Unit 1: What is beauty?

Tanan

Acrylic on wood, 15 x 13 inches

Beauty is different in the eyes of every person. There is no right definition of what is or what is not beautiful when it comes to appearances. Tanan is a Cebuano word that means “all”. I think this word properly defines beauty since it is universal. Universal means applicable to all. This painting illustrates the different features of different women. It mainly rides on the stereotype of beauty here in the Philippines. Majority of Filipinos associate beauty with a person who is blonde and light-skinned. Because of this stereotype, people who are naturally born with dark skin consider themselves ugly. The woman in the painting has different skin tones, different eye colors, and different hair colors. This painting attempts to show the universality of beauty.

Unit reflection

I learned that a piece made by artists often reflect on what they think is beautiful. Based on the description of creative thinking, I don't think I was very creative in the art making process. Throughout the process, I think one challenge I faced was the facial expression of the woman I was painting. Initially, I didn't refer her face to a picture so I had to find a reference for her facial expression. In the end, I based her facial expression and mouth position to my mother's face.

Julianna Chan

Unit 2: Self Discovery

Andie

Photograph

For this unit’s project, I decided to explore photography. I have always been interested in photography and wanted to try making a project with it. I looked for a few photographers that I fit the kind of photos I wanted to take. I mainly looked at the works of Annie Leibovitz and Rachel Bush. Annie Leibovitz usually takes simple photos which I liked while Rachel Bush’s photos looked very dream-like. I didn’t research about similar artworks that explored the theme of self- discovery. Instead I just looked for photographs that I want my photos to look like. I looked at pictures in the “cottagecore” style since it looked very dreamy. In this project, I ultimately had 3 trial runs. The first two were test runs that had a lotion bottle as the subject. I basically used those to trials to see how the different settings looked in the photo. For the final photo, I took what I learned from the 3 trials and applied it for the final shoot. To achieve the hazy effect, I covered a piece of my camera with a tool cloth from my sister’s dress. Throughout the unit, my project underwent many changes. Overall, I’m happy with the final product.

Unit 3: Art In Trying Times

When I was in the “designing” part of the project, I was mainly looking at “storybook” illustrations where everything is very 2 dimensional. I decided that a painting would be the best way to show this. I didn’t want to make the painting very literal to the situation so I wanted to look at different perspectives of the pandemic. To do this, I looked at some videos on titoks about how people’s year 2020 was but the main inspiration for my work is something my mother said about covid: “Covid is like a time of darkness that makes you lose your bearings. The best thing we can do right now is find new things that bring us joy so that we can make the most out of this time of isolation”. What she said really changed how I saw the pandemic and ultimately influenced my painting.

Unit 4: Community Art

I wanted to try digital art for this unit since I’ve never done it before. Digital art also seems more shareable on social media if I were to ever post it. It would be easier since I would just have to take a screenshot and share it on my social media accounts. I didn’t really have a certain art style I considered while making this project. All I knew was that I didn’t want it to look too realistic to keep it’s animated feel. Although I didn’t have a specific art style I followed, I did see some Tiktoks on my fyp that involved digital art. In an unconscious way, I guess that influenced how I wanted my piece to look like.

Since I wanted to do something related to violence against women, I decided to look and read the stories about Sarah Everard and other victims of violence. The main website I used to read about these women was Wikipedia since they have a section about Women who have been raped, assaulted, murdered, etc.

Since I also wanted to include symbolism using flowers, I looked at the meanings of flowers such as the amsonia, dahlia and edelweiss. I used flowers because of the old saying “Women are as delicate as flowers”. The amsonia flower represents endurance and determination which I think perfectly represent women. The dahlia also symbolizes enduring grace as well as inner strength and dignity according to Gardenerdy. The last flower, the edelweiss, doesn’t stand for strength but I thought I should include it since edelweisses are known to grow and live in harsh environments/ temperatures. I thought that this could portray the environment a lot of women experience or go through.