I painted.

Yesterday I took my first crack at painting with oils. I painted a total of 3 pictures and I have to say by the 2nd one, I thought I was pretty good. The first time I tried to paint a Starbucks coffee cup and I couldn't figure out shadows, or how to blend. I quickly realized that I didn't have to really blend with the paint, it's supposed to be thick and layered. I overthought the whole thing. Once I saw what I was doing wrong, I had no problem starting over. And it worked. My 3rd picture was of 2 cups: one red, one blue. I thought that they looked very realistic. And other people did, too, which is always nice. I still haven't figured out what exactly I'm going to paint for my final, but I think I'm going to need a bit more practice before I start anything serious. Let's do this.

Independent Project

When I first learned that I would be able to do an independent project on what ever I wanted, the first thing that came to mind was, paint. Everyone loves to paint. Even people who are bad at painting love to paint. Now, I've always lacked technical skills when it came to anything artistic (paint, drawing, etc.), which is why I was so excited to finally get the opportunity to try and teach myself.

I chose Wayne Thiebaud as an inspiration because his work was the first to pop into my head when I thought of painting. I did a report on him in the 9th grade for Studio Art and I kind of just adore his paintings. I love his use of colors, the thickness of each piece. I especially love what he paints. His work is inspired by advertising, diners and are very 50'-60's, mostly because that was his prime. I appreciate how his work is always light and upbeat, because life isn't always light and upbeat. Especially when you're an artist~.


I think the reason why I've always been so attracted to Thiebaud's work is because it reminds me a lot of my family, in a way. My parents grew up in the '50s and they always talk about the culture of it, with the clothes, food, music, etc. I also remember my parents taking me to the Hamptons where there would always be a lot of Thiebaud-esc paintings around. Looking at his pictures bring me back to those little moments and it's nice. This all especially makes sense after taking the enneagram test. Mine was tied between 5w6 and 6w5. 5's are apparently prone to clinging to comfort and security, which is probably why I like Thiebaud's work. But anyway. I'm excited to get started.

Workshop Essay

I have never thought about how acting worked. I assumed an actor was trained to express different emotions and when a script came they acted what was necessary. I never thought much deeper than that when it came to acting. Now, I wasn't completely wrong with this assumption, what I lacked in my thought process was where the actor gets these emotions from. As we learned in the intensive, there are a few notable ways to achieve this. One could use one of Constantin Stanislavski's techniques, which involves an actor to draw from their emotions for a character from past experiences and remembrances of the actor. Or one of Sansford Meisner's techniques such as repeating, where an actor spontaneously makes a comment based on his or her partner, and the comment is repeated back and forth between the two actors in the same manner, until it changes on its own. I learned that there are many techniques that can be used and it all depends on preference. Personally, I thought that Robert Lewis' technique made the most sense. His theory revolved around the idea that there are many branches of an actor's preparation for a role. Meaning an actor's emotions aren't the only factor that should be taken into account when practicing for a role. If an actor is playing an astronaut, an actor should study up on astronauts. However, for my independent project, this idea felt a little silly. I played a drug dealer and I felt I had the stereotypical drug dealer down. However, I had a hard time relying on the second half of this equation, my emotions.

For my independent project, I acted in a play written by Julian. I played the stereotypical drug dealer with a big heart. When it came to acting before and during the intensive workshops, I just read what I thought was right. Figuring out what a character is doing and why they're doing it, usually isn't a problem for me. And judging from the feedback I've gotten in the past, it's kind of worked in my favor. I just acted what I thought those situations would be like in real life. However, my original technique did not work in my favor for this particular role. Acting like typical, loose drug dealer wasn't an issue. It was simple, really. The biggest problem I had was at the climax of my particular scene where Grace's character hits on me. When I first went over the scene, my first instinct was to of course be shocked, but at the same time be sympathetic. I was leaning more towards sympathetic. When I asked how I did, everyone told me that I hardly looked shocked. I tried again. Still wasn't surprised enough. I kept trying over and over again and I couldn't figure out why I was having such a hard time putting myself in that place. I wasn't sure if it was more a personal disconnect, that I wouldn't personally act that way in that situation therefore I couldn't put myself into that situation, or whether it's because I'm more of an introverted person and I just couldn't push myself to get to that place. Then I realized that it wasn't necessarily about the situation being so real, but more entertaining. Not that someone couldn't act in the way I did in real life, but I felt that most people would probably keep more of their true feelings to themselves. The problem I had was not being able to trust my own instincts and feelings. I found it so difficult to exaggerate the truth for some reason. A lot of the time during practice I couldn't bring myself to really go for it because I kept thinking that it wasn't the truth. It became weirdly personal in a way that I wasn't expecting.

In the end, I'm not sure how I did, mostly because I don't think while I'm acting. My brain completely shuts off and I just feel like I'm saying words. It's a strange feeling because when I'm done I don't have much recollection of what I did. I believe that the workshop helped me a lot on my acting because now I have an idea of where everything comes from and how it gets there. It's also interesting to watch others act in real life. I get more of a sense of what people are doing and why they're doing it, and it's pretty interesting. I'm not much of an actor and I'm not sure how much acting I will do in the future when it comes to plays and things of that nature, but I do know that this workshop has helped me with my acting in everyday life and that's much more than I expected to get out of this.