If blogs were Smurfs I'de have a blogging good time smurfing my thoughts on one.

Blogs... they don't seem to work when forced on someone. BUT! That does not mean that having a blog for an assignment is a bad idea. It's a great idea. I just think there aren't enough people in the class that actually care about the blog or the blog format enough to want to share Ideas. I frequently look through other's blogs, but I am also to blame. I made few comments where I should have, but a good chunk of the blogs have the bare minimum for what we were supposed to add, which is understandable. Some might not think they have time to post something new every week. There were a few blogs of mine where I offered to bring in some books, or suggested some graphic novels to read, but I never got any responses for any of these things. I responded to my groups blogs when they put their artwork from school up, but again, got no response to that, or even to my own artwork I had posted. Blogging is something that needs to be self motivated. I tried to post several different blogs relating to life drawing and other interests of mine, but was discouraged because I didn't feel like anyone was reading them or really concerned at all with it. What Amy is trying to do is to get us to talk with one another, learn about different styles of art, or maybe even something that has nothing even to do with art, just something- new. To connect, because an artist is nothing by themselves, it is the people, culture, surroundings, and the individual's awareness of these things that makes them an effective artist, whether their input to society is through some philosophical message, or just to dazzling imagery, whether it is visual, literal, or something else. The blog is a step towards that, a way for us to take interaction into our own hands. Sometimes days at school seem like walking through the crowded city or something. Everyone is so busy, everything is so fast. We have so much to do, but at the same time we don't. Our generation and society is so distracted I think from everything. We all want to be successful, but why do we hurry so much? Not to try to sound above anyone, believe me. I just think there are a lot of questions everyone has about the application of art and design, it's correlation with our current society which seems so commercial. I have a lot of questions about the way this country was founded on expansionism. We discovered the West long ago, and now the only thing to explore is technology, progression, economic stability, wealth, but what of ourselves? Everything is so complicated, and so impersonal these days. The blog format seems a bit impersonal,so it makes it harder to be critical and easy to be shy. but it's a gateway if anything. I am switching into studio art and I know the importance of self-motivation, but it's difficult. I don't know what I want to do, but I want to interact with people.. There are so many things to do in one day, it's 1:15 in the morning right now and I'm writing about this and I still have 50 other things I could be doing right now. If anything a blog is a good way to vent, to discuss, critique, and ultimately learn from our peers and hope they can learn from us. It seems like life-drawing is such a quiet and contemplative, almost meditative class, and that silence between students made its way to the blogs, at least from what I could see.

I did enjoy some of the posts I did read however, I just finished reading one on Shelly's blog about the relevance of life-drawing in secondary education. These are the types of blogs I like to read, where someone debates a topic and leaves it for others to comment on. I should have definetly taken more time to comment on other peoples, but of the comments I did leave for my group members, I thought they were thoughtful and insightful. I will leave more in the future, but I like others have been just doing my blog, and not really thinking about why I'm doing it. I would read other people's but I sometimes feel shy to express something about that topic or about their drawings.

I tried to keep my blog updated, and the quality of the images are high, but sometimes creating a blog is so frustrating. There's something with the interface and uploading that's sort of annoying, mainly trying to move pictures around. I'm really interested in reading forums, but I hardly ever contribute, so I tried to do that with my peers a little on the blog at the beginning, but seemed to have lost sight of the community aspect. Community is so important, I always forget that. If I could give one blogging assignment, it'd be to talk about something that bothers you about the art and design world, some uncertainties about the future, and to debate the topic with some other person or just talk about it in their blog. Everyone thinks, we're all somewhat unsure of the future (hopefully).. that's what college is about. We don't have to all believe our thoughts and emotions need be contained as weaknesses. Conversation brings consultation from contributions of controversy. If your father's father is your grandfather, is blogging about blogs your grandblogger? just a thought.