Creativity

This break I decided to focus mainly on being mentally and emotionally stable. The second trimester of 11th grade for me was definitely really stressful and full of assignments which is why I wanted to take as much time as possible to not do anything that would make me feel stressed. I decided to focus on doing things that I enjoy such as painting, drawing, coloring, photography and just spending time with my family. Related to the creative aspect of CAS, this time I didn’t do very big projects. At first I helped my grandma with some tasks she had to do, for example she had to make decorations for a hotel in Brasilito. I had to paint a piece of wood with different colors and write phrases that were related to the beach. My grandma wanted me to help her because her calligraphy is not the best and that is comsehting that I consider myself good at. After I finished she painted a few palm trees on each one of the decorations and as we contributed to this project with our skills, we were able to make these really cute decorations for a hotel. Something else I did was brainstorm ideas of a mural that I was going to do in a bikini store located in Santa Rosa. This showed me that because people have seen my artworks and know that I am capable of doing projects effectively and with hard work, they trust me to do big projects like these. It also helped me practice my drawing skills as I did many first drafts of the mural. I made the final draft and the owner really liked it, however this project was put on hold because they might be changing locations. It was still fun to do this and it got me into thinking that I could make decorations (mostly paintings) and sell them to stores and businesses that are interested in my work. Lastly, during this vacation I focused on improving my photography skills as this is a hobby I am passionate about. I went to the beach several times which gave me the opportunity to take pictures of one of my favorite places to go to. Going to the beach also gives me so much tranquility and time to reflect about my life and surroundings. When I go with friends and family, it gives me the opportunity to capture raw moments of all of them having a fun time together. I am always looking for the best moments to photograph and any unique plants, objects or animals to take a picture of. One of my favorite moments that I captured this break was the time that I went to this beach called Pitahaya. It has a cliff with a beautiful view of the ocean and during sunset, you are located directly in front of where the sun sets. After waiting we finally watched the sunset and behind us the moon had already risen. When we were walking back I decided to take out my phone and take a picture of the moon between a cactus and once I did, I got the moon to be exactly on the end of one of the spines of the cactus. I really enjoyed this photograph because it wasn’t planned but it turned out to be one of the best pictures I took. Now related to the yearbook, I got to use a lot of creativity as Melanie and I decided to spend a lot of time getting most of the pages done. We chose the cover of the yearbook which we are really happy about and also the background of many of the pages. However, we did have a challenge that got us spending a lot of time on it and even shedding some tears. This was getting the portrait database into the Pictavo System. Because Genna uses a different program to upload the portraits, Pictavo does not recognise any of the information of each one of them. So after days and days trying to figure out what to do and sending a lot of emails to both Genna and April from Pictavo, we finally got it to work. Even though it was a really long process where we had to create the database ourselves by writing the name, last name, grade and file name of every student and staff member, with time and determination we got it to work.