Beach Volleyball

        The indoor season for volleyball is played from November to May or June, depending on if your team makes it to the National Competition. In the off months, a few players chose to participate in beach volleyball, a different type of the game. This game is involves more physical movement than the indoor variation because there are only two players on the court at a time. However, less injuries occur because a player can dive and go for every ball without fearing being hurt, this is because beach volleyball is played on the sand (Dunphy, Wilde 112).
        Volleyball Essentials provides a clear description of how the beach version of volleyball is different than indoor. Having played multiple years of beach volleyball, I knew the basic differences. You can't tip, if you use your hands to set the ball then the ball can't spin, there are no antennas, and you can't overhand pass a slow-speed ball. The book helped me realize things that I had not known before about the game. "A player may block any ball crossing over the net, including a serve," (Dunphy, Wilde 113). In indoor volleyball, blocking a serve is illegal. I did not know until I read that part of the book that this was legal in beach volleyball. So, I went out with my friends and tried it. For a two player match, I found that having one person up front and ready to block the ball was a bad idea. That meant that there was one person back for serve receive. The court is only a tiny bit smaller than an indoor court and on hard serves, the passer would have a hard time reaching to every ball that the opposing team gave my team.

       The book also says that the ball is heavier than the indoor ball because the wind won't move a heavier ball as much (Dunphy, Wilde 112). I had known that the outdoor ball was heavier, but I didn't know that was because the wind wouldn't move it as much. "... wind will also have a profound effect on every pass and set. For this reason, the ball should be played lower to reduce this variable," "Dunphy, Wilde 115). While the beach volleyball was built to limit this factor of the game, the unintentional movement of the ball by nature still does occur. What the book told me to do made sense to me and I went out onto the court with a mindset to keep the balls lower than normal (also keeping in mind that most players use a bump as the second contact). I found that sometimes my partner would have difficulty getting to the balls I passed, but the passes I made were accurate and normally to the right spot. I also used this advice and reversed it. If the intention of keeping the balls low were to have more control over the wind effects, then would it be more effective sending a high ball over to the opponent so that hey would have difficulty. While this thought popped into my mind only after I had gone home, I was wondering what you thought.

         Do you think that sending the opponent a high ball in beach volleyball would be more effective than a higher ball?

Dunphy, Marv, and Rod Wilde. Volleyball Essentials: Video-Text. Total Health Publications, 2014.

Still Life Sketches

                                                 Still Life Drawing By:Olivia Nguyen

If you look around the room you will find shapes, shapes everywhere. Drawing can be simple and easy when you start each sketch with shapes and then connect them. I decided to pick up my water color pen and my watercolor palette to start drawing again. Since this is my fourth entry I decided to change it up a bit and instead of drawing building I decided I would try still life. I picked some objects only and from the book to replicate or draw. I lost track of time and before I knew it I sketched about a dozen different objects!



In the book Understand Perspective by Stephanie Bower she says "Try sketching rounded lampshades in your home from different eye levels. What part of the ellipses do you see when your eye level is higher than the lampshade?" (Bower 83). I kept this in mind when I was sketching one of the objects, I sketched the teacup from different angles which gave me a good perspective and I learned a lot from the shapes from different angles.

Bower describes ellipses as circles in perspectives as flattened shapes, by understanding these circles making arches and vaulted ceilings are so much easier. We often rarely see true circles (Bower 82). I made many ellipses when I was drawing, I used them to sketch out my first drawings. Starting with a base was helpful to make more in depth drawings. The rough drawing make a good match with the watercolor.

These sketches took me about under an hour. I used a pental aquabrush, paper, and a bic pencil. What i really like about watercolor is the flexibility of colors that are optional for you. What is your favorite media of art? And why?

Betty Crocker Cooky Book - How to make the perfect refrigerator cookies

For my fourth post I make chocolate peppermint cookies. The cook book said to make the dough as recipe suggest, which I did. It also says to roll the dough into a cylinder with the diameter that the recipe suggests (Crocker pg 15).  I had trouble rolling the dough because neither the instructions or the tips told me how to roll it correctly. I ended up taking wax paper and putting the dough in it and rolling it out almost like a rolling pin.

I then chilled the dough in the fridge overnight. The tips on page 15 said to cut desired thickness but the cookies i made required the dough to be cut 1/8th of an inch to cook correctly. It was very difficult to cut the cookies the correct thickness because of how thin they needed to be. The tips on page 15 also say to use a very thin sharp knife. I had a thin knife but it wasn't very sharp which might be why I struggled with the thickness

After I baked them I made a mint frosting to put in between the cookies. I ended up burning a significant amount of the cookies so I had a lot of extra frosting.

Ingredients

Mixing the dough

After chilling in the fridge overnight

After i cut some of them

The frosting

The really burnt cookies

Finished product

If  I make these again I would watch them more carefully when they are in the oven and use a sharper knife.

If you made these would you cut them the right thickness or cut them thicker?
Would you try the flavors i tried or would you make different flavors?

Realism

          As you progress throughout your life and continue to draw you go from wanting to draw simple cartoon like figures to wanting to be more realistic. Sometimes this can start from a really young age like when you are with your teachers in elementary school. An example that was brought up is cubes and making cubes seem real to the viewer. As a kid you wanted your drawings to look funny and as different as possible rather than making the actual shape and drawing it is supposed to be.

          Though a sophisticated viewer, familiar with the art of cubism and abstraction, might find the incorrect drawings more interesting than the correct drawings, young students find praise of their wrong forms incomprehensible" (Edwards 75).

Do you prefer drawing the objects the simple common way or would you rather switch it up and draw unique abstract items?

Drawing: Strawberries & Lemons

I'm not going to lie, I was definitely thinking about summer when it came to the drawings for this post. Just think about all that delicious lemonade...But no. It's winter, and that means I can only dream about summer. With these doodles, I focused on drawing them step by step as usual, but I also considered the shapes that I was drawing. I really tried to make all the shapes of each step look the same, instead of getting within the ballpark and calling it good. Starting with the strawberry, "1. Draw the outline of the strawberry. 2. Draw the calyx. 3. Draw the little seeds on the surface" (Umoto 86). The general shape of a strawberry is almost like an oval, but with one end pointed a bit more. The top (calyx), leafy bit of the fruit includes a rectangular stem and semi-circle-ish leaves, and the seeds are shaped like mini ovals, filled in. Once finished, I was able to not only see a piece of fruit, but also all of the shapes that make up the doodle. The lemon, however, was a little bit harder. To start, I drew an oval shaped like the lemon. I then drew the protruding parts on each end, and added the spots on the surface, just as directed (Umoto 86). The oval was simple, and so was one end of the lemon, which was just a rectangle. But the other side was tricky. I had to draw a little wave, that almost looked like a really stretched out letter "m". It took me a few tries to get this bit to my satisfaction, but I managed. The last step, adding the spots, was similar to step 3 of drawing a strawberry, so it was not too challenging. Shapes are everywhere in the world; every object is a shape or a combination of them. Overall, I was pleased with the outcome and my ability to think about and identify the shapes in each of these pictures that have me longing for that summer sun.

Take an object or two that you see everyday; what shapes contribute to this object? If you were to draw it, would it be easier to draw the shapes that it's made of or try to draw the whole object at once?

Umoto, Sachiko. Illustration School: Let's Draw Plants and Small Creatures. Quarry Books, 2010.

Football Equipment

Football is a dangerous sport and  could not be played without the equipment. Things such as a helmet, shoulder pads and  mouth guard are required.

The head is the most important part of the body that is why helmets are required. They prevent constant head trauma and also prevents debris going to their face. " Head injuries, such as concussions, can be especially dangerous, so much thought has gone into designing the best protective helmets" (Wright  35).  On the helmet includes a mouth guard  which protects the jaw and teeth form injury.  The helmet is probably the most crucial piece of equipment in tackle football as it assures the safety of players heads.

Shoulder pads protect the upper body from collisions that are made with the shoulders. This piece of equipment is made from a plastic shell and a underlined foam, and cloth padding. "Shoulder pads , which are worn beneath the jersey and give players a broad-shouldered and powerful look, are vital because many tackles and other hits are made with the shoulders" (Wright  35). Theses work by absorbing and distributing the force making hits not as hard for the player.

 Football equipment Is a big part of the game which makes it so unique. In order for players to continue to play is to stay healthy and that is with the use of protective equipment. How is Protective equipment utilized in other sports? 

Wright, John D. Football. Mason Crest Publishers, 2005.

Drawing - Scale/ Proportion

          After looking through what techniques were left in my book Design Basics by David A. Lauer, I decided to try drawing something with different scales/proportions for my next piece. These two words are very similar, as they both relate to size, however are slightly different “Scale essentially is another word for size; ‘large scale’ is a way of saying big, and ‘small scale’ means small… Proportion refers to relative size, size measured against other elements or against some mental norm or standard” (Lauer 80). I attempted this technique by drawing a simple flower with a lady bug sitting on one of its petals. The flower is considered large scale because it takes up most of the space on the paper, and takes up most of our visual attention. The lady bug is the small scale, since in comparison with the flower, it is much tinier, and can be looked over at first glance.

          First, I started by sketching the flower. This seems very simple, but I had to draw it twice because I was unhappy with the way the petals looked the first time; some petals were too long, or too wide. Once I was happy with the way the petals looked, I drew the little lady bug. Next, I outlined the pencil lines in black, and colored everything in. This is the first drawing I used color in and I’m really happy with how it turned out.  I feel it made the piece stand out much more.

          Tying this piece pack to my first piece, scale and proportion often go with emphasis and focal point. Large scale is a visual emphasis, and the eye naturally is drawn to the largest figure in a piece, creating a focal point. (Lauer 80). This just shows how everything is connected. Most pieces have multiple art elements or techniques used. Trying out so many new techniques has helped me increase my knowledge and skills on drawing.

Have you ever drawn something using scale and proportion?

What’s your favorite drawing technique?

Lauer, David A. Design Basics. third ed., Thomson Learning, 1990.