Category: General

1. Evaluate your skills in drawing your self-portrait. This should be a detailed response – what were you good at, what did you struggle with…? Do you think your work is successful? Why?

In drawing my self-portrait, I think I was good at getting a diverse range of tones to match the actual variety and contrast in the photograph. This gave the portrait more depth, as well as emphasizing the detail. I managed to do this by looking carefully at the tones in the picture and comparing them to other areas, as well as thinking in both small and larger areas, in order to get small details and also larger overall details. I struggled at drawing the fabric as it was difficult to judge the locations and depths of various creases, because there were a lot of creases, and it was difficult to decide which to emphasize or how they naturally fit. I overcame this difficulty by working in small areas, and being careful to think about the shapes, rather than the objects. I think that, overall, my work was successful, as the portrait looks like me, it is a significant improvement from the first portrait that I drew at the beginning of the class, and I managed to capture many details and make a clear depth and shape in the drawing.

2. What has been the most helpful or interesting technique you have learned during Traditional Drawing?

The most helpful and interesting technique I have learned during traditional drawing is the technique of drawing shapes/lines/angles rather than objects/ parts of objects. This is especially helpful as perceived ideas of objects can often be wrong, and it is difficult to transfer them from memory. Thinking this way has been useful for me as it allows me to make a more accurate drawing, as well as adding in more detail, rather than worrying about how it would affect the object– as in the end drawing the shapes allowed me to put together the drawing in a more precise and detailed manner.

3. Write about the process in detail, from taking the photo, to transferring your drawing to the board to finishing your drawing. What choices did you make?

At the start of the process, I researched various portraits to gain inspiration for my own. I looked at the portraits of various professional artists to see their styles and their different compositions. I then decided on what I wanted to be doing in my portrait – I was allowed to use props, so I decided to be playing my violin in the photo. As none of the portraits I had looked at had people playing the violin in them, I researched some photographs of violinists to look at the various angles I could take in order to have the best angle to draw from, allowing significant detail for all parts of the drawing. I chose to have an angle front-on, with both my hands visible so that I would also be able to draw them, but without obscuring the face, and I also ensured that my eyes would be visible from the camera so that I would be able to draw them as part of the portrait. In taking the photograph, we first used a proper camera, but it turned out that the iPhone cameras had more detail in them, so we got a large variety of shots of me playing, taken in a dark room with a light, which maximised contrast. After taking the photos, I looked through them and chose a few which I thought were the best. Some of the things I considered when choosing the photo were the contrast, the detail shown, and the positioning and composition. After choosing the photo, I went onto the photos app and adjusted it so that it was in black and white, and changed the settings to maximise contrast. I then printed the photo.

After practicing drawing myself a few times on normal paper, and on a small sample of the good paper, I moved onto my proper portrait. To do this, I printed out the photo on A3 carbon paper and coloured in the back side of it with graphite pencil. I then taped it onto the good paper and traced over all the significant shapes in the photograph, including shadows, to transfer them onto the page, then took off the photo taped on. Then, I began drawing on the good paper, using the lines as guides, and focusing on the tone and texture of parts of the artwork. I started by focusing in on the details of the face, in each section that I drew starting with a lighter pencil and then progressing to a darker pencil before moving onto a different section. After finishing each significant area of the drawing (head, violin, hands, shirt), I went looked over it again to see if there were any details I had missed and changed a few things, then moved onto the next section. After finishing the drawing, I again looked over it and made a few changes to small details, and got rid of any residue.

Before (portrait drawn before any lessons) and after (final portrait from project)

In science this term, we worked on a project in which we had to construct a scale model of an earthquake-safe building, using spaghetti and blu tack, in order to learn about the different structures used in the real world to make buildings more safe for people, in order to ensure that they do not collapse in the situation of an earthquake. We first did a 50min design sprint in which we tried to make this building without any planning, in just 50mins, then redid it a second time in the next few lessons in order to plan and make a structurally secure building. In making the model, following the budget of $60 to buy the materials of spaghetti ($1/stick) and blu tack ($1/gram), we planned the design in order to make it structurally secure and to make sure that we could afford it. We then constructed the building out of the materials which we purchased with the hypothetical money, and then afterwards tested its resistance to earthquakes by simulating an earthquake using a shake table, and saw how well it withstood the shaking, measured with a seismometer app.

In the process, we started by planning the model. To keep within the budget, I used the desired height and necessary supports to calculate the exact lengths and sizes for all the parts of the building (e.g. supports, levels, etc) which also ensured that, in building, we cut the correct lengths to avoid wasting material, drawing this up in a design plan. In building the model, we ‘purchased’ the materials and followed the plan with the design and lengths, having one person measure and cut the spaghetti, and the the others to work together in constructing the building, holding and building various parts of the structure, allowing us to successfully build the model to meet the requirements. To improve in the future, we should factor in the unusable leftover cuttings into the plan, as well as considering a way to make it more vertically strong but cheaper, as a lack of blu tack required us to make a taller level which would be less stable. Also, group members should more equally contribute to the plan so we would have more methods to make it stable and also plan the actual coordination of building the model together.

Australia’s legal system is based on a number of principles of justice which work together to ensure equality and fairness and that the rights of people are upheld. These include having equality before the law, high quality of evidence, the right to appeal, and the right to silence. Equality before the law ensures that everyone is treated equally and fairly, no matter their race, gender, income or similar, and ensures that nobody is above the law, so that everyone is protected equally. Using high quality evidence ensures that the decisions and convictions made by the court are reliable and likely to be true, as well as ensuring that they are made due to factual proof rather than a personal opinion. The right to appeal allows people to, if unhappy with a verdict, appeal to have the verdict reviewed and possibly overruled by a higher court, on reasonable grounds. This can happen, for example, if someone believes some of the principles of justice have been undermined or court procedures not followed correctly. The right to silence allows people to remain silent and not answer questions (except for name and address) when being questioned by the police. This is important as, under pressure, people may not be able to answer properly, especially if, for example, they did not have legal advice on it, or they had communication issues. These principles are important because they ensure that everyone is equal in court and that rulings are fair and suitable, demonstrating the great importance of equality in Australia’s judicial system. However, at times, this is not the case, as will be shown through an investigation of the case of Andrew Mallard’s accused murder of Pamela Lawrence. In this case, jeweller Pamela Lawrence was killed with a strange weapon on May 23, 1994, and Andrew Mallard was unjustly accused, after being forced to confess statements by the police. In this case, the principles of justice were largely compromised.

When Mallard was being questioned, the principles of the right to silence and equality before the law were compromised. The right to silence allows people, when being questioned by the police, to remain silent (except for giving name and address), as they may need legal advice first or may be disadvantaged (e.g. by language or mental capacity), and could incriminate themselves if forced to speak. Equality before the law ensures that all people are treated fairly and equally, with nobody above the law, without discrimination based on differences such as race, gender, culture and disability. In the Andrew Mallard case, he was interviewed when he was not mentally stable, and was at one point even in a psychiatric hospital. He was not given the opportunity to have a legal aid and he was not even able to have a nurse with him during the interview. This disadvantaged him, as he was mentally ill at the time, being in a manic stage of bipolar mood disorder and therefore may not have been able to make proper decisions or think properly. Mallard was also denied the right to silence- during his questioning, police fed him statements to ‘confess’, and threatened him to say what they asked, coercing him and threatening to shoot, beat and harass him. These factors caused him to have to ‘confess’ these false statements, as well as giving other information used against him, leading to his conviction. This would not have occurred if he had had a legal aid or other assistance, or if he had been allowed silence in the questioning, rather than being threatened by the police. These examples demonstrate that the principles of the right to silence and equality before the law were compromised in the Andrew Mallard case.

Another principle, the presumption of innocence, was also violated in the Andrew Mallard case. In the primary investigation of the case, Mallard was identified as one of the original 136 suspects. Shortly after, he was identified as a prime suspect after he was interviewed. This was partially because he had committed some crimes previously, although they were unrelated and were petty crimes.  They therefore treated him as though he were guilty, rather than innocent, and tried to convict him based on this belief rather than properly looking at the evidence that turned out to prove his innocence. This led them to do things such as forcing him to confess to the crime, and presenting false evidence from this, as well as, in court, hiding evidence that clearly proved him innocent. This assumption of guilt caused him to be convicted, as, if he had been properly presumed innocent, and treated as so, it would be likely that the police would not have forced him to ‘confess’ and use this against him in order to easily convict him, and the evidence found to prove him innocent would have been immediately brought to court. As a result of this, it can be seen that the principle of the presumption of innocence was violated in the Andrew Mallard case.

The principles of justice are essential to the Australian legal system. These include the use of high quality evidence, the presumption of innocence, equality before the law and the right to silence, as well as many others. These principles ensure that everyone is equal in the legal system, and treated fairly, and to ensure that rulings are as reliable as possible. However, the failure of the legal system to support these principles can lead to people being wrongly convicted, as was the case for Andrew Mallard, in whose case the principles of justice were largely compromised.

In Life Skills, we have been researching different jobs that we find interesting. I chose to research the job of Music Professional (Music Professionals | JobOutlook).

Music Professional

Some of the tasks of music professionals include creating melodic, harmonic and rhythmic structures to express ideas and emotions in music, as well as performing music in different contexts, and directing musical groups to achieve desired effects.

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Statistics of the job of music professional

Type of Qualification	Music Professionals	All Jobs Average
Post graduate/ graduate diploma or graduate certificate	14.9	10.1
Bachelor degree	31.7	21.8
Advanced diploma/ diploma	11.6	11.6
Certificate III/IV	7.9	21.1
Year 12	23.1	18.1
Year 11	3.6	4.8
Year 10 and below	7.1	12.5