Drip Drop Splat!

This how my virtual drip painting turned out

Today I did some art called drip painting with Katie, this was a style of painting that was originated in World War ll. This is a way of doing abstract painting which is a painting of random colours but looks good. The hard thing about drip painting is knowing when to stop or when to change colour. To do some drip painting you need to never let the paintbrush touch the canvas and be able to control the brush by knowing how to do lines and blotches. To do a line you need to move the brush quickly over the canvas. You also need to saturate the brush in paint so that you have enough paint to create lines and blotches. We also did some virtual drip painting on http://www.jacksonpollock.org. My virtual art is above.

Tech challenge

A very great newspaper chair (not ours)

Today we had a Tech challenge and our challenge was to build a chair out of newspaper . The rules were it had to be a chair, had to hold a wooden frog that weighed about 1.5 kg, it had to be freestanding and you can only use the materials given to you. The materials given to us were: a roll of masking tape and five newspapers. To start are team made a stool which was going to be the base of the chair so the frog would be able to sit in it we then built the chair around it. finally after about 40 minutes our chair was complete and we took it down to the judging area where there were some pretty impressive chairs. There was one that was very strong but it was a triangle and there was another one with a table and one that fell over right on the spot so it was disqualified in the end we won!!!  Based on the judges decision they said that our chair looked great and would've been more comfortable to sit on than a triangle chair.

Impressionism

This is my last day of the term and from now on I will only have 8 days left at Enrich so I'm making the most of it! Today we had a second workshop about impressionism painting and we got to choose what we painted. I chose to paint the picture above because I thought it would be a good picture to paint and I could also change so it looks like my perspective of what it would look like in real life. Impressionism is my favourite style of painting because it doesn't have to be perfect and it can be what your perspective is of the picture in real life.

Impressionism

Claude Monet's most famous painting

Today I went to the second workshop of art with Katie and we studied Claude Monet and his art style: Impressionism. This is a type of art which is done by using a flat brush, mixing colours on the canvas and they way he painted which was "tache" which is French for touch. Today most people were doing a lily pad scene which was water using pretty much all of the colours and then mixing blue and yellow (not on the canvas) to create the lily pads. When you are painting you should always remember to do your lily pads and your water different ways. This gives a great stroke effect. I like the style of art Claude Monet did because nothing has to be perfect and it is your impression of what your painting is about.
 

Affective Study

Today I researched some facts about Michael Jackson for my affective study and I found out heaps of wonderful and weird facts about him. Darryn gave us a criteria we have to meet to be at a certain stage. I am going for the "at" stage (which is the middle stage) because I do not have much free time after school or during the weekends to research. Some of the facts that I found out were that he owned a pet boa constrictor called "Muscles". He also came up with the lyrics for black or white 20 mins before he had to sing it. A survey in 1997 declared that he was the most famous person in the world. This is great because I don't have to explain who he is. (everyone knows him!)

Welding, flame-cutting and grinding!!!

Today Stu (my expert that is helping me build my go kart) came in to take me to SIT to learn how to weld, grind and learn what machines do what and how to use them. First of all we went around all of the machines and tools so I knew what they do and how to use them. Second we went into the welding room and I learnt how to do 2 different kinds if welding. (Stu helped me with this.) The types of welding that I learnt to do were arc welding and MIG welding. I tried welding on a piece of scrap-metal and I got to use a welding mask that was automatic so whenever there was any kind of spark that would damage my eyes there was an automatic shade that allowed me to look at the welding without my eyes becoming sore. After that Stu taught me about flame cutting. (You still have to wear a welding mask for this!) When he was teaching me about flame cutting he taught me ho to make a C which is the first letter of my name. He then helped me do a good C which is the one above for a decoration.

Changing behaviour

Imagine recycling or keeping your seatbelt on while you are in the car for a brilliant reward!

Well that is what we talked about at Jenni's workshop. We talked about changing behaviour in a way that rewards someone or something.We watched 2 videos on a website called fun theory, if you want to look at it here's a link: www.funtheory.com/ 

The first video that we watched was called the bottle bank arcade. The game was put outside a local place to recycle glass. The arcade machine works by flashing lights that sit on top of holes that you can fit your bottles in and you have to put them in before the light stops flashing to get points. At the end of the game it tells you how many points you got and the highest score.

The second video was about an invention called the play belt which teaches kids to keep their seatbelt on while in the car. To work the play belt you follow the screens instructions and then you can use the on screen entertainment device. But if you take your seatbelt off the screen automatically turns off and you can not use it until you put your seatbelt back on.

While I was at Jenni's workshop I learnt that you can change someone or somethings behaviour in different ways.