9/24/15

Since I have never had an iPhone before, and only had one for college very recently, I never realized that I could apply filters to the photos I took or crop parts of my photos on my iPhone! I discovered this today when I was taking pictures of my friend, and since she wanted me to take a nice photo of her, I wanted to edit the photo to make it look better. I saw the “Edit” button on the picture, and clicked on it to discover what was there. Here are the results:

Regular Photo

Instant Photo

This inspired me to take advantage of this during my Met museum assignment, which requires me to take photos of different architectural structures.

9/27/15 & 10/1/15

On September 27, I went to my first breakdance dance club session, and I realized how much I liked to dance. I must say that I am not that bad at it either. But I know my parents would never like it if I decide to dance as a profession, so I don’t think I’ll pursue it as a career. But if I have a chance to dance as a hobby, I would not mind. I think I’ll try to join a dance club (since breakdancing is putting a strain on my wrists, and would like to see a dance style that doesn’t focus much on wrist activity).

I also went to the dance studio class for Humanities on October 1, and I had plenty of fun dancing modern dance techniques and choreographies. I really am considering joining a dance club next semester to pursue dancing a little further.

11/10/15

For the “My Commute” Assignment, I wanted to make a comic book, so I looked up the different paneling methods for a comic book. I saw that paneling is an art itself! It was interesting to see the many ways these action boxes could fit together. One paneling method was the traditional left-to-right panels in which comic books can fit in a single continuous comic strip, or the paneling method of fitting in different-sized, disconnected shapes. I decided that I could connect these concepts together, and so I decided to draw a comic book with disconnected shapes connected by a sort of "road map," drawn out on a single sheet of paper.

Left-to-Right Panels (continuous, comic strip format)

Different-sized, Disconnected Panels (mismatched, separated 4-sided polygons)

Disconnected Panels on a Continuous Road Map for My Commute

11/24/15-11/25/15

I went to my first Hunter music concert at Lang Recital Hall, and I was shocked by how talented the music class, called the Hunter popular Music Combos, was. For example, I noticed a group member who had previously played on the piano for a certain song suddenly switch to the conga drums while the members were getting ready for their next song. This inspired me to consider learning more than one instrument as well, and the instrument I want to learn right now is the ukelele. Just the day before, my friends were saying how they could play the ukulele, and persuaded me to learn as well. They told me it was not very hard to learn, so besides learning how to play the piano, I will someday take on the ukelele too! 

(the guy on the far left playing on the piano also played on the conga drums, which you can somewhat see behind the two guitarists)

11/19/15 & 11/26/15

I always loved to draw human faces, and rarely drew anything else, but after seeing Zoe’s project of the map of her brain on canvas with the ombre colors, I was inspired to draw in ombre colors too. On Thanksgiving, my cousin and I attempted to paint a rainbow ombre on a blank piece of paper  using acrylic paint. My cousins who saw us painting also advised us draw dots with texture to them, just like Vincent van Gogh did with his painting. Here is the result!

This is more of an experimental art painting, hence the reason why I will not title this artwork. If anything, I will call it "Rainbow Ombre with Textured Dots." 

12/04/15

I went to the Manhattan School of Music at 5 P.M. to catch the Chamber Music II performance by the well-trained classical student musicians! The groups either played as a duet, a piano trio, string quartet, or string sextet. They showcased a variety of works by classical composers like Mozart, romantic composers like Mendelssohn, and even neoclassical composers like Elliott Carter.

But the Romantic compositions by Felix Mendelssohn had an impact on me the most. I really loved the 1st movement of the Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, op. 49, because it really gave a prominent role to the violinist, who played a sweet, but sad melody, and was followed by the faint murmuring of the piano and low rumblings of the cello. For the first time, I have come to appreciate the beauty of Romantic music by Mendelssohn. I am hoping that I can attempt to play this Mendelssohn piece, or any of his works, in the future, even though I live at the dorms most of the time, where there is no piano.