Level 2 Painting - Week 5

For my folios this year, I have decided that my broad idea is to focus on the idea of light and dark. To build on that large concept, I will particularly be focusing on the theme of love and hate.
I have been researching a few different art genres and I one that really suits my ideas is impressionism. Post impressionism has many aspects which I would like to incorporate into my artwork, such as texture, vibrant colour and also giving an alternative view of an image. I feel as though post-impressionism is a way of sharing a different perspective of a scene which is your own - its how you see it and manipulated to how you want to share it with everyone else. This art genre originated from the impressionism, however, post-impressionists moved away from the normal and went past the limits of what impressionism is supposed to be. By passing the limits, I mean breaking through from traditional subject matter, introducing brighter and more vibrant colours, and more ambitious expression. A post-impressionism artist who I feel displays the concept of personal perspective is Vincent van Gogh. Van Gogh's work really captures my attention and that is something I want in my artwork. I want people to be interested in it. The texture he uses in his art fascinates me in how it clear objects can be seen, but they are also not too clear. The texture allows distortion in objects, encouraging an audience to figure the objects for themselves. A simple example of this is from one of his most well known pieces The Starry Night. In the oil painting, texture is used to make stars look bigger and brighter compared to how we normally see them, yet we still see them as stars. They don't look normal, but they are definitely recognisable.

My perspective of the world at this point in time is that there is a lot of hate. Hate rules the world in my eyes. The hate ranges from jealousy between two people, to war between two countries. Sometimes, the hateful feeling is just there without a real reason. It seems so easy to hate compared to being able to love. My point is, is that if it is so easy to dislike one another, why is it that we find it so difficult to like one another.
My idea is to show the current society the world is experiencing - on both small and large scales - and it progressing into what I want to see. I want to see is things like people being happy for each other, not jealousy, more positivity shared around, and rather than countries fighting against each other over nothing reasonable, why can't they just work together to help everyone to live out the lives they deserve.
The world as I see it now isn't the greatest place and I have no idea why so many people are abusing the greatest privilege of all - living. A few world leaders are some of the greatest people at picking out every little thing which they think is wrong, and finding a destructive way of getting rid of it. Things like 'I don't trust those people, bomb them' or 'That country is closer than I'd like, let's build a wall' are thoughts which come to mind when certain important people are mentioned. I understand the possible trust issues in between countries and people, but I feel as though that people have forgotten that there are kind hearts in this world. Stereotyping is something which I feel occurs so often - towards ethnicities, genders, and even just the colour of your skin - that I feel it encourages those stereotypical things to be seen more. Some people are different to their culture. Some woman still find it difficult to feel strength with men just bringing them down with their greater strength - not physical strength, but societal strength. But then on the other hand, males have feelings too, and it is stereotypical to say that men don't have such strong feelings towards some situations, but do people really think that boys are born without a sad bone in their body? It is a very large circle of how society works in my eyes. I purely just think it is unfair to prevent the innocent from living.
As a part of my work to help portray my whole idea, I want to use a single flower on a hill, all alone. In the beginning, the flower will look as though they are dead, and as the folio progresses, the flower will come back to life and there will be more flowers alongside it - kind or like a group of people coming together. The reason behind this is because I feel that by being kinder to each other, it could mean that we are being kinder to Earth itself. Also, to tie in the use in 'light and dark', I think it is only right to give use more dull, dark colours to represent the dull, dark world at this point in time. As I continue to develop the world in how i want to see it, I will begin to incorporate a more vibrant colour palette.
Therefore, the idea I want to use is positivity and the affect it could have on the world.

Level 2 Painting - Week 1

Week 1

To start the year, I have begun with finding a style of painting which suits me, as well as a theme to work with. So far, I am thinking of going ahead and using quite a bit of texture in my work as I am very comfortable with using it. I am also thinking of heading in a light and dark direction, implementing the effect of contrast in my work, however, I am still trying to figure out a purpose behind this idea. When it comes to texture, an artist model would definitely have to be Vincent van Gogh. Not only is the texture used in his work something which I would like to work with, but I also just find his art work as some of my favourite.

I want to find a meaning to go behind the Chiaroscuro style which I hoping to use in my work.

Formal Writing

Should cigarette smoking be banned?

A small stick of tobacco rolled up in some paper has the power to kill you if you let it. Bringing the cigarette to your lips and simply igniting it with a flame for the first time can be the start to a long, unhealthy addiction. I believe that cigarette smoking should be banned for many reasons. These reasons include the way it negatively affects your health, the health of those around you, your mental health. Although there are so many negative impacts, smoking is still a popular addiction which needs to be stopped. Also, if smoking was to be banned now, then further generations will not be encouraged as much to try it. These points all come logically come together to portray the obvious point that cigarette smoking should be banned.

If anything, the main reason for smoking cigarettes to be banned, is because of the way it can affect your own health. Every cigarette you smoke has a way of harmly almost every organ in you body and ruins your system The more cigarettes you smoke, the more likely is will be the reason for serious medical issues and possibly result in death. Statistics from the New Zealand Government, show that over 80 percent of lung cancer is caused by smoking. Also, the chemicals from tobacco can eventually get into your bloodstream and travel through your body. Each year, 5000 people - 13 people a day - in New Zealand die from either smoking or exposure to smoke. By banning the smoking of cigarettes, the death rate could definitely decline. Although smoking can be seen as some form of stress relief to benefit your mental health, it is ruining your physical health. The less people there are smoking in our country, the fewer deaths will occur. However, it is difficult to get so many people to quit, but by banning the smoking of cigarettes, you have no choice but to quit. By banning smoking, hopefully one day there will be a generation which does not know anything about cigarettes and tobacco, and they will not face the health consequences which smoking brings.

Personal health is very important. The health of those around you is also very important. Secondhand smoke comes from those who smoke and affects the people around them. Exposure to secondhand smoke can be just as deadly as doing the smoking yourself. Secondhand smoke can have subtle and serious effects. Subtle being headaches, dizziness, or coughing and serious effects including heart disease, lung cancer and strokes. Children can be majorly affected too with illnesses such as ear infections, lung or breathing illness, and sometimes even sudden unexpected death in infantry. Secondhand smoke is dangerous and has such negative long term effects on people who do not deserve it because they do not personally smoke. Smoke Free New Zealand states that before indoor smoking was banned, around 350 people a year, would die from secondhand smoking. Banning cigarette smoking can benefit the lives of those who are around smokers quite often. This point is particularly aimed toward families of those who smoke. By banning cigarette smoking, and people not smoking as much as they usually would, or not at all, then that will be benefiting the health of so many friends and families who usually have to live with the smoke surrounding them from those they love.

Mental health can sometimes be affected more than physical health. When you purchase a pack of cigarettes or some tobacco, you are basically paying just to kill your own organs. Now that is a definite waste of money. In the United States, people who generally smoke a pack of smokes a day - which is quite a lot - pay close to $15000 a year. That $15000 could go towards so much more than just feeding into an unhealthy addiction which is hurting you physically and mentally. Mental impacts can include stress from running out of cigarettes, or anger due to not having enough money to go towards cigarettes, and that anger can sometimes be further aimed toward someone else, turning serious, into some form of abuse. Sometimes, so much money goes towards purchasing cigarettes, and then there is not enough money left for necessary items like food to feed a family. Things like this can tear families apart. There is no point in just letting people use their hard earned money to go towards something which will eventually kill them. Cigarettes should be banned, they are hurting the bank accounts of so many people and their suffering families.

Smoking can be a now and then kind of thing, or it can become a vital part of life. By banning cigarettes, the addiction of them will hopefully fade, and could restore so many lives which have been spent smoking for so many years. It is quite risky as there is a chance that many people could gravitate toward drug use, but by banning smoking cigarettes, that is a start to banning other drugs, and helping more lives. If this law was to be implemented now, there is a chance that smoking could be an unknown thing for future generations and they will not have to face the many consequences which smoking can bring. It will be an end to a horrible killer.

The smoking of cigarettes should no longer be a thing. There are so many negative outcomes from smoking that it is not worth it. Your harming your own physical health, the health of those around you, and you mental health. Banning these small sticks of evil would so beneficial for our country and the rest of the world. It would save so many lives and disgusting smell of smoke in so many public areas can finally be gone. Keeping cigarettes around is just feeding into a harmful addiction and not helping those who are wanting to quit, to actually do so. Cigarettes need to be banned now, for a future so pure, and 100% smoke free.

Year 11 Art - 9

Although I have already formed a piece consisting of a celtic knot, I felt that other versions of the same and even different celtic patterns were needed to show that it is genuinely meant to be involved in my work. Using water colour paper, water colour paint and acrylic paint. I painted half of a celtic knot in black acrylic paint and used different water colour paints to fill in the free spaces within the pattern. Around the knot, I used purple acrylic paint and faded out the strong colour using a clear gel medium. The further away from the knot, the lighter the shade of purple. Once again, using purple to tie in with my other pieces.
Also, I have begun with sketching other ideas for my three larger pieces. Some of the ideas consist of the half celtic pattern, using the roots from the woodcut print, as well as tree branches separately. These are some ideas which I am looking at turning into stencils for spray painting. I am looking at using blue, yellow, white and silver spray paint for these stencils. I decided to go against the use of purple spray paint as I want to use purple acrylic paint instead.

Year 11 Art - 8

I have now completed my woodcut and printed it on the paper using purple ink. The use of the colour purple helps to tie this piece in with the other two pieces which I have made for my board. I found that the print looked plain the first time I tried it, so then I tried to add a bit more detail to show different textures. Parts from this woodcut which I am hoping to use in other pieces are the roots of the tree, as well as the line separating the ground from the sky in the middle of the print.
My next focus will be on finding other small subject pieces to work together with what I already have. The reason for this is because my second panel is going to consist of three horizontal pieces. The plan for these three pieces is spray paint a background with multiple colours and using  objects to help with gaining different textures. Then continuing to form and use stencils to layer on top of the background. After the stencils, then using acrylic paints, adding in whatever I need to allow the piece to work together.

Bacteria and Disinfectants

Bacteria and Disinfectants

Purpose: To see how concentration can affect the performance rate of disinfectants in killing microorganisms.

Aim: I want to investigate how different concentrations of disinfectant inhibit the growth of bacteria.

Hypothesis: I predict that the stronger the concentration of Savlon, the more bacteria is inhibited from growing. I think this because Savlon is an antiseptic disinfectant which is a bactericide, therefore, the stronger the concentration of savlon, the more bacteria is killed and stopped from growing.

Variables:

The independent variable in this investigation, is the concentration of Savlon - we will be using. 

The concentration of the Savlon will be done through a diluting it with water (9 drops of water, 1 drop of solution).

The concentrations of this solution will be 100%, 10%, 1% and 0.1%.
To keep this investigation constant, there needs to some controlled variables. Firstly, the agar plates we will be using are nutrient agar plates rather than other ones as they are used to support the growth of a wide range of non-fastidious organisms. They are eligible of growing bacteria and fungi, because of the great amount of nutrients needed for bacteria growth.
Another controlled variable is the use of filter paper. This is used to soak up the same amount of solution rather having different types of paper. Also, another variable is keeping the same size of filter paper discs to ensure that the results are more accurate.

In this investigation, the dependent variable which we will be measuring is the clear zone surrounding the discs of Savlon. The 'clear zone' is the name of the area where the bacteria on the agar plates does not grow, or kills the bacteria cells.

The measuring process of this will be carried out through using a ruler to measure the diameter of the circle - hopefully - which will be surrounding the discs. The measurements will be done in millimeters.

Equipment:

• Agar Plate
• Savlon - antispetic
• Vivid
• Yoghurt - the bacteria growing
• Beaker
• Filter Paper
• Hole Punch
• Tweezers
• Dropper
• Dimple Tray
• Ethanol
• Bunsen Burner
• Tape

Method:

1. Firstly, begin with collecting all of the equipment needed.
2. With a clear agar plate, make sure to keep the lid on it as much as possible and divide bottom of the plate into four sections using a vivid. Label each section according to concentration (1=0%, 2=10%, 3=1%, 4=0.1%).
3. Dilute some yoghurt with water until you are left if a watery consistency. Pour 10mL into agar plate to form a thin layer on top of the gel - may need to be swirled around to cover every part of the gel.
4. Drain out any excess yoghurt in the plate - do not touch the gel.
5. Take a sheet of filter paper and using the hole punch, punch out four small discs of the same size.
6. Taking the dimple tray, a clean dropper, a beaker of Savlon and a beaker of water, begin with forming different concentrations of Savlon - 10%, 1% & 0.1%.
1. Using a clean dropper, put 10 drops of Savlon into a well in the dimple tray - remember to clean out the dropper after every time you use it to collect Savlon. This can be done through collecting water from a beaker and squirting it out, doing this three times.
2. Put 9 drops of water in the second well, and one drop of savlon. Make sure to stir the solution and proceeding to rinse out the dropper once again. This is the concentration of 10% Savlon.
3. Drop 9 drops of water once again into another well, and take one drop of the 10% and mixing it into the new dimple of water, forming a new solution. This is the concentration of 1% Savlon.
4. Take 9 more drops of water into another dimple, add one drop of the 1% percent solution and mix to form the 0.1% Savlon concentration.
5. Finally, add water to another dimple. This is the 0%, or ‘control’.
7. Turn on your Bunsen Burner, making sure you have your filter paper, dimple tray, agar plate, some tweezers and ethanol - making sure to put the lid back on the container when not using it.
8. Take the tweezers and dip the end of them into the ethanol, then run it through the Bunsen flame to sterilize.
9. Soak one disc per solution and place the discs into the center of it’s designated section on the agar plate.
10. Finally, using tape, seal the lid to the plate so the agar plate doesn't open.

Repeat these steps on two more agar plates to ensure you get more accurate results.

Results:

Final Result

Data Table

Concentration of Savlon resulting in Clear Zone
	Clear Zone (diameter)	Clear Zone (diameter)	Clear Zone (diameter)
Concentration	1	2	3	Average
0	0	0	0	0
10%	21mm	20mm	24mm	21.67mm
1%	14mm	26mm	15mm	14.5mm
0.10%	12mm	10mm	10mm	10.67mm

Analysis

This set of data shows three tests of this investigation and in almost every case, the highest concentrations have a greater diameter, and the lowest concentrations have the smallest diameters. However, within this investigation, there appeared to be one outlier, and this can be seen in agar plate 2's results, where the 1% concentration has a greater diameter compared to the 10% concentration, unlike the other two plates.

In the line graph, he blue line represents the size of the clear zone - area where no bacteria had grown - compared to the concentration of Savlon.

The red line in the line graph is a trend line. This line shows which direction the results seem to be going, and in this situation, the trend line seems to be showing that it is increasing. This means, that the higher the concentration of savlon, the greater the diameter of the clear zone.

Conclusion:

In this investigation, my hypothesis was correct. The stronger the concentration of Savlon - antiseptic - the more bacteria is inhibited from growing. My hypothesis was proved correct because when looking over the data I collected, a trend can be seen. In the graph, results show an increasing trend - as seen in the red trend line. This means that by increasing the concentration, the size of the clear zone is also increased. Or, in other words, the stronger the concentration, the more bacteria growth is inhibited, therefore forming a greater clear zone.

Discussion:

Bacteria

Bacteria are small, single cell microorganisms and they exist in groups of millions. There are three main bacterial shapes - sphere shaped, rod shaped and spiral. Bacteria cells can live within soil, water, plants, animals, and so on. The life process of bacteria is movement, respiration, sensitivity, growth, reproduction, excretion and nutrition - or MRS GREN for short. In this investigation, we were looking more into the growth and reproduction side of bacteria. The growth and reproduction of bacteria is an asexual process, dividing one cell into two daughter cells. This process is known as Binary Fission.

Bacteria cells have a specific structure. The outermost wall is called the capsule and it simply protects the bacteria. Inside, is the cell wall - which helps to keep the structure of the cell - and the cell membrane - which controls what enters and exits the cell.

Within the cell, the long twisted thing in the middle, is DNA, and it holds the genetic code or instructions. As seen in the photograph, there are two small plasmid and they are DNA which codes for processes which are not essential. The small, circular things are ribosomes, and they are where proteins are made. Everything within these cells are held together with cytoplasm which is a gel like texture.

On the outside of the cell structure, there are short spikes which stick out and they are called Pili. Their purpose is to transfer genetic material. Also, the cell has a tail, and it is called the flagellum. The flagellum is there to help the cell to move.

Binary Fission occurs asexually, when a grown parent cell, divides into two halves producing two new daughter cells which will eventually do the same thing at some point as a way of reproducing.
The diagram above shows the growth of bacteria, growing to the right size to split into two. These two new cells are identical clones of the mother cell they originated from, due to there being no other genetic code - another parent - involved in this reproduction.

This a graph showing the growth of bacteria when there is nutrients present. During the lag phase, there is little bacteria, beginning to take in nutrients and synthesizing their DNA and proteins. From there, the exponential phase is where the bacteria begin to replicate themselves - cloning - and the amount of bacter grows. During the stationary phase, the essential nutrients needed start to run low, and the growth rate of bacteria is equal to the death rate of bacteria. As the nutrients completely run out, it means that the bacteria can no longer reproduce and the bacteria slowly decreases. This is known as the death phase - the death of bacteria.

What is Savlon?
Savlon is an antiseptic which brand. It contains two antiseptics called Cetrimide and Chlorhexidine Gluconate.
Cetrimide is an antiseptic, having a mixture of quaternary ammonium salts - including cetrimonium bromide.  Chlorhexidine is an antiseptic and disinfectant used on skin before surgery is performed on a patient and also used to sterilize surgical instruments.

What is a disinfectant and an antiseptic?
A disinfectant is a chemical which kills bacteria, and prevents it from growing. Antiseptics do the same thing, except they are used on the skin as it does not do as much harm. An antiseptic is a solution which prevents the growth of microorganisms which can cause diseases. Antiseptics can also be known as bactericides, and these are known to inhibit the growth of bacteria, and the stronger the bactericidal is, the more bacteria is killed off. This provides us with a reason for why the higher concentrations of Savlon resulted in greater clear zones - area where bacteria has not been able to grow.
Disinfectants can work in multiple ways. Depending what disinfectant it is, it oxidises the molecules on the surface of of the bacteria cells. This disrupts the cells wall and cell membrane and the proteins on the surface begin to become damaged and forming clumps. This happens quickly and the bacteria does not work fast enough to fight against this process. Then, the cells can't handle it and splits apart, killing the bacteria.

growth What Is Bacteria? What Are Bacteria?
Nutrient Agar: Composition, Preparation and Uses Evaluation:
With this experiment, we carried it out three times to gain a more accurate result. It was a good idea considering that one of our three agar plates did not give us the result we were looking for. This one poor result gave us an outlier to work around. The outlier can be found in agar plate 2, with the 1% percent concentration. This result was over 10mm greater in diameter compared to the other two plates. Therefore, this meant leaving it out when calculating the average diameter for the final results.
For next time, I feel that we could improve on this experiment by having a bit more time to actually accurately soak the filter paper and place onto the plate correctly - rather than rushing within 5 minutes at the end of the class. Also, allowing the plate to dry once the filter paper is placed so that it doesn't move around - there was a lot of movement when it came to our paper.