12th July Group 4

Group 4

Chelsea Wong 3S (32)

Nichole Cheung 3T (9)

Alison Kwok 3T (17)

Sharon Ng 3A (25)

12th July, 2016.

We had an interesting art lesson in the morning. We learnt about different perspectives of art, for example the one point perspective and the two point perspectives. We first constructed a story in groups, and making up fairytales along the way. Then we used those elements in the story to construct our structures to project our different ideas in the group. We were taught to use abstract structures to portray different characters, for example, a horse portrayed by a horseshoe, and prince portrayed by a crown. We put a lot of effort into our stories and we got to experience being in a group with other classmates, and we had an opportunity to learn from other people instead of our own original groups. We then learnt to construct different shapes like cubes, cones, spheres and cylinders by building boxes on the outer spaces of the shapes, which helped us to construct a more accurate and precise shape than our previous ones without an outer shape or an outer box. We were also asked to make use of different shades of colors, for example, using warm shades of red and yellow and orange to fill in the gaps with brighter areas which attract light and the darker cooler shades of blue and purple and even black for areas without any light on the surface. We were also requested to leave a lot of white spaces if possible for even brighter spaces. Afterwards we learnt to draw bottles in various sizes and shapes, and we all drew a glass cola bottle. We had to divide the bottles into little portions to accurately trace and sketch out our glass bottles. We were very excited when we first received the materials sections to accurately sketch the bottle according to ratio. We were also not allowed to use any erasers to eraser our mistakes, yet we were requested to use tracing paper to trace over our previous mistakes and compose an even better picture. This could definitely boost our confidence in drawing or sketching in the future.

After lunch, we went to the art centre in campus and we took a group photo at the Gates of Hell in front of the centre. We were all really hot but we had a very fun time posing in front of the Gates. We then proceeded to the Stanford institute of medicine, which was one of the newest buildings on campus, and went shopping in the small store inside. We saw various medical notebooks and T-shirts, all written "Stanford Medicine" on the front. We were all impressed by these medical students as we all thought that they had to be really smart and hardworking to get into the Stanford Medical Institute. After that we went to another famous spot, the Hoover Tower, it was a 285 feet tall structure in the Stanford campus. The tower was dedicated in 1941, which was coincidentally the year of Stanford's 50th Anniversary. The tower was named after Herbert Hoover, who was a member of Stanford's first graduating class and the 31st president of the US. The Hoover Tower was also a primary resource during World War I. We then visited the 14th floor of the Hoover Tower, which includes an observation deck with sweeping views of the Stanford campus and the San Francisco Bay area. We also saw a few bells within the area, and we found out that the 14th floor actually has a total of 48 bells cast in Belgium, which are played periodically throughout the year. We also learnt that the largest bell actually weighs 2.5 tons, and that the general public is not allowed to go to the top of the tower when the bells ring. We all thought that we learnt a great deal from this experience up the Hoover tower, and we gained bird’s eye view of the Stanford Campus. The view was absolutely stunning and break taking.

Reflection 

After attending the visual design lesson, we realized that art was not as easy as we think, because there was a lot of interesting stuff for us to discover. We thought that the activity of creating stories can help us to develop new ideas. We enjoyed the time when we are crazily creating nonsensical but creative stories. The professor also taught us methods to draw different things like a bottle, sphere, cube etc in different perspectives. Although we thought that the method was a bit difficult at first, we finally managed it at last. We found it useful to learn these techniques, it can make us to have a better art sense and gain our interest in art. The interesting teaching methods of the teacher made us to be more attentive in class too!

Then, we went to the Stanford Medical Institute. As this was the first time for us to visit the medical school of Stanford since we arrived at the campus, though we had to walk a long way in order to arrive at the destination, we were all still pretty excited. Each of the buildings had different functions, such as one is used for research and one is for performing experiments and the size of it, which was a lot bigger than the ones in Hong Kong University, it really shocked us. Inside the building, we could find the most advanced technologies, including microscopes of various sizes. We were amazed as we won't see these in the school's laboratory. It was really a once in a lifetime experience. The view on the top of Hoover Tower, which we can see the whole of the university campus, was very beautiful.  Although we were all exhausted, we didn't regret in joining this journey. We took a lot of photos up there and had a great time.

Photos