Sydney Theatre Co. and Archibald Prize

Hey everyone,

Well first of all I'm going to see Cyrano de Bergerac at the Sydney Theatre Co. in November and I'm excited because I haven't seen a live production in a while! The last time I went to the Sydney Theatre Co. was when I went to see Storm Boy (can't remember when, a year or two ago I suppose) which was excellent by the way. My grandma read me the book when I was little and the production was wonderfully done! So yeah hopefully I will like Cyrano de Bergerac. Richard Roxburgh is playing the part of Cyrano so I'm excited for that too. Hugo Weaving is doing Macbeth at the moment at the Sydney Theatre Co. and if it were anything but Macbeth I may have gone to see it. Unfortunately I have been put off Macbeth after doing it in English this year but to be honest I really didn't like the story of Macbeth regardless of having to write an essay on it. I found it kind of boring to be honest. Maybe seeing a live production would have made me enjoy it more but anyway... Macbeth is the first and only Shakespeare play I've read so I'm interested to read a few more Shakespeare in English in the next two years to see if there is one I like better. Yeah I've kind of had a bad start to Shakespeare but I'm going to remain optimistic.

Second of all, if you haven't gone to see the Archibald then go see it now! To be honest I actually liked the artworks in the Sulman Prize exhibition better but the Archibald, Sulman, and Wynne, as well as the Young Archie are all on display next to each other at the Art Gallery of NSW. So if you are popping by Sydney check it out! It's on until the 28th September 2014. If you can't make it there, see the finalist artworks on the website. If you do live close by do try and see them in person though, it's much better. I had so many favourites their were so many great ones! Oh and if you look in the Young Archie section there is a drawing by a 15(?) year old girl of her grandmother done in ballpoint pen and it is just AMAZING. If you don't know what the Archibald prize is, here is a short explanation from the Art Gallery of NSW website:
"The Archibald Prize is awarded annually to the best portrait, 'preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in art, letters, science or politics, painted by any artist resident in Australasia’.
This open competition is judged by the trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW. Finalists are displayed in an exhibition at the Gallery... Although it is a non-acquisitive prize, several of the entries are now part of the Gallery’s collection.
The Archibald Prize was first awarded in 1921. In establishing the prize, JF Archibald’s aim was to foster portraiture as well as support artists and perpetuate the memory of great Australians. Over the years some of Australia’s most prominent artists have entered and the subjects have been equally celebrated in their fields."

Also, I found two really great things recently. First of all, Codecademy. It teaches you how to use HTML and CSS and explains it quite simply through step by step, interactive lessons. The other website is Duolingo. It's a language site that teaches you languages like English, Spanish, French, Italian, German etc (and more coming soon) and is tailored specifically for whatever language you speak already. It teaches you in a way that gets right down to saying simple sentences rather than teaching you like you're a kindergarten.  It's really great, you can redo lessons and practice until you get it right. It is interactive meaning you get a hands-on learning experience by converting English into Italian (just an example), Italian into English, speaking Italian into a microphone etc. Plus it's free! So if you want to learn a language I suggest this site for you. And this is a personal recommendation because I too want to learn a language and learn HTML and CSS so I know that both of those things can be tricky but these sites are some, if not the, best I've seen. And if not that, then they are definitely the best value (they're both free!!).

And that's it.

Be happy, be grateful, be generous, be bold, be spontaneous, and have a wonderful day!

Jody

Art, art, art.

Hi guys,

Sorry I haven't posted in a millennium, I just haven't had much to talk about, and I really haven't had the time this term. I've got lots of assignments coming up and of course homework and I've been getting back into Tumblr so of course as soon as I get home from school all I want to do is go on tumblr. So much so that tumblr is all I do until I go to bed, I don't even give myself time to watch the movies and tv shows I want to watch. But tumblr is really great, if you're old enough to get it, get it. There's so much great stuff out there. If you're not sure what it is (don't worry I didn't understand what it was at first either) it's like Pinterest I suppose, a little bit. You can upload your own content, upload content from different sites, or just re-pin (or reblog in this case) content from other people. In tumblr you have a blog, so unlike Pinterest you don't have boards, but that doesn't matter because sorting it out isn't really the important bit although you still can by #tagging 'posts' (like 'pins') and from there you can either look up things that are also #tagged and and see what other people have posted using that #tag. Some 'themes' (like a 'template' on a normal blog, it changes the style of the blog and you can download hundreds of themes straight from tumblr or online, some cost money but a lot of them a free and you can further customise the look straight from your blog - just like any normal blog) will allow you to create a page with all your tags, so people can find posts on your blog with just that tag. You can also of course 'like' a post rather than reblog it onto your blog. Anyway where was I, oh yes, I probably made the whole tumblr thing sound a lot more complicated but basically I go on there to see content that makes me laugh. My favourite blog at the moment is my friend's blog which has some seriously hilarious stuff. Be warned though, she posts a lot of fandom stuff; she posts a lot of generally hilarious non-fandom stuff too but I would follow her if you are at least interested in a few of these things: Supernatural, Doctor Who, Merlin, Sherlock, Marvel, Harry Potter, and these days, Friends. But I would say that about 50% is non-fandom so check it out anyway. I've discovered that the more people you follow, the more content you will find and so therefore if you just follow, follow, follow, hopefully your dashboard (like your 'feed') will come up with lots of good content once in a while. Sometimes it's all about chance. I mean, you can never see it all, there's just too much and you'll never get through it all, so you just scroll down for a while and then you stop. Sometimes you see good stuff, and sometimes you miss good stuff, but if you follow similar blogs, then things will usually show up again if you missed it the first round. Wow this is going to be a really long blog post. Well okay I'll get on with it then, my blog is filled with "pretty" pictures I guess. Photography, food, art, fashion, etc. I've been trying to put up more text posts as well like quotes and poetry. I may use some quotes I put up on here before. Anyway please check it out.

Okay so now we move onto the 'art, art, art' part of today's post. Recently we had to watch Alfred Hitchcock's 'Psycho' in English and then create a speech on why it is a classic film. We also had to bring in a prop for this speech so I did two A3 drawings. Now if you've watched Psycho you will understand what I have done to these pictures. If you haven't, I will explain. I have swapped the two characters around. Normally Marion (the woman) is in the other picture, surrounded by the rounded picture frame, the lamp, and the phone etc. Whereas Norman (the man) in the film is surrounded by the sharp picture frames and the owl. My reason for doing this was to show the importance of mise-en-scene, lighting, and acting in the parlour scene. Now I'm not going to go into detail because you probably don't really care unless of course you are an English teacher but here are my drawings:

Unfortunately I could not get an image of the camera looking up at Marion so she looks a bit out of place there. Like she been stuck on or something, but oh well. I used a combination of pencils, progressos, and charcoal. Plus this really useful blending stump which is absolutely wonderful in creating smooth textures like in Marion's dress. If you are a serious drawer I suggest you get one of these, it will change your life! It was absolutely perfect in creating the dress where I didn't want to see the pencil lines and I wanted to give the shadows a soft, blended look. See if your local art store sells these and if not, you can probably by them online.

And last but not least, I recently have been getting interested in Tom Hiddleston (shhhh!) and so that has made me a little less obsessed with Johnny Depp ( :O ), yes, yes, I know, I thought Johnny Depp was forever, but as it turns out, obsessions pass, well, at least when another obsession takes it's place, which in my case, is taking the form of Tom Hiddleston. Although I don't find him as attractive as I initially found Johnny Depp, he is much younger (sorry but Mr Depp is like over 50 now) and I think he is a really good actor, so even if he wasn't so gorgeous, I'd still like him as an actor. He kind of sounds like my English teacher though (I think it's the Shakespeare) and he's always so happy it drives you to the point of suspicion (thank you Tumblr for beautifully wording that) but anyway this isn't about Tom. My point is that I could never draw Johnny Depp while I was obsessed with him because I would probably scold myself for the slightest imperfection because it would not do him justice. So now that I wasn't obsessed with him, I decided to draw him, and it didn't turn out too bad. Sure it isn't perfect but that doesn't bother me like it would have before. However I cannot draw Mr Hiddleston because he has found himself in the position of being utterly perfect and therefore too much of a task to draw. So maybe one day when the obsession fades I'll draw him as he is now (33, ridiculously tall and skinny, a massive smile which is both uplifting and kind of creepy, and impossibly happy).

I don't know why I find myself attracted to these two men. The only similarity I can find is their outrageously good cheekbones. Other than that, different eye colours, hair colours, hair styles, build and figure, face shape, accent, and of course, completely different actors. Sorry the printer makes the drawing look a bit washed out, no not washed out, like there is a really bright, white, light glowing from it. And grainy too. Do you know what I mean? It did the same with my Merida drawing.

And my god, can you believe we are in the eighth month of 2014 already? Where did the time go? 2014 still seems like a strange word to say. I can't believe by birthday is like 2 months away and that I am more than halfway through Year 10 which means Year 11 next year!!! Honestly does anyone else feel this way? It feels like time just moves too fast. People say "oh thats a few weeks away" and I think "What? A few weeks?". 12 hours of daylight just seems to short, 7 days in a week seems to short, 52 weeks in a year seems to short, and all of a sudden I'm worrying about how fast my life will be over. If you have anxiety and you are reading this, I apologise, I don't mean to make people anxious it's just, well, this is how I feel. That time is just racing by and there's nothing you can do to stop it, or slow it, or pause it. For example this post took like 1.5-2 hours to type up. How? Waiting at the bus for 15 minutes feels like 2 hours for most people but it feels like 15 minutes for me which doesn't feel like much at all. Anyway enough rambling, hope you all have a wonderful happy day and oh! I almost forgot. Apart from checking out the 'People Helping People - The 8x10 Show' today is your last chance to check out Michelle Morcos' (whom I've mentioned before) solo exhibition 'the nocturne 528' @ the Christie Cotter Gallery, Camperdown. The show closes at 6pm but there is an artist talk at 2pm so if you're just lounging about today check it out! Here is Michelle's blog.


Well that's all for today. Hope you enjoyed that and I'll see you next time!

Jody

P.S. You may have noticed this post has changed. Just telling you so you don't think it's not loading properly or something. So basically this post should just be called 'Art, Art' but that sounds a bit lame... Anyway, hope you did check out the Red Cross exhibition though and hope you have a great week!