This assignment came in two parts. The first part was coming up with my poem. In order to do this I read through all of the pages I selected, and first chose the page I found most interesting. After deciding on that page I re-read it over and over again in order to craft my poem. I started by just circling a bunch of phrases and words I found interesting, until eventually I came up with my poem.
The second part was deciding what to draw in order to depict my poem. My poem is all about hunger but more importantly peoples situation and life, and how there is always someone out there that has it worse than you. I decided to draw two plates of food. One of them with a ton of food on it and the other very bare and with no protein, just a few peas and carrots.
Not much planning involved before I decided the page and the words for my Human Document assignment. As a result, I was able to complete this in a relatively short time. I started off with a few interesting words and phrases and then selected the next ones that rhymed. I hope the text actually makes sense, but if not, at least it flows smoothly
Digitalizing the page before drawing saved me from a lot of trouble. It was easy to draw and make changes digitally. And there are plenty of tools on the iPad – all sizes and colors of pens and brushes – to help me achieve different effects I desired.
I really struggled on this assignment (I am turning it in a day late). First of all, my Dad was here for all of parents weekend and I only see him a couple of weeks out of the year; because of this, I didn’t start my homework until 5 PM on Sunday, and I started this assignment at about 11 PM on Sunday Night. I went through all of the submissions and was truly blown away. Unlike the previous Sunday Sketches, it really seemed like everyone was an artist. It really stressed me out, and in a frenzy, I decided to go to bed instead of finishing the assignment. When actually making the page, I just started drawing away with Ore at Complex. When looking back on my work today, I decided to totally scrap that and start over. I then spent about 2 hours reading the pages, trying to find some sort of meaning in a somewhat random assortment of words. I ended up choosing something that I would not have written about in a million years. In my avatar post, I explained about how instead of reflecting on lows in my life, I was going to try and reflect on the highs in order to keep my mental health strong throughout the year. Instead of doing that, I dug deep to one of my lowest lows. This page is about when I was in a forced abusive relationship for about a year. I am not going to go into too much detail, but I try and make my point about how the relationship was abusive in a physical and emotional way. I tried my best to draw gravestones in the center of the page. Her gravestone is what kept me bound to the relationship and my gravestone is actually being in the relationship itself. Overall, I am pretty disappointed in my work. Not only was I a day late, but I do not think I properly expressed my story. It is moments like these when not having practice in any art field really made me feel like an outlier compared to the other students. Hopefully in the future, I am able to find my groove. I might redo this assignment before the end of the semester; even if it does not impact my grade at all, I really want to produce something that I am proud of, especially if it is about such a meaningful time in my life.
For my human document I started by glancing over the page I had chosen and highlighting words that stood out using a colored pencil. I varied the color I used based on what emotions I felt the word elicited. Once I had a narrowed down set of words to work with, I went along boxing in the words I wanted to use in my poem, adding articles and punctuation when needed. As I went along, I used my pen to add illustrations that underlined the meaning of certain key words. I particularly like how I drew a silhouette of a man holding up the words “depend on,” and make his footing be on an unstable pile of bricks. I thought this signified the unreliability of the man in my poem. Last, I used white paint to cover the parts of the page that I didn’t want the audience to pay attention to, especially since some of the words I had originally highlighted but not used in my poem would have caused confusion. I enjoyed this project a lot because it gave me the opportunity to be really creative; however, I also found it very difficult and time consuming to choose the words to use in my poem, since so many were on the page for me to choose from.
I went into this assignment thinking it would be difficult for me because I easily get lost in a page of words now that I’m used to graphic novels and comics. At first it was, but then I focused myself and began to dissect the pages I had. The poem I made is mostly talking about how you can at one point have such a positive view on your life and think you’re doing well and then another point you can think you’re spiraling out of control and not meeting any goals. This is often how I’ve felt throughout my few months in college so I felt very confident in my words. So confident I didn’t think any drawing in the background could add to the words alone so I just used color and a common symbol for success.
