For the past couple of weeks, I have been learning how to communicate and express myself creatively no matter what purpose, platform, tools, styles, and formats I use.

To start off this project, we got split up into two different groups. Carr and Herzog. In Carr you would focus on drawing and sketching and doodling while in Herzog, you would take pictures and other types of digital media. I got put into Carr.

To be honest, I am not that talented at drawing but I always have an open mind for new things! Each class, we would start to learn new skills and for the first class we learned about using pressure.

to learn about using pressure, we made word art of our name. Here is mine.

While making this, I wanted it to include some of my interests so that it was more unique and different. Since I am a competitive swimmer and i swim all the time, I wanted to include that into my art. To do that, I drew a wave under my name and because my club colours are green and white, I also used those colours. I think the hardest part of this was making the bubble letters because I don’t normally write letters like this.

The next skill we got to learn was doodling. To show this skill, we made a sketch note. A sketch note is basically just images and symbols to show anything you want. You could use it to show a to do list, a day in your life, a book report, etc. here is mine.

I decided to make a day in my life. This was actually really fun and I got to learn about using symbols and I got to practice some of my doodling skills. I would definitely recommend you try this to help you take notes or organize things. If I were to do it again though, I would try to include boxes or arrows to organize my ideas to make it more clear.

The third skill we learned was shading. I am not very good at shading and whenever I try to use it in one of drawings, it ends up looking like this.

  (Image from Napoleon Dynamite)

It took me like three hours just to shade the upper lip!

One thing that helped my understand how shading works was this.⬇️

What I did was I started off by making a shading spectrum (I think that’s what its called). Then I started shading the sphere. On the right side of the page, you can see a square, I used this as a window so I could imagine where the light was coming from. Doing this exercise helped me a lot so I decided to start using it to draw other things.

To be honest, this is not the best mug I’ve ever seen. When I made it I thought it looked a lot better. I still learned a lot about shading though which is good.

The fourth skill we learned was perspective. To practice, we made this.

It doesn’t look like much but it was actually very helpful. I learned how to draw a room so it actually look like there was dimension to it. After this I decided I wanted to make a landscape. This is how it turned out.

I loved making this because I can really communicate my point of view. I chose to draw this landscape because it is a recurring place in my dreams and it feels really calming. If I didn’t learn how to use perspective, I would not be able to communicate what I am seeing and feeling.

I also made an opposite image. Here it is.

Instead of this image making me feel calm, I wanted to draw the opposite. I originally drew the hallways of the school but then I wanted to make it more eerie and creepy. I am very proud of these images.

The last skill we learnt was how to use colour. To do this we got to make our very own logo for a brand. We were also lucky enough to have a special guest teach us about graphic design. Her name was Chloe Devine. After listening to her talk I got lots of ideas of what to do. I decided to make my brand a swim shop but all the things we sell are made of recycled materials. This was my finished design.

To make this all I did was find a picture of a swimmer I liked and a dolphin and use them as references. While making this I learned a lot about colour, images and layout. I think this skill can really help me communicate my ideas.

Through out this project, I have been learning many cool and useful skills and techniques that help me with my art and drawing. With all the things I learned, I think I can use them a lot to help me express my ideas easier and clearer.