Practice 4-1: Picasso

When I saw Picasso's painting "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" the first thing that really popped out to me was all the different faces of the women. They are all very unique and not realistic, they look like a face that someone with less experience would paint. This confused me because Picasso is very talented and I feel like he could've painted in general a lot better than what he did. I believe that good art is something that takes talent and I don't see much talent in this painting. It doesn't use correct perspective and although to some it may look more appealing, I don't see it as being "good" art. After looking at his other painting "science and charity" (which looks a lot more realistic using real angles and perspective) I was really blown away at how good this painting was. In my opinion it is better than "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" because it shows a lot more talent and skill. The amount of detail and emotion that is going on in the scene is very clear. While in his painting, "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" the viewer has to make his own opinion on what he/she sees, it's not clear. I believe good art should show clear meaning and not meant to be unclear what the art piece is about. In some cases it's okay to break the rules in art, and I'm not saying that either one of Picasso's pieces are not art, they both are a form of art one is conventional realism and one is more abstract and not following all the rules of painting. I believe that in writing should always be conventional when you're writing a research paper or following a specific outline because without these outlines there would be no similarity between them, it would be a lot harder to grade or compare them with one another if they don't even use the same writing style.

Practice 1-3: Citations

MLA Citations:

Smythe, James. “The Outsider by Stephen King Review – an Impossible Alibi.” The Guardian,      Guardian News and Media, 18 May 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/18/the-outsider-by-sephen-king.

King, Stephen. The Outsider. Thorndike Press Large Print, a Part of Gale, a Cengage Company, 2019.

I decided to cite the book The Outsider by Stephen King. I'm still reading this book, but at the time I really enjoy it. It's the first Stephen King book I've read and so far he lives up to his name. Coming from someone that doesn't usually enjoy reading, this book is very interesting and keeps me on edge. It's a about a little league baseball coach that is "arrested for the brutal rape and murder" (King) of a young boy that was once on his little league team. The article that I cited is a review about this book and it explains how there is an "impossible alibi" (James).

Practice 1-1: Blogging

Welcome to my blog! My name's Angad, you could call me Jay. I hope that you enjoy my blogs!

Practice 1-2: My Personal Favorite Story

I have a lot of interesting stories that I have told most of friends. Most of these stories have all the same friends in them, but they are all very different stories.

Here are some of my stories:

1) Getting my scuba diving license
2) My first cross country practice
3) Going cliff jumping

My favorite story that I would choose to break down into the hero's journey would be story number one, getting my scuba diving license. I chose this story because it is the one that I remember the best, and I believe it resembles the steps of the hero's journey.

Ordinary World: I was enjoying my summer vacation with my friends and planning to go to a summer camp.

Call to Adventure: I had the opportunity to get my scuba diving license.

Refusal: I was hesitant about signing up once I found out that it would be a lot of hard work and very challenging

Meeting with the Mentor: I didn't really have an official "Mentor" but my two good friends, John and Colin, convinced me to sign up. They were going to get scuba certified as well, so I felt it would be easier to go through it with my two good friends.

Crossing the Threshold: The best example in this story of crossing the threshold is going on the actual summer camp.

Test, allies, enemies: I didn't really have any enemies, but main test throughout the training was just completing the training and/or tasks that were assigned to us. Some of these "tests" were on how well we remembered all of the safety terms and procedures. The more difficult "tests" were the ones in the water where we had to do a number of different drills that we needed to do well in, in order, to proceed with out training. Some of these included being able to hold your breathe for a specific time while exhaling under water; we also had to be able to share air with another scuba diver if we ever ran out of air. My "allies" (John and Colin) and I would motivate one another during these drills because some of them were very challenging on our first attempt.

Reward: Our reward after making it through the drills and training was to go on two open water dives in the ocean. These two dives were amazing, we got to see all kinds of different fish and it was just a totally different experience when compared to the pool that we were practicing in.

Return with Elixir: I guess in this scenario my "Elixir" was my scuba diving license which I had earned by the end of the training.