Dear blog reader

In this blog you will learn about facial expressions as well as different art forms and how both topics are connected. Throughout this blog I have grown as a writer and as a person. When I first began this blog, I was not excited about having to write about one topic all year long, but as I researched more about facial expressions I learned that there is a lot more to it than sad or happy faces. I learned to connect my posts to art and even jokes. Our blog assignments made it fun and easier to learn about my topic. By far this has been my favorite assignment in the year because as a class, we got the chance to learn more about each other throughout our blogs. Our classmates would give us feedback on what they liked or what they felt needed to be changed. I believe that this made me a stronger writer because I was getting multiple comments on how to improve my writing.

My weakness as a writer is not being able to write poetry or a short story. Although these were some of the assignments that I had to post on my blog I would always struggle and have a hard time with putting something together. Passion post and short stories are examples of our assignments. As the year went on, I became more skilled at writing about things that I was passionate about. I learned to not over think an assignment and to just write how I felt about it. I pulled out the little piece of creativity inside of me and let it take over my key board. The blog assignments were a good learning experience. As I learned more about facial expressions, my blog would help me spread my knowledge to other viewers who shared the same interest.

I have defiantly gained more confidence as a writer since the beginning of the year. I am now able to write about different topics and feel good about my writing as well as being able to share what I know with others. I have bettered my writing by incorporating a little piece of me in everything I write. I discovered that we all have different styles in writing. Things that make paragraphs and words come to life. Style in writing is like writing down your personality. It is as if your writing had a unique rhythm that made everything flow just the way you want it.

The human body has many important features, one of them are facial expressions and our interpretation of them. I have shown my interest in learning more about facial expressions through my blog and the universality of them. As you look through my blog, you will find short stories, poems, art and even jokes that all tie up with facial expressions. Not only that but a unique style of writing.  

Guest Post on Book Reviews

I chose to do my guest post on Kinsley's Blog about book reviews because she told me about this super creepy comic and suggested I should read it. After reading the comic, I was creped out and decided to write about what I thought about the comic. The comic I read is a Japanese comic called Enigma of Amigara Fault by Juni Ito. Enigma of Amigara Fault is a horror comic about a earthquake that leaves people like shapes on mountains. There is only one of a kind so not just any random person can go into a hole. The holes leave people striking with fear and curiosity and somewhat hypnotizes them and forces them to find their hole. Once you find your hole you become attached to it and without knowing end up going in it. The weird thing is that there is no way out. Or at least that is what the people think. It is not until towards the end of the comic that they find a way out of the holes. This is where it gets weird. The people that came out of the holes were all deformed! According to a legend, the holes were made to get people to pay for their sins! They were paying by becoming nasty looking monsters that society would reject. After reading this comic I decided that I would not go hiking alone. EVER. Any ways, even though this comic was creepy and weird and somewhat nasty, I actually enjoyed reading it and recommend others to read it as well. Also the pictures shown on the comic are really weird because it shows how monster looking the people look when they come out of their holes. Before Kinsley told me about Enigma of Amigara Fault, I could not see myself reading any comics. Especially scary ones.      

Strokes

As we all know, strokes affect multiple parts of the human body. One that many people don't usually consider is the person’s facial expression after having a stroke. A minor stroke usually does not cause harm, but a much stronger stroke can affect the Cerebellum, right, and left sides of the brain. If these areas are affected, the person can lose their memory and loss of muscle movement and speech. When you have a stroke and the right side of the cerebellum is affected, it could pretty much leave your face deformed. Why? Well, since your muscles aren't responding well, you lose movement. This could be a losing the movement of your lip or eyes. 

 Apart from losing movement, a stroke can also cause memory loss or face and leg pain. A person should not ignore the sighs of a stroke; this could save your life. In my family only one of my members has suffered from a stroke. I believe it was one of my aunts from my mom’s side of the family. I think that this could run in your family and can happen to other members in your family of other generations. Fingers crossed this won't happen to me. Eventually we will all dye of something but I hope that I do not dye from a stroke that would be super scary! 

  

SSR: Nikos Gyftakis

Nikos Gyftakis is a Greek artist who created a several swirl self-portraits made out of oil pastels during 2004 and 2005. Nikos studied fine arts at Aristotle University and was well prepared to begin a career of his own. Not only does he paint really cool self-portraits, but he was also involved in fashion and design. He made many works for movies and fashion shows.

This self-portrait of Nikos Gyftakis is my favorite. I really like the colors that he uses. It represents the emotions that the image has to offer. In this particular piece, he is expressing sadness and sorrow. It seems like he is asking for forgiveness to like Jesus or something.  I like that it has a lot of texture because it makes the painting pop out.

I wish that I could do something like this. It kind of reminds me of the portrait that I did of my dad a while back. Only I did mine in pencil instead of color. Oil pastels are very hard to work with. If you mess up, you can’t erase it or paint over it. It is also very messy and when you try to blend, you could end up peeling the pastel off.  Because this is a challenging thing to do and takes a lot of time, not many people are up for it. I would rather draw flowers in pastels because they do not have as many details as a face.

Book Review

Mendi Designs by Marty Noble, published in 2004, is a book of traditional Henna body art. This book is for any person interested at looking at many types of Henna art work.

Mendi is a traditional Indian type of Henna body art. Mendi and Henna can also be found in the Middle East. These designs are applied only on special occasions such as weddings. In a wedding, both the bride and the groom are decorated. Sometimes some oft eh guests have it as well.

Mendi art is like a temporary tattoo. They only tend to last for a couple of weeks. Mendi is made from Henna leafs and tea, coffee, wine, sugar, syrup, egg, yogurt, tamarind, fenugreek seeds, cloves or titanium powder.

In this book, you will find many pages filled with very creative Henna. Although it is not a how to book, it is still grate because it simply is just fun to look at. If you are willing to give Henna a try, I would highly recommend this book.  

Passion Post: Creepy Smiles

We all have met that one person who has the most creepiest smiles. They look down on us as they open their eyes super wide and only show their top set of teeth when they smile. Although all of these pictures are of little kids eating food, they are still super creepy!! The little girl on the top left corner is looking at her sandwich like she’s about to eat it in one bite! What the quack! How desperate is she to eat that darn jelly sandwich? And the little boy on the bottom right, his smile is like threatening! I just want to say, little boy no one is going to steal your darn can of Pork Beans! Another type of creepy smiles are the ones when people second chin it and kind of tilt their heads down and smile. That's super creepy.  I remember when I was in Kindergarten; I had this teacher who had a creepy smile. I was really young back in the day and I can still remember her nasty smile! I was already a timid child since I had just moved to America in Kindergarten and I didn’t know English and this teacher here made it worse trying to scare me with her nasty yellow teeth. This one time she had lip stick on the teeth. I notice because she had a creepy smile so when she smiled at me I saw it and I laughed. She didn’t know why I was laughing she probably thought she was being funny or something. I would have told her but I didn’t know how to. Anyways, the point is that there are those people who have the creepiest smiles that you just never forget about them, like my Kindergarten teacher. They scar you for life. Who knew that smiles 

Creative Post about coffee

Coffee is my favorite thing to drink in the mornings
 It helps me stay awake for at least a couple of hours
Whenever I don't drink coffee
I feel like poop.
My eyes burn because they are so swollen
and I am forced to squint because the light irritates my eyes
and I can slowly feel them dry out.