1. Do these artistic methods – art and writing – help people to understand themselves better? Why is that important?
To understand a great deal about yourself, art and writing help you to understand it. Everybody makes different kinds of art, about different certain subjects. But you won’t like all kinds. If you understand yourself, you know what kind of art you like.

2. Might the answers to these questions be different at any given time?
It’s quite logical, when you’re young you might give other answers than when you are older. Also self-portraits will be different.

3. What do you think Van Gogh is saying to the viewer in this self-portrait?
In his self-portrait from 1888, he used lots of blue. Normally, blue associates with calmness or sadness. But in this painting, it looks more like calmness than sadness. He would have used darker colors for sadness.

4. What do these changes do to the self-portrait and to your ideas about Van Gogh at that point in his life?
He uses different colors than in his self-portrait from 1888. It creates a completely different mood.

5. In which do you think Van Gogh appears calmer?
He looks calmer because of the light blue background.

6. What would you say are two of the most distinctive qualities of a Van Gogh work?
The most distinctive qualities of Van Gogh:
Van Gogh visibly uses brush strokes in contrast of the colors.
His other quality is his use of color.

7. Read these axcerpts from Gauguin’s letters. Do they add to your understanding?
The letters makes you understand what he thought was important in painting

8. Do you find anything unusual about this picture of Gauguin? Click on the painting what happens when the colors change.
The painting of Gauguin has two different faces. If you click on the painting you see a green complexion, it’s a totally different face. Without the green, he looks happy, but with he looks anxious. It has a big effect.

9. Judith Leyster
Judith Leyster is a very skillful and creative artist. In all her self-portraits she looks happy. She’s one of the great female painters of that time.


At the end, the Who Am I exercises were most of the time nice. Some exercises we had to draw weren’t that nice. Such as the digitally decorating of the picture. I didn’t like that because I didn’t knew how the program worked and I like normal drawning more. I’m also not very good at painting, so if we have to paint, I’m just doing something. As almost always with art, it was a nice assignment

Decorating picture with computer

For this assignment we had to use a picture from ourselves and then decorate it on the computer. I used the programm of GIMP. I was not very good at it because I didn't knew what I could do with the programm so I just did something. And for the assignment we also had to write about the photo, so I'll do.

At my photo, I was trying to find a nice 'effect', then I found mosaic. I thought it was very nice. Then I found something which looks like a light bulb. I think it's very nice.
You can also see my picture as something else than a light and some mosaic. You can also say the light is a very bright sun. Because of the very bright sun, the river dried out and you get a lot of cracks in the earth. And the picture is full of cracks.

I finally found the result quite good, certainly 'cause I don't know how the programm worked. I didn't like the exercise, I like normal drawning etc. nicer.

Collage

For Art we had to make a collage about ourselves, but you couln't put a photo of yourself on it. I putted things on that I like.

I putted photos of the following things on it:
Mythbusters, Neonletters, Ik Hou Van Holland, Echt Waar?!, Wie is de Mol? and Expeditie Robinson, because they are nice programs
A smiley
A balance, because that's my constellation
The numbers 15, 10 & '96, because I'm born in 1996 on the 15th of October
Coca Cola sign, because I like cola
Flags of The Netherlands, Zeeland, Zeeuws-Vlaanderen & Terneuzen, because I live there.
The letters Z, S & C, if forms ZSC
The letters T & A and the number 3, it form T3A
TTO-school sign
Far East Movement, David Guetta & Ministry Of Sound, because of their music
Candy
A musicnote, because I like music
Signs of Hyves, Facebook, Twitter & MSN
Map of Terneuzen
A computer
Sign of Speedo, swimming product
Waterpolo balls
De Vliegende Vaart, the swimming pool in Terneuzen
Sign of Radio 538, my favourite radio station
A piano, I play keyboard
Goggles
Immobilizer
Waterpolocap
Sign of the Dutch Top 40

The background of my collage is green because I like green.

I hope I get a good mark for my collage. I like it.

Self-portrait

For Art we had to draw a self-portrait in the style of Van Gogh. And then we had to make a letter to a friend for english about our self-portrait. This is the letter:

Dear Wouter,

I’m writing you because I had to make self-portraits for our Art class. For the assignment we had to paint the self-portraits in the style of Van Gogh. With this assignment we have to learn to use colours to express a emotion.

At the first one, which is happy, I used the colours orange, red and yellow for the background because they are bright colours and they are complementary colours, which means they are opposite of each other. And the brushstrokes are to all the sides. And for the clothing I used the colours blue and green, which are totally different from the background because it had to. At the face I just used quite normal colours but the mouth went a bit wrong. You can see he is happy because his eyes are bigger then when he is sad.

At the second one, which is sad ,I used the colours blue and green for the background because they are dark and sad colours and they are also complimentary. At this drawning, the brushstrokes are also to all sides. For these clothes I used the colours red, orange and yellow because they are opposite to the background. Over here, I also used quite normal colours for the face and at the right it looks a bit like the is crying. But when I started painting the face, I forgot that I had to use the style of Van Gogh so I didn’t use stripes.

But I like the sad one more than the happy one because the mouth has failed with the happy one. Also, the form of the head of the happy one is a bit disformed compared with the sad one. Also the shadow of the happy one is unsuccesful.

My final mark for the drawning was a 6.5. I think it would be a better mark if the happy one wasn’t unsuccesful.

Do you have done something interest? For instance for Art? I’d like to hear about that.

Write back soon,

Koen

Cantebury

With school, we have been to Cantebury. It was really nice but the bus journey was a bit long (the one from school to Calais). On the ferry it was also nice. I was in a group with Mr. De Baets, Lorenzo, Job, Laurens, Jens Peter, Sven, Demi and Nayra. First we went to the Cathedral, it was very beautiful and very big. If you saw it on the side we saw it, it looked much smaller. After the Cathedral we went through Cantebury. We had to search for old windows and other old things. We went to the Cantebury Museum where we had to think of an assignment for the next year. We made photo's from things in the museum which the next years group has to make a big photo of. But we were the only group that had been in that museum.
After that, we went to the Cantebury Tales Museum. Over there we got an audiotour. We had to walk through the museum and heared a Tale at some places.
What I thought from Cantebury was that it is very big, old, beautiful and nice.