human rights abuses. Most of Eritrean people are forced to leave the country and are immigrating to nearby countries such as Ethiopia, Sudan, and Djibouti, and they are accepted as refugees and are recognized by U.N. and there are also thousands of Eritrean in different countries of Europe and Israel. There is no country in the face of the earth which has not an illegal Eritrean immigrant.

I did not have that much difficulties and failures in this project it was interesting and that is because I did image editing before. Throughout this project my intention was to lean how to use the tools for image editing and I have learned many things from this project, communicating through arts, and different tools for image editing. I also did not experience any difficulties or failure. I learned about myself that I was interested in the editing art and how it helps us understand history.

For my artwork, I was inspired to create a silhouette drawing that I got inspiration from Kara Walker. I  drew a women with long curly hair that is surrounded by a colorful and bright background. I wanted to make a contrasting theme. I want to communicate the piece by showing how a person’s environment is what brings color to oneself and I feel like I did that really well for the piece. To create this, I have made it with pencils, erasers, spray on adhesive, tracing paper, micron pens, watercolors and acrylic paint. I sketched everything with the pencils and and touched it with the eraser for the centerpiece. I then painted it with black & white acrylic paint. I then used thick paper to draw the design for the background, outline it with a micron pen after coloring it with the water color. After paint the rest of the piece, I used the spray on adhesive to attach the cut outs of the water color piece. I found that I really enjoy the silhouette drawing with a colorful background. I feel like it’s a style that i really enjoy.

My process was honestly easy to follow. I know I wanted to draw a person with flowing hair and and mostly gained some inspiration from the movie Pocahontas for the song color in the wind. I took the song title literally though. IK drew a girl with flowing hair and created a colorful background. This made me want to create something light and colorful to fit the image that I wanted.For the watercolor, I learned that less water was better for the color to flow on the paper.  It made the color look more smooth. I learned how to use the spray on adhesive for the first time if I even decide to do it again. I’m proud of the overall outcome of it. I feel like it looks really good and I improved from the last time I did this. I wouldn’t change anything at all for this drawing because. In conclusion, I feel like I learned how to get more confident with doing silhouette drawings. I feel like this can be one of my styles for when I draw just like Kara Walker. I won’t always draw this but then at the same time it isn’t a style I would do all the time.

Ali Mohammed

Ms. Hertz

Artist statement

   For this project, I created a piece of drawing on a big sheet of paper which is based on the artwork of great Cuban artist known by the name of Armando Marino. His artistic capacity and talent are highly appreciated in all parts of the world. Almost all of his arts are based on media reporting issues such as immigrants, wars, economic crisis and other related issues. His arts are so amazing and based on facts. He was born in the end 1960s, that era was historically one of the worst situations, It was a time when the civil war was spread all over the countries, and the economy was bad. I chose to study his him and his arts because when I was doing my research I was looking for artists who do arts based on immigration, and refugees in order to relate his art to my life. There fist thing I did was draw the chained hand as big as I can with pencil, After the drawing was completed I used pencil colors for coloring. I have drawn two chained hands, brought together as one hand are locked. The palms of the hands are big and used different colors to beautify them. I used different pencil colors, mostly used brown over it red pencil color, and for the forearm, I used brown over green one. For the chain, I used blueberry pencil color over it a red color. And all the colors I used were, red, orange, blue, blueberry, brown, red, and pink.  If I had to do this project again I think that I would have drawn an image of refugee or people protesting and being beating. This project inspired me to participate more in art classes and courses.

   I have learned many things from his wonderful arts, his arts are self-evident, you can understand the heavy message behind them. One thing I liked the most about his art is that they are directly connected to social problems, such as protests, immigrants, violence etc.. and these are of deeply rooted in my life. His artistic works have influenced many people from all over the world. This project inspired me to participate more in art classes and courses.

For this project, our class had to imitate or create an art piece from a famous artist. The artist that I was studying was Vik Muniz, who is known for making collages that creates an ultimate image for viewers. I decided to create an artwork that is influenced off of Vik Muniz and has a message to give to other viewers. I call this art piece “United Under One Race”.  

The materials that I used for this art piece were sharpie markers, construction paper, and newspapers. With the sharpie marker, I drew an outline of a person with her arms sticking out and cut out a bunch of heads from the newspaper. Then, I glued all all of the heads of colored people within the body, and all of the heads from white people and surrounded the body with them. The technique of using a collage of white people surrounding black people is essential to this art piece because it helps viewers get a better understanding of the message that I want my art piece to share. This art piece doesn’t really relate to my previous work because my focus on this art piece was to send a message to the black community, while on the previous work, I didn’t really focus on a message. The message that I wanted this art piece to display is: “We’re all we have, we’re all we need.” The reason why I wanted to display this message is because in recent history, there are times when we still feel like we’re surrounded by racism. And, I wanted to display this message to remind those people that during those times we need to lookout for each other and speak as one race to bring awareness to racism.

Overall, one thing that I wish that I could improve would be to make the art piece look better, but I’m not beating myself over it because this was my first time making a collage. However, my goal wasn’t really to create a beautiful art piece, but more of a meaningful art piece, and that’s something that I’m proud of because I felt like I made it very meaningful. I hope that one day someone can actually look at my art piece and acknowledge the message that I tried to implement into it.

After completing my artist study project about Keith Haring, I made the decision to put my own twist on his work. Rather than replicating a piece of his, I compiled a few of my favorite pieces Haring made in his lifetime. This piece incorporates pastel colors, as well as a few deep, cool colors. (The pieces I used will be linked below.) I tried my hardest to maintain the linework and simplicity of Haring’s work, but remembering that I wanted to make a tribute to him, in a way.

To complete this piece, I used acrylic paint, a store-bought canvas, Sharpie marker, and paint brushes (soft and medium bristle). I first traced the pieces I wanted to incorporate in pencil, then began to think about color choices. At first, I wanted to use bold colors, but soon realized I don’t often like working with them. Pieces I’ve done in the past have indeed included darker colors, but my favorite pieces almost always have pastels in them.

I struggled with this piece quite often. I wanted to also incorporate his “Ignorance=fear” piece, however, I still have trouble with painting words. I was able to paint “safe sex” on the canvas since it was a more abstract font. Unfortunately, you can still see the black marker at the top of the canvas where I made the attempt to write “ignorance=fear.” To cover this to the best of my ability, I made yellow and white spike-like brush stroke marks. There’s also pencil marks in some spots that I was unable to erase.

Keith Haring connects to my life in a more distant sense. He was a gay man living in the 80s with AIDS. He had an abstract, but simple artistic style. Many people know that the 80s was time where HIV/AIDS had an “outbreak,” for lack of a better term. Here I am, a queer female living in the 21st century, with a ever-changing artistic style. Times have changed- we still have homophobia, but it wasn’t a blatant fear to touch someone with AIDS, or be near a gay person. Not only does Haring inspire me with his pieces, but his activism for the LGBT+ community was executed in a subtle, but powerful way.

Overall, I’m most proud of the entire piece. Keith Haring has been a favorite of mine for a long time. (I’m going to college in his hometown!) I really like how I was able to make the characters in the piece pop out by using dark, cool colors. This gave a nice contrast against the warm, pastel background. I also like that I used sharpie to do the outlines instead of black acrylic paint. I feel as though the marker gives a bold, clean line. This piece has to be the best I’ve ever produced. I appreciate my color palette, as well as image choices. I’ve been in an artistic-rut as of late, so this is a huge accomplishment for me. I hope I can continue to grow as I move on in life.

Tykeiah martin

Ms. Hertz

Art

Q4 Artist Statement

May 21. 2018

Incorporated in my work there is a clock, made from the sun and the sec and min hands are being run by the clouds, as the day us passing. Lying by an orange sunset, which I thought would set the tone for the picture and keep the photo coordinated with one another. At the bottom of the picture, there is a young lady, who hair blows in the wind creating the phrase “no time” as she panics while time vanishes as she runs on top of the green grass. O’s fall from the cloud into the phrase no time to emphasize the day or her life is passing by and she has to move fast. The tools I used to create this art was a canvas, canvas painting, using the colors orange, yellow, black, pink, green red, blue. To create the vibrant color in the photo. I think this work represents work I did in the past because my work always wraps around me and a lot of thoughts I may keep private that are spontaneous that truly reveals me. The steps to creating this process were, first to start then continue completing my work, halfway finished and completed next to work on my final touches. Salvidor Dali, because we seem to express our thoughts in an expressive way, creating https://www.google.com/search?q=salvador+dali&rlz=1CADEAA_enUS762US762&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjW5dvf3ZbbAhXIr1QKHeaUADgQ_AUICigB&biw=1366&bih=654#imgrc=BgYWfMc85EsyDM

A certain technique is always important because its what make the photo, the right stroke with a paintbrush can create something you’d never imagined. A new technique I have learned is between t and look for the right brush. I'm most proud of how I turned out to look just how I imagined it in my head and now it's out on something physical. If I could change one thing it would be pace, time. I've learned that the meaning of art is what you create because we're all different so don't be afraid to show off your colors. I've learned that the meaning of art is what you create, because we're all different so don't be afraid to show off your colors.

For my group’s capstone we decided to make a go kart. In the beginning we struggled with figuring out what the end product would be, we thought about buying an already made kart and disassembling it, or scrapping the idea and building something more like a truck. We bought components for a go kart like a frame and axle and started working out blueprints for a design. We ran into a lot of problems with the frame we bought, a lot of the measurements were not customary and it was a little small. Designing a new frame was the next idea. We used CAD (Computer-Aided Drawing) programs like Autodesk Fusion 360 and Solidworks 2017 to create 3-dimensional blueprints for the kart that can be printed out. This process is/was not easy, you have to make objects in real life in a computer program, this requires seemingly endless measuring, analyzing, and just thinking about every piece of the kart. We assembled the frame in the program, you can see pictures attached here. During this capstone I learned how to more effectively collaborate with a larger team than I’m used to, how to use 3-dimensional design programs, and how to change ideas with a group so everyone is heard.