Misunderstood

 "What did we use to color these self portraits?"  This is a chalk pastel self portrait and I want to share it because it is me, misread.  Often people look at me or hear me speak and they will form a perception of me that is incorrect.  I have created this by not following all the guidelines.  First of all the head was suppose to be a circle, the shoulders an "L" shape and I believe the line in the middle of my head was supposed to be dark and finally the colors in the circle were supposed to be only four and in each quadrant of the circle.  So here is why I defied instruction......

I initially drew a circle but then flipped my paper and drew the shape you see.  This shows my face as harder and perhaps scarier.  As I drew this shape I went over it a couple more times to darken and thicken the line because I am often told that when people initially meet me, they can be intimidated by my appearance.  On the outside I display a hard shell and for many years I have tried different techniques to soften my features, but I don't believe they have helped as I continue to receive comments, "You know when I first met you......."

I wanted to draw my shoulders sloped because  I feel that I am not really a "square" and plain person.  So I pictured myself with more rounded shoulders to better represent me.  I don't know why we were supposed to draw the line in the middle, but I wanted to make sure it was not a place where the eye goes, so I decided to make it lighter but to still be there. 

I wanted to color the bottom two quadrants by going with a  darker color first and getting lighter as a representation of the outer shell that I have.  Then the colors closer in represent the lightness, humbleness, honesty, integrity that I believe to be a better representation of me.  I left the bottom a little darker than the top of my head because people tend to focus on the face not the top of the head and for this reason I made the top of my head brighter.

I chose red as the center because then people would see it as my heart and the colors surrounding my heart are those that are friendly, accepting, stand for openness and acceptance.  The final three colors of the background, blue - red - yellow represent the colors of Superman (Truth, Justice and the American way).  Kidding aside, I heard that to sell your home color the door yellow because it is a welcoming and friendly color that brings peace.  The blue represents "likeability" and the red represents my desire for adventure and my spontaneity.

So that's me...often misunderstood on the outside but quite understanding and colourful on the inside : )

Why?

When provided options for an individual assignment for my 406 Arts class, the first two to excite me was the blog or scrapbook.  Neither of these really getting me going, it's the challenge.  My wife really enjoys scrapbooking and is fantastic with it, so I thought maybe we both could do it together.  She could work on hers and I could work on mine.  Then I remembered how time consuming and expensive it is to scrapbook and really, it is a lot of work.  Why not Blog?  It means again I have to sit and write, but about my experiences with this class and the arts through out this semester.  This should be challenging for me, yet easy enough.  Our family enjoys a lot of the arts, and I sure could stand to learn more of the painting and drawing side of things.  So let us see what I learn this semester.

New Adventure

 

Kete - Uruuru - Matua

 

In my Aboriginal Studies class at UNBC, two of my peers presented on New Zealand's Maori iwi (tribes).  They were talking about the Maori Three Baskets of Knowledge and gave us a quick assignment to do.  I don't remember how my basket was selected, but I received the Kete-Uruuru-Matua basket.  This basket represents peace, goodness, and love and includes a portrait of the family.  I was suppose to draw my representation of this. 
Every time I am asked to do art such as drawing I cringe, just looking at my picture I am sure you can tell why.  Just the day prior, I saw someone else's art work of an orange, and she told me it was grade one artwork.  My comment to her was "Well I must be drawing at a pre-school level then." 
In my mind I envisioned a dove (of course for love), and two different colored hands holding this dove and then the family standing behind the arms and dove. 
I drew the picture this way because the dove represents love, the hands holding the dove represent goodness and caring, while the different colored hands represents my family and it's diverse make-up.  We have Norwegian background and in the family we have Mexican, Aboriginal, and Japanese cultures that have joined my sisters family.  When I drew the family portrait, I wanted to connect the arms to the family because this would show the unification, support and love in our family.
So enough embarrassment and here is my personal challenge.  I am going to get a learn to draw book and teach myself how to draw through out this arts course.  Near the end of the course I will re-draw this portrait in the same amount of time and post it here so that we can see if I have improved at all.  Through out my lessons, I will log any drawings that I feel I should post and share my thoughts around them. 
Feel free to pass along any words of encouragement as I learn over the next couple months.

A little about me and my arts history

I was fortunate to learn ukulele and recorder as regular schooling.  I use to slouch in my chair and play the recorder for my friends on test day while they pretended to play.  We also had choir and band, and concert band, I don't remember the difference between the two bands now.  I was involved in all of these in elementary and junior high school.  I even did poetry readings.

In high school I joined the high school band and jazz band.  I played the baritone as my primary instrument as well as the alto saxophone.  In band I could play every instrument except flute and drums.  I could not get my lips right for the flute and lacked coordination for percussion. I tried out for the Alberta band with my baritone and made it but never played with them - financial reasons.  I was in Ft. McMurray and they wanted members to travel to Red Deer and beyond. 

As a youth I took piano lessons for two years and guitar for one year.  I quit guitar when my teacher asked me to sing to her.  I picked up guitar again 10 years ago and continue to play.

My wife and I started a community wide worship band when we lived in Saskatchewan, I played guitar and vocals while my wife played piano and vocals.  She plays piano, has an amazing voice, and can play guitar.  My oldest Josiah and daughter Faith both take piano lessons.  Josiah is going into his 2nd year with a teacher.  He taught himself the first book and so we couldn't refuse him to go in to lessons.  Faith loves to sing and dance.  Everything with her has to be musical right from the when she was in the womb.  She use to slam her utensils on the table and then we realised she was making music.  As she got older we could hear different rhythms.  She says she wants to be a singer and drum player for the worship team when she grows up.  Faith also has done two years of ballet.   

Art:  I took drawing lessons for a week in grade seven, other than that drawing, drama and other such art areas, I am not very gifted at, but I do appreciate to see it. 

Dance:  I was in Jazz club in junior high but chickened out when the big school performance came.  I took 2 step lessons for 4 months with friends, then I took East Coast Swing lessons with my wife for 4 months.  While in my first degree I took a dance class where we learned the basic steps for dances such as two step, polka, jive, swing, fox trot and the waltz.  I enjoy dancing and would love it if there were a place to go where people could experiment with different music and dance.