10th Grade

PBL - A Change is Gonna Come

For our Change is Gonna Come PBL project, students re-designed and painted cutouts of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica. The designs were supposed to represent an issue or topic the student is passionate about and would stand up for. For my group, we decided to create a piece that represents some of the conflicts taking place between Ukraine and Russia right now. We used a cubist style of painting, such as the many shapes, lines, and different perspective lines, while keeping the colors in grayscale. In the painting, there are things such as protestors, a mother with her baby, a military truck, nuclear bombs, destroyed buildings, and a woman playing the piano (based on the viral video of a Ukrainian woman playing her piano one last time before evacuation).

I had lots of fun painting this project, especially since it was on a bigger scaled “canvas.” The paint itself was a little bit annoying to work with the surface of the wood since it was so thin, but our group got around it and I think it turned out really good. I also liked trying out a cubist style and not having to worry about color choices since everything was abstractedly colored anyway. The chaoticness and expressions of the faces in the painting hopefully resemble the distress of the real solution and that the repeated “Stop War"s stick with the viewers.

ReARTions Project

In this project, students demonstrated or used a chemical reaction in an artwork. For my project, I sculpted a koi fish out of clay and glazed it. The piece is titled "Splotches" because of the splotches of colors on the fish. The chemical reaction involved in my work is focused on the way the clay's chemical formula changes after it's been fired up in a kiln. Firing up clay to extreme temperatures in a kiln chemically removes any water left in the clay. This is why the clay cannot be too thin because it will crack. If it is too thick, it will explode because the water is trying to escape but can't. I had to hollow out my fish and add holes in the eyes and mouth because of this. The color of glaze before it is fired up is much different than when it is because the colors are developed chemically while melting. In the end, I am proud of how it came out, having that this project was one of the first times I was dedicated to sculpting. I expected the fish to crack a lot more than it did, which was only a crack running in the side, and one between a fin and the body, so I'm glad. Working with glaze was a bit confusing because I had no idea how the colors would come out after the kiln and the fact they were so different before firing. I'm glad I can apply my newly learned knowledge to future projects using clay and glaze.

Epic Elements Animation

stop motion_1.mp4

The Epic Elements PBL project is a project utilizing our knowledge from all our class subjects. For World Literature, we wrote a story that was set in an ancient civilization (World History), contained the use of an assigned element (Chemistry), a line in Spanish, and attacked a social justice issue. We used Geometry to show transformations of shapes in stop motion.

My partner's and I's story is called "The Great Pyramid Sisters." It's about two half sisters (both demigod children of Egyptian goddesses) on a mission to save their father from unfair working conditions. They later find out that thousands of Egyptian workers are being forced to build pyramids for their pharaohs. They confront the Pharaoh, free the workers, and use their half-blood powers to build the rest of the pyramids.

For my project, the drawings and story writing went well. The difficult part was working collaboratively with a group instead of individually. Everyone had a different pace. I wish I had added more keyframe animations, but my editing program didn’t have the tools for that. I learned about Egypt and metalloid elements, and I learned how to animate backgrounds and characters separately. This project was honestly a little tedious because of how every subject was shoved into one video, and having to work with multiple people, but it worked out in the end.

Recycled Textiles

For my recycled textiles project, I made a wig out of magazine paper and secured it with a plarn headband and plastic bag bow. The materials I used are non-biodegradable because the material used to make plastic bags (polymer) is covalently bonded. I used plarn in my design because otherwise, the plastic would sit in the ocean forever. I used the principle of design, pattern, in my crocheted plarn headband. It was difficult trying to learn how to crochet again after years of forgetting how to, so if I ever did this project again, I’d practice how to crochet and make something that involved more textiles. I did learn how to make those paper wigs that cosplayers make though, and that was fun.

Molecule Artwork

My idea was to use the molecule structure of Ammonia in an artwork that shows how dangerous ammonia is if used incorrectly in the human body. Too much exposure to ammonia can cause burning of the eyes, nose, throat, and respiratory tract and can even result in blindness, lung damage, or death. I showed this in my work by drawing a person bedridden in a hospital bed, chained to the molecular structure. I made a model in TinkerCad of the structure and made it part of the main focus of the drawing.

Demonstrating the principles of design, I used proportions to show how big the structure is towering over this person. I refrained from having too many dark lines in the background so the shadow cast upon the bed is emphasized.

I used digital tools in Medibang Paint and TinkerCad to create my artwork. Careers I think would use these tools would be digital artists, animators, graphic designers, and even video editors.

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