Art First Few Pieces

     For the last few weeks of art, I have worked tirelessly on two pieces of art. It took longer than I had thought it would have, mainly because it had been a long time since my last piece, and I was a bit nervous starting art again, due to the break I had taken from art, yet I continued with my art (showed perseverance and commitment in the activities).
     My skills were a bit shaky, and I had to start over countless times, but overtime I started to regain  my skills, and soon I was learning new skills to incorporate in my artwork, and slowly started developing these new skills. Especially in my second piece (the strawberries), I learned to transform, something more realistic; such as strawberries, into something more cartooony; which is a transformation skill which I hope to develop throughout the course of my artwork (undertaking new challenges). Rather than merely coping a piece of work, like the first piece, which was merely to regain my skills back.
    When trying out this new technique with the strawberries in water colours, I encountered some problems, especially since it's hard to achieve a thick consistency with water colours, the cartoony effect required a lot of concentration, focus, and time to get it right, at sometimes I messed up, but I believe through more practice with this new style, I will be able to perfect this as my own style, and achieve in significant less amount of time. Also another problem with the cartoony effect, is due to the thick water colour consistency it mixes with any not dried water colours (since this paint is mixed with a lot of water), and messes the strawberries up. Therefore I have to wait till all my water colour paints are dried, until I can apply the thick consistency, which is really time-consuming, but hopefully overtime I can improve this style (considering the ethical implications of my actions).
    The first piece (the grapefruit), was done also in watercolours and pencil colours, as my supervisor suggested, so I could regain my skills back (since my most comfortable media is pencil crayons), and  prepare for the actual work to develop my own style (the strawberries), so I would be more comfortable with starting my own new style.

                        My first piece of artwork, done in watercolours and pencil colours
                                                          

                                       The original piece of the grapefruit piece (above)

                                     My strawberry piece, with my first attempt at the cartoony effect

                               The original piece for my strawberries photgraphed by my supervisor

TFC (The Forgotten Children) Movie Night

On the week before Halloween (the 24th of October), my service and I started our first planned and initiated activities to raise money to reach our current semester goal; to raise awareness of the global issue and the organization (engaged in issues of global importance).
   We decided to have a movie night for the junior school kids (as I stated in one my earlier posts). Firstly we had to choose the movie, and in order to achieve that we sent out slips in prior of the movie night for a vote on the movie, and Brave ended winning. A few days later we had created our permission forms for the kids, and asking for an entrance fee of Rs. 300. However there were some complaints from the parents, as since our service is based on "child sex tourism," some parents thought we were talking and explaining about the particularly sensitive topic, but no such thing was going to happen or happened as our service realizes that the topic is a bit inappropriate and have aimed discussions on this topic for senior grades.
    Although we faced an obstacle and had to think about the ethical implications of our actions we continued with the movie night. At the event 30-40 kids had showed up, which more than we expecting, especially with the complaints we had received. Also the movie night was much harder than we had thought, as I think most of us had forgotten the fact we were dealing with younger kids, so we were quite unprepared as controlling and being responsible for 30-40 kids was a lot tougher than we thought.
    In the end it was a great experience/movie night for the us and the kids. Also in total we had raised Rs. 23,000, which was more than enough to get started on our goal for the semester; to raise awareness of the issue, and to purchase supplies for when we meet some of the kids we work to help.
   To raise awareness, besides the representatives across Colombo, we decided to create a video we could publish, so it would be easier for us and the representatives to achieve a way of introducing the organizations and its objectives to the public.

                               Me selling food and drinks at the movie night

                                                    The kids

                                        The goodies at the bake sale

                                                      Me

                                           Us at the movie night

First Week of Football

   On the last week of October was the first week of football for me. Personally it was a new experience for me as it was kids younger than me, as usually I take part in planned and initiated activities with peers or kids older than me, where I could learn from them, but now I have to teach to others and undertake new challenges (developing new leadership skills). For warm up we had to partner up with each other and practice on our passes (work collaboratively with others), and I partnered up with a colleague younger than me named Virat. I helped him practice his passes and teach him the right method for passes and improve his skills. We worked very collaboratively with each other, and improved each others skills in different ways, and not only that, towards the end I had made a new friend!

   Me and Virat practicing passes during warm-up

Towards the end we played a skirmish, which gave me a opportunity to really increase my awareness on my own strengths and areas for growth, such as I realized that throughout the game, my aim when taking shots at goal, as most often I missed the goal by shooting too high. Also it gave me a chance to get to know every bodies strengths and weaknesses so I can help them improve on their football skills by working collaboratively with others. It also gave me a chance to show my perseverance and commitment to the activity, as no matter how many times we missed or lost possession of the ball, me and my team never gave up and kept trying and that way we managed to end the game in a tie!

Swimming

   This week for swimming, I attended the Austisa Sports Club for practices on Monday and Friday from 6:00 to 8:30 (pm).
    For this week me and my coach (Mr. Perera) mainly focused on improving my 25m sprints, most importantly on my freestyle and breaststroke. In the start of the training session, we first started stretching. I lead the stretch session (developing leadership skills), it was my first time leading activities in swimming, so I was a bit nervous, yet excited, as I had to lead a big group of people. It was tougher than I thought, it was hard to keep everyone on track with me, most people got confused as to which stretch we were doing. Overall, it was a new experience for me.
    When we got to the swimming we carried off planned and initiated activities, we started off by a 1000m freestyle swim, which was tough, as I've only done swimming this long a couple times before, so I was still developing my endurance in swimming (developing new skills), and since it was still a relatively new experience I was undertaking new challenges, which were out of comfort zone. This will help improve my skills in swimming, and in day to day life, as I will be more comfortable and enthusiastic to take on new challenges in life.
    Later we moved on to 50m freestyle and 2nd stroke kicks. It was particularly difficult, especially for me as my kick for freestyle is very weak and my endurance in swimming is even weaker, but it was a good opportunity for me to improve my kick, for both my freestyle and breaststroke (which I am more comfortable with).
    During the last half an hour of swimming, I suggested we carried out some 25m sprints, just to check our overall improvement at the end of the activities (planning and initiating activities). We did three 25m sprints; two freestyle, and one second stroke (any stroke besides freestyle). For the freestyle sprints; I achieved a timing of 14.95 seconds, for the first one and 16.23seconds for the second time. The 14.95 seconds timing was quite an improvement for, from my usual 15 seconds for freestyle, especially since freestyle is not my strongest stroke For the second stroke (I did breaststroke), I achieved a timing of 20. 4 seconds, which wasn't an improvement, but still a decent timing. Although I was not developing skills, I was developing existing skills, which I believe is also very important, not only in sports and activities, but in life too.