Human Behavior: Compare and Contrast: The Four freedoms & American Dream

Human Behavior: Compare and Contrast:  The Four freedoms & American Dream

Project proposal

I want to recreate my own version of Norman Rockwell's The Four Freedoms. My thinking skill is Comparing and contrasting and I would like to compare how our version of the American dream and our freedoms are perceived in 2018 compared to the 1940s. The purpose of this is to show how our country has evolved rather then died because a lot of people say that the american dream is dead but it is far from it. I would like to bring more hope to the people of our country because I feel that a lot of people talk down on America but we are such a great nation.

Artist Statement

In my project I compared the old American dream to the new one at the same time as showing how different the perception of the American freedoms are in 2018 compared to the 1940s. I have concluded that our freedoms are the same and are used today but their individual definitions have changed according to our modern society. I used Norman Rockwell's painting of president FDR’s beliefs of the Four Freedoms. I recreated his work but with a modern spin. This is my first series too I didn't intend them to be turned into a poster or to be the same size like Norman Rockwell's painting.

What is the American dream?

Definition:the ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative.

How would someone today define the american dream? Today the American Dream is not about moving to America to have a luxurious lifestyle and get famous. Today the American dream is living life in a capitalist country having extended freedoms, having a voice in your government, and being able to pursuing a life that makes you happy. People don't even realize how free our country is because they focus on laws like having to pass a health inspection for your restaurant or not being able to hurt you children as the government having too much control. I think the laws we have are mostly protecting us. The American dream could be simple as being able to have an education as a woman, or to be able to wear your favorite clothes, or to marry someone of the same sex. In some other countries gender roles are huge and stops people from doing things that aren't designated for them. That is why I think that the American dream has changed to be more focused on the freedoms our country has in the way that people are able to pursue millions of different lifestyles and be creative and have the opportunity to be themselves.

What do people expect the American dream to mean? Move to America and get rich. This is not the case at all. People can become rich but that is not what America is about. I was reading

America is a wonderful place full of opportunity and the freedom to pursue happiness. Although some might say that the american dream is dead. I think that this is not true the American dream has changed. I read the book the Two Kinds written in 1989 about a young Chinese girl named Jing-Mei. Jing-Mei’s mother moved them to America and pushed her daughter to be extremely talented and a prodigy because her mother had the idea that going to America her daughter would become a child prodigy and make her rich. That did not happen and it ended that her mother dispersed her because her mother believed that her daughter failed the american dream.

Norman Rockwell’s “Four Freedoms”

This is a painting that I found on the Norman Rockwell Museum site https://www.nrm.org/2012/10/collections-four-freedoms/

This painting was supposed to reflect President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's vision for a post war world. In 1941 FDR believed that America should be based on four human freedoms: Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. In 1942 artist Norman Rockwell was attending a town meeting and someone had given an unpopular view and that made him think about his next painting. He wanted to paint the freedoms from the perspective of his hometown.  I want to recreate that idea using inspiration of my town and things that I personally see in my local community and in school.

This is Norman Rockwell's interpretation of FDR's four Freedoms. He started by sketching things that he saw in his town including the top left one of that town meeting. He then turned the painting into a poster with a cover artist Mead Schaeffer. This poster became so popular it received 25,000 requests for reprints. It was making history by 1943 when the U.S. Department of Treasury made a joint campaign to sell war bonds and stamps.It was a success and people were buying war bonds and buying reprints. I don’t want my paintings to be sold or made to advertise anything. I just want them to be inspired from the four freedoms painting remake into the modern interpretation of the American dream.  

In my first painting represented the ‘OURS...to Fight for Freedom from want. Norman Rockwell had painted a family eating dinner at a table together the scene is very lively and mirrors Andrew Jackson's constitution that all men should be allowed to pursue happiness. Which basically means being able to do what makes you happy in the Constitution it is a right that people are allowed to freely pursue joy in life and live in a way that makes you happy as long as you don't violate others or do anything illegal. I compared that to my interpretation of how today the American dream is being able to have the opportunity to pursue your dreams and find happiness in that. I painted a young tiger in a stalking pose hiding in a bush, I made the tiger stalk the American flag. This represents the way I view the American dream being achieved today. The tiger represents a person stalking their dreams and freedoms and waiting for an opportunity to grab that dream head on. For the actual painting part this only took me one class because I didn't feel I needed to make any changes to it because it is simplistic and gets a point across. I had a chat with my family and they thought it meant that that the government was a tiger trying to take your freedom away and I thought that was a very interesting point because unlike other countries where its legal to rape children we have laws in place that limit us from doing stupid stuff. Some people can look at the American dream as dead because they feel limited because of taxes and laws and permits.

Right here is the final product of my second painting this one doubles as freedom of speech and freedom from religion. 2018 in America we have the freedom of speech and are allowed to display or not display the American flag as freedom of speech. I think that this is a good meaning to it because in 1987 the Edwards v. Aguillard case changed the way religion is taught in school. Prior to this the topic and teaching of evolution was banned in public schools and instead creationism and class prayers were happening. Now creationism and teaching religion is banned and evolution theories are taught. I think now we are taught the freedom of not having a religion because prior to this almost everyone was practicing some religion now I only know like less than a handful of people who go to church or even believe in a god. I think that the freedom of religion in Norman Rockwell's painting was from a culture of people who all practice some sort of religion. Now in 2018 we still have the freedom of religion but we also are not looked down on if we don't have a religion.

My last painting is based on the freedom from fear. I choose to paint a photo of my friend in rainbow because she is expressing her sexuality in a way that would have had her killed before 2010. Now that gay marriage is legalized in all 50 states the LGBTQ community doesnt have to live in fear that they cannot marry who they love and be accepted anywhere but there is still fear there is still hate. I think that people are now brave in the way that they are able to come out in school and not be judged here in our high school. It is sad that people sometimes are scared to love themselves because not everyone is going to accept you. I made sure to use bright acrylic mixed with water to make it seem like watercolor. I wanted to use vibrant colors to express the colorful person she is and how she isn’t afraid to say that she isn't strait. She embraces herself mostly.

Thinking Skill: Synthesizing

Artist Statement

“Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself”-Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin D. Roosevelt  our 32nd president has said that fear is the only thing you should be afraid of but I think that is definitely not the case. For my project I investigated people's fears and most fears are things people should be afraid of. I used the thinking skill synthesizing to explore deeper into human behavior starting at fears. To start off my project I decided to go around interviewing people of different age groups and backgrounds. I asked each person their age, one fear that is of a physical thing (ex: heights, blood, terrorist attack), and one fear that is more physiological (ex: fear of rejection, feeling someone is watching you, or of any anxieties). What I wanted to get out of the project was a larger understanding of fear by learning about different people around me and what they fear. Before going into this project I thought that people would have fears that change with age. I found that the same fears can be found in people of different age groups and that fear can be constant through people's lives. In my interviews I interviewed 11 people from 10-45 I tried to find elderly people but I don't really know any. During the interview I wanted to create a safe atmosphere by ensuring that their data would not have their names or exact age attached to it because I didn't want people to be discouraged from answering truthfully. I had initially asked about 15 people but only choose to include the more diverse ones. I found that interviewing people and asking about their fears had given me a deeper understanding of who they are and I was able to make more personal connections with them. This research was very valuable because I had a lot of meaningful conversations with people and was able to draw some of my own conclusions about how these fears could have came up. In my research online I found that fear is a tool to humans. From birth we use fear to tell us when we are in danger and should run away. Fear gives us that sense of danger that acts as a stimuli to our nervous system causing a physical response one in the same with the fight or flight response. Fear is primitive and necessary for our survival. Fear in children is natural especially when they are exposed to new things, they can grow out of that fear when they learn there is no danger but they could develop into phobias. A phobia is a very intense fear revolving around a specific thing or scenario even if there is no danger or threat. An amazing fact I saw on HealthLine was that about 19 million Americans have phobias that prevent them from living a normal life. This goes to show how problematic phobias can be. If i step back and analyze this from my point of view I can see that I have a fear of spiders but it doesn't affect me to the extent of avoiding hiking in the woods, but for a person with a phobia of spiders they might be avoiding places all together. I learned that fears can be embedded deep into people's lives and some are just instinctual.

Data I Collected From Interviews

From here I found that the fear of failure is common and there are multiple fears that are on bugs. Some fears that I related to were fears of spiders, failure, running out of time, and of failure. Based on the information people have given me on their fears most of them were not super intense and don't really affect their daily living.

How do you know if you have  a phobia?

I found on healthLine some symptoms of phobias: Ask yourself does your fear make your heart race, give you shortness of breath, upset stomach, trembling or shaking, dizziness, or a sense of impending doom? If you do feel that then most likely you have a phobia and not just a fear.

Don't worry there are treatments for phobias too.

I read that antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications can lessen the phobias, but a more direct approach would be from therapy. I found that there is a treatment called Cognitive behavioral therapy(CBT). CBT puts patients in a comfortable situation and then they introduce the fear that they have head on, they might use virtual reality to put the person in to a world where they have to face their fears. This is supposed to expose the patient to the fear head on and show them that there is really nothing to be afraid of. CBT is a great alternative and can used to help people with so many issues like depression or addiction.

This is the sketch of what key things I wanted to put in my painting. My initial vision of the painting would be a woman from profile view with smoky purple hair with little symbols or pieces of the fears through it almost like personifying a haiku.  This concept of my art would support the synthesizing portion of my painting because I want to collect smaller pieces of fear and creatively connect them into a bigger whole. I took fears like claustrophobia(small spaces),atychiphobia(failure), Chronophobia ( time) and FOMO (missing out). Ones that I collected because I thought they could add some nice imagery to my painting. But I also added some fears I learned about online, like fearing nuclear disaster or war relating to Russia and North Korea. I took fears of corrupt government officials from Chapman University’s study on the top 10 fears in America.'

https://blogs.chapman.edu/wilkinson/2017/10/11/americas-top-fears-2017/

I also used the fear that the US will be involved in another war and the fears that North Korea would use nuclear weapons. Because of Recent news I decided to sketch a North korean Nuke and a Russian Nuke together because they both and very threatening to America.

Right here I started to paint the base of the face over a large board that I also coated in black acrylic paint. Since I did do that coat it made it very hard for the next layer of paint to grip onto the board. I think the face started off well I made sure to incorporate blue into the skin onto the neck to give it a cold appearance and on the face I used a lot of pink to give very warm undertones. I really like the contrast in the skin color because it almost makes it look 3D with the reds and blues.

This next part I started to use any leftover blue and added water to it to spread it out like hair flying in the wind. My original Idea was to have smoky hair but then I wanted it to be like very long straight hair that is fanning out like it is shocked. So far things look pretty scary and cold. I want this blue to just be the background layer of hair and I want to paint objects over it and then last paint a layer of hair over and around the objects to place things between the hair.

This painting is done by Edvard Munch the artist that I took alot of inspiration from. This painting is called the Spring Plowing and it is filled with warm and cool colors with free strokes. I think that the colors used were very beautiful and I used the reds and blues in the face and in the hair I used the rainbow assortment. The hair I wanted to use it to show many colors like a whirlwind of emotions that come with fear.

Right here is a close up of the pendulum earing done with white black blue paint and then after I made it have some nice value I used a light layer of gold paint that allows the clock show through. The reason I painted this was to represent fears like thanatophobia(fear of death), atychiphobia(Fear of not accomplishing goals), and FOMO (fear of missing out), and chronophobia(fear of running out of time). These are all time sensitive fears and I think I needed to include time into my fear painting since time related fears keep reoccurring.

This next photo shows the face and I am very happy with how it turned out. Since I used water in my painting the paint has cracked but it made the painting look aged kinda like an old portrait. I choose to keep the eyes white because I wanted to make the girl look like she is blind she cant see clearly because with phobias people can blindly fear without a real reason even if it seems silly. With the eyebrows I gave them a neutral shape but I couldn't decide if I wanted to give them shading inside or just do hair stroke and I ended up doing plain brown eyebrows. I gave her a full glammed out look by giving her skinny pink lips pink blush on the cheeks I used darker brown to contour the nose cheekbones and eyebrow bones. I also used a combination of silver and gold paint to dab on highlighter to her cheekbone and brow bone to imitate a highlighter. For eyeshadow I used brown gold and a cream color combination to really widen the eyes. I gave her very long and thick eyelashes. I think that this part came out beautiful. I added heavy makeup to represent myself in my art since I do wear very heavy makeup.

This F was put here to represent the fear of failure (atychiphobia). This fear is super common for a lot of students because not many people are confident enough to think that they are flawless. A Penn State article wrote about about this phobia and said that between 2 and 5% of Americans suffer from this as an actual phobia but the number of people who are affected by it in smaller forms are a way larger percent. https://sites.psu.edu/akb13/tag/atychiphobia/

This next part is of a black widow spider. I choose this spider to represent all of the spider and insect fears as well as the fear of death since black widows are known to be deadly. I liked this alot because I was successful in making the spider seem shiny or have a very spherical form.

This skyscraper is representing the fear of falling and of heights. I made it seem like someone was hanging on to the edge like they are * not commiting suicide*. I made the front windows white and the side ones black because they are in a shadow. Based just on this picture it looks like the building is being swept away by a strong wave.

Right here I painted a man who is inside of a small box while his face is very distressed because I wanted to show the fear of small spaces(claustrophobia). When researching this fear I also found that there is another fear that is of large open spaces rather than tight spaces. I made the hair sweep over the top of the box and it made it look like someone stuck it inside the hair.

Right here I painted a heart to represent the fear abandonment. I choose the heart because when someone is abandoned by someone they feel very emotional and sad. If someone abandons you they take a bit of your heart and leave you feeling cold and sad without it.

For this part I painted a man being swept away by the hair as if he was drowning and the face textures and colors are inspired by Edvard Munch’s The Scream(below).This part gives people a very anxious feel looking at it since he is in very clear distress.

This is Edvard Munche’s The Scream. I connected the very distorted water in the background and the wavy sky lines to be put into to the hair in my painting.

This portion I explained it in my sketch and on the photo of America's top 10 fears. Some of their biggest fears are that North Korea will send nuclear weapons or that we will be involved in another world war, like in Russia since in the recent month Russia has not been agreeing with President Trump's policies.

THE END

Thinking Skill: Synthesizing Proposal

Thinking Skill: Synthesizing 
 Pulling together smaller pieces to understand the greater whole

I am still using the topic Human behavior and my subject is fear. What my vision for this next project is I want to find out why humans have fear. I was thinking that I want to survey the class one on one and see what everyones personal fears are and then I want to research about their fear. I want to take all of the fears and synthesize them all in one painting to talk about the bigger whole which is why people fear, what makes us fear. I choose The Scream, 1893 by Edvard Munch to be an inspiration for my art work. The Scream painting was supposed to reflect Evard's personal take on fear. My topic is similar but I am taking bits of peoples fears who are around me and then I want to compare them to how common they are. Like The scream I would like my painting to give an anxious feeling over peoples fears. I really like the distorted aspects of the painting that makes everything feel scary.

Thinking Skill: Analyzing Perspectives Progress Update

This is what I started my painting with. I started to paint 4 pillars representing different platforms, not just from social media. I choose to use this columns to represent a pedestal to be above all of the other perspectives. The left, rainbow ombre  pillar is representing Instagram. On that one I am gonna use that to represent the points of view of a feminist since thats where I thin I see them the most.   

This part of my painting I am showing a cave carved out of a hill. This Cave is located on the bottom right of the painting and the reason I put it so low on the painting is to show how people towards the top of the painting are shown more and have issues equal or are shown as more important not only to themselves but other Americans. This specific part I wanted to paint a small child crawling out of a Cobalt mine in Congo. Kindergarten age children in Congo are being forced into child labor working in bad and harmful conditions. April 16, 2018, Financial Times wrote, 'Glencore warns on child labour in Congo’s cobalt mining', a European article about the issues in Congo. They talk about Glencore, the largest producer of cobalt. They work in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Amnesty International reported that children 7 and up can be found mining cobalt by hand, this is exposing them to harmful toxic dust. The kicker for this is that cobalt is used in making lithium ion batteries that Americans everyday use in the phones, and electric cars. These children are shown so little in media and Americans don't really even think about them but they literally harvest materials that we need in order to have the media access every single day.https://www.ft.com/content/dbf18e0e-416a-11e8-803a-295c97e6fd0b 

This Photo is from Sky News. http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-cobalt-mine-child-labor-2017-5?r=UK&IR=T This photo shows an 8 year old being threatened to be hit if he didn't do the job right. This shows how hard and sad the reality of where Americans get their resources from. They are deep in mud working like slaves in the rain. These kids are working to supply Apple with its much needed cobalt, So Apple is saying they want to try to get workers who are older.

          Here I painted a frail child crawling out of a cobalt mine opening. I tried to use perspective making the Childs body get smaller and disappear into the shadows of the mine. I made a large bucket and pickaxes to show just how young this child is, I tried to make the kid about 7 which is an age that children would be working in these mines.  I had also decided to remove the second child since it cluttered the area. I used skills like building from dark to light to create depth, this is a skill that I am starting to practice and use this year. I also put water on the dirt to try to make age ground there look muddy because they do work in pouring rain calf deep in mud. I was very happy with the results of the bucket because I layered starting from black to white and it actually made the bucket look like it was made from metal. The last part of this that I want to talk about is the white and grey patches inside the cave. What this is showing is not smoke but, static. I framed the cave in mood trying to make a rectangular or buy shaped opening to make it seem like static on a tv. Not a lot of people who don't follow world news don't know about what has been happening in Congo for years. This static represents the lack of these issues to being shown in any forms of media. Its like the children there can't be seen by Americans because they don't prioritize these issues above their own lesser issues.

           This is the start of one of my pillars. I painted it red to represent the youtube platform as a physical thing. I choose to use it because there is a lot of youtube drama all over social media and news talking about demonetization, and youtube general algorithm. I plan on painting a gold demonetization symbol because for a lot of people its literally life and death for some people. Recently in the news Nasim Aghdam, The 'YouTube Shooter' actually went to YouTube HQ and shot 3 people. She did this right after her videos were demonetized by YouTubes flagging algorithm. To be demonetized it means that your videos will no longer have adds played which means that the YouTuber will no longer make revenue off of their video. Although that could seem like no big deal, to Nasum Aghdam she thought that her life was over. For many big and small YouTubers like Onision, Pewdiepie, and Dextry, have publicly complained about how it is a really big deal in the Youtube community because these content creators cannot create videos because if they swear once their video will lose all its revenue. This is also very unfair because rappers like Nikki Minaj can rap about inappropriate topics, using foul and derogatory language, and have extremely inappropriate and sexual outfits and themes, including showing prostitution or drug use....But still they don't get demonetized.

This is not a trash can! Everyone has said that this orange column looked like a trash can. It is not, I am saying right now that it doesn't look like a trash can because it was intended to be. I was trying to create a fiery orange that looked very saturated but then it kept fading as it dried. I wanted to pull in elements that were very dark and dry  like the into my painting in all parts because I was looking at the artist James Ensor. I admire the textures in his paintings, it looks like he does very small strokes and it looks like he doesn't blend but uses layering. I tried to layer starting with a black outline of pillars and then I coated it in red and then orange and then I mixed white and yellow in to make the lightest parts. I am happy that the structure looks like it is actually rounded.

Here I did paint a dog on a pedestal because in America people love dogs so much that they literally would run into a burning home to save one. I choose the orange and grey colors to represent the ASPCA. On their website I found many compelling facts supporting that humans prioritize these pets and see them above all else happening in the world. According to the ASPCA website:
- Approximately 3.2 million shelter animals are adopted each year (1.6 million dogs and 1.6 million cats).
-It's estimated that 78 million dogs and 85.8 million cats are owned in the United States. Approximately 44% of all households in the United States have a dog, and 35% have a cat. (Source: American Pet Products Association 2015-2016 (APPA))

To further explain, CBS Money Watch has done a study about 'Charities Faking Their Numbers to Look Good'https://www.cbsnews.com/news/charities-fake-their-numbers-to-look-good/ The Feed The Children charity program lies by saying that charity's claim that it spends 91% of donations on programs (this is a link to the actual charity site) That would mean theoretically that that for each dollar raised they would donate 91 cents of food. The American Institute of Philanthropy analyzed the actual numbers, they actually spend less than 25 cents of each dollar...Thats angering thats misleading af(Air Force). Where does the rest of that money go? Well we would like to guess on advertising...Unfortunately this is completely legal to lie about your charities worth as a way to get around taxes. So yes, we do care more about dogs than other people.


Right here I painted an ombre rainbow pedestal to represent the Instagram social media platform. I used this one because it particularly is an app that is an app that almost everyone has now with 500 million active users daily according to Omnicore https://www.omnicoreagency.com/instagram-statistics/ . This is a place where people go on daily to see what people are posting, I am a user, all of my friends are, and even some of my teachers have accounts. The reason I used it in particular is because I see a lot of feminists ranting constantly especially on international Women's day March 8th, of this year. A lot of the ones represented on social media and very over bearing and forceful and abusive to men. A lot of them I see are giving strait out hate speech to any males even to transgender people and that is widely offensive. But with them their drama sparks a lot of talk and reshares for comical effect, this makes them money because a lot of them have large followings because people want to know what the 'Feminazi's' have to say next. I can't even remember a time when people were taking about slaverey in Libya or other issues that could influence someone to step up and help third world countries.

Over here I made a painting inspired by survivor of the Nepal India Sex Trafficking. Although she is not known her art is found on the 3 Angles Nepal Website https://3angelsnepal.com/human-trafficking/ Please click here if you want to help. Every single day 54 young girls are trafficked out of Nepal and into India for the purpose of sex slaverey. This is very sad mostly because these girls are tricked by handlers to willingly cross the checkpoints between Nepal and India. They do this by appearing to be rich and asking the girl for her hand in marriage or by offering her a job that would giver her a lot of money to support her family, of course these are just their tricks and unfortunately an effective way they lure young girls. By clicking that link above you can find more information on how to help, donating would contribute money to building more security checkpoints at the boarders of Nepal and India to intercept the young girls making mistakes.
Below I put one of the actual paintings done by this unknown artist. I really admired soft strokes of the hair and fields and tried to make the hair in my painting appear more fluffy. I also wanted to paint very dark clothing and capture the abuse that they go through without actually showing violence. I opted for painting these girls smiling and going over the boarder in chains. I choose them smiling because they don't know that they are about to be captured into sex slavery. The chains are leading off the page almost as if someone was leading them into their unknown fate. I also tried to use the yellow sashes and bright red dress because I really liked the contrast of their cultures colors.

Something that stood out to me when exploring the 3 Angels Nepal site

           I painted the typical white girl that rants on social media constantly. I painted her onto of a blue pillar that represents Facebook since Facebook is infamous for teenage girls to tell everyone their whole lives. I put her on top of this column because above everyone else these girls have huge followings and people usually react to all of their posts. I literally cannot go on social media without seeing at least 10 of my friends post an intentionally attractive photo and then comment, 'Im so ugly' And each and every time it ends with a hundred comments on their post telling them that they are gorgeous and even some people write out multiple paragraphs supporting these people. For Americans we always want to be apart of everyones lives on social media. For celebrities like Kim Kardashian millions of comments end on their posts and the general American public cares so deeply about the lives of others on social media that we constantly are checking their lives. But no one is checking up on a highway they adopted or a poor child in another country that they are sponsoring with only a few cents a day. There are countless articles on the psychology behind why social media is so addicting ti people and why they care so much about it. On the Association For PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
website (https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/social-media-likes-impact-teens-brains-and-behavior.html) I read a compelling article called, 'Social Media ‘Likes’ Impact Teens’ Brains and Behavior' It basically explains that teens actually have a physical reaction in their brain overtime they get likes on their social media posts. They made an experimental trial with 32 teenagers where they showed them their social media and analyzed their brain activity using fMRI, functional magnetic resonance imaging. Lauren Sherman, a researcher in the brain mapping center and the UCLA branch of the Children’s Digital Media Center, Los Angeles said, "When the teens saw their own photos with a large number of likes, we saw activity across a wide variety of regions in the brain,” This was discovered that when teens see more likes on their photos their striatum in their brains light up like a Christmas tree with pleasure. This is apart of their brains reward circuitry which means they get dopamine, the feel good chemical, released into their brains.


This part I had started the feminist portion and I included a sign that says, "Im a woman" because some of the extreme ones criticize every single word that includes any male pronouns in it. I also made her pretty obese because a lot of them are trying to make themselves fat to prove that they are not sexual objects and no offense but I would not choose that body as a sexual object. If whoever is reading this page is triggered you have every option to walk away since this is not hate speech or bullying. The press publishes offensive political cartoons every single day this can't be that different.







This is the beginning of a sad message I put into my painting. So far its the outline of a starving child in need, figuratively holding a cellphone that has no signal. This is representing their lost in connection with the rest of the world and shows that they are not making their way into Americans lives this also represents the perspective of Americans because they don't care about these topics and they don't look up posts or charity pages they don't show up in the medias algorithms, just the fact that you won't see any post pertaining to saving a starving child is because you didn't care enough to look it up and the general population didn't either so it is not a recommended result.

      I am extremely proud with the result of this part of my painting. I don't think I have ever freehanded a human so well. I am proud on how the highlighted areas came out especially on the eyes and the collar bone. I wish I could have done the fingers better but I am not very good at hands so I tried to just make it seem like they had some. I think I could have also done the feet better. I want to try to practice more painting hands and feet. 

          This is one of my favorite parts of this painting. Right here I painted a couple in Yemen in their common clothing. I researched the mens and women clothing. On this website it goes though the mens wear.https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94979969 They usually wear long tunics with a large belt holding their traditional ordinate sword. Every man there carry one and it is a symbol of their masculinity. They usually are made with a rhino sword that they are willing to spend thousands on in the black market for. In itself the outfit is a problem when it comes to promoting poaching. The women have many different styles that derive from quite literally a sheet. They actually used to wear sheets, not joking actually bed sheets. Some of them wear a veils with a mask but others just wear the head wrap which is the most common since they always cover their hair. The reason I painted these two is because in Yemen women are not allowed to be independent, they cannot marry, have custody of their children, divorce, or even receive health care unless her male guardian says so. In Yemen women have a male guardian, usually their father, make all of their decisions for them. On GlobalCitizen.org They said that there is no minimum age of marriage there and 52% of Yemen girls are married before age 18.“These Are the Worst Countries to Be a Woman.” Global Citizen, www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/worst-places-woman-yemen-congo-saudi-arabia/.  This is shocking to me I cannot imagine living in a world where a man literally owns me. They must feel powerless, because they are.  I think that I can compare the perspectives of a women in Yemen and an American Feminist and I can guarantee that their point of view is similar although a typical American woman cannot be in the same situation. With a strong culture although these women are going through hardships and are literally being owned, they don't really think that and don't want to spark a change. these women have no access to the world looking at social media or even having tv access, they don't know that what is happening to them is anything other than normal. They are in a very different world it can be hard to relate. I wish that people in America knew more about these issues so their awareness can help out.

I love the feminist. I took inspiration from Fiona from Shrek because she kicks ass. Thats where I got the red hair and green top from. I took out the, "Im a" from the sign because I wanted to keep things simple.

I love how this came out, the Yemen man looks overbearing standing above his wife like that. I think I really did well incorporating the dark sad tone that I was going for. I can really feel it when I look at it. Im sure for people who don't know what it means would also think so too.

This is the completed demonetization symbol. It was pretty easy and simple.

Final Product: I had added black and white paint to represent the grey areas in how people perceive the world I think it gave a very dark element to the painting. I think there is a lot of grey area in America on what Americans perceive as important and what they think is more important depending on the individual.