SLEDJE RETURNS TO ROOTS

Woow! It’s been forever since I last blogged (actually, roughly 2 months… Still ‘forever’ in my eyes though). Meeehn, you need to believe LNC when next he says “Ko sere ni Canada, ise lo n se” (translation: Dem no dey play for Canada, na work dem dey do – sorry, na only pidgin I fit translate am to).

Yeah so I’m in Canada studying Foundation Visual Arts & Design at the Vancouver Film School. The Koko of this piece is not to talk about Canada though (which is quite a chilling country btw) or to blab about how the workload is as heavy as Lepacious Bose collapsing from the fifth floor of the Ozone Cinemas with Princess in her arms and landing right on your shoulders… No. It’s all about: ART

Let me go into a brief history of Kolawole Ayoola. Since I gained consciousness of myself (approximately when I was 2) all I wanted to do was draw. That was all that was on my mind. Not being a doctor, not being a banker, but being an artist – a cartoonist. I was very active in the visual arts all my life, up until 2004. I received the cold revelation that cartoonists never really excelled in Nigeria by my sweet mother. Her career advice for me was to become an Economist (become a Whaaaa?). She presented her point exceptionally well, so I had to agree. But somewhere within me I knew I couldn’t end up as a white-collar brother. And along came Music!! BAAM!! My escape from the banking world was certain!!! Sadly, the more I hugged the Performing Arts the more I neglected my Fine Arts. I didn’t create any fine art of worthy note since 2005 (8 years ago), asides a couple of back-of-notebook-scribbles during my Economics classes.

Lo and behold, my entry into Canada coincides with my thrusting head 1^st into the world of Arts!! I got into the class 2 weeks late so I was behind on a lot. Mumsy even asked me to defer my resumption so I could steady myself before starting, but I sampled the class and realized I could weather the storm. And boooy was it a STORM!!

Ok that’s for the History. Let’s talk some of the pieces I cooked up during my first Term (two months) in Vancouver Film School.

This painting was my final assignment for a class called COLOUR THEORY. We were to first of all draw anything (abstract, still life, real life, etc), make three copies and then use paint to represent the following colour relationships – primary, secondary, tertiary, monotonous, analogous, complimentary, cold, warm, complex and simple; ON EACH 3. I think this took me about 23 hours to complete.

TEACHER’S SCORE:          10/10

This was a group assignment for our COLOUR THEORY class. We were to have a photoshoot that focused on colours between Blue and Yellow (which includes Green). My group tagged ourselves School of Sweat, and we were dubbed the best in the class with this “Sexy & I Know It” inspired shoot.

School of Sweat Bishiiiiizzzz!!!

TEACHER’S SCORE:          16/20

This assignment was for an ART & CREATIVITY class. It’s by far the toughest assignment I have done in my life. We are to pick (or snap) a picture of ourselves with as much colour variation as possible, redraw on a platform about 5 times bigger, then colour with collage. It’s ironic that the “colour with collage” part was insanely difficult and time-consuming. It took me a total of 40 hours to complete, so I missed the deadline by about 3 days. For those of us that don’t know what collage is, it is a system of colouring that involves the use of cut-pieces of materials (in our case it was strictly magazines and newspapers).

Before...

After

TEACHER’S SCORE:          7/10

This one was for our class on 2D DESIGN. It was our final homework. We were to draw a natural background (which is a background with very little organization and with a lot of variety), then draw an object (anything that can serve as a character) in an identifiable silhouette form and merge both.

Trivia: For the first 5 hours I worked on this, I came up with nothing. My eraser nearly wan swear for me

Object Silhouette

Natural Background

 

Background & Object

TEACHER’S SCORE:          10/10

I made a silly mistake with the pix of this one. I was to copy all our shots of the process of creating this on my flash drive and post here, but I somehow forgot (yea I know, I’m a chicken nyash). Oh well, this is the only piece of evidence I have. It was for a final assignment for a class called LENS BASED MEDIA. We were to work on nature i.e. produce art using nature. We could also vary with some artificial material. So my group decided to work on an ancient Egyptian Tomb using the sand on a nearby Beach. It was serious work too. We worked on it for about 10 hours. Manage this picture for now sha *extends arms for a consolatory hug*

TEACHER’S SCORE:          unknown

And we move to the last piece I wanna share with y’all. It was the final assignment for our ART & CREATIVITY class. We were to take a picture of ourselves that bares the trademarks of self-portrait paintings specific to an era in art history: between Renaissance and Baroque. I picked Dutch Baroque. The picture was taken by me (Yes, I took it). I wasn’t too crazy about the shot though, till everybody else saw it and lost their minds: fellow students, family members, teachers, etc. It was a blowout! However I got criticized for not following instructions. I was shocked when this criticism got in, by the very teacher that was blown away by the shot. When he finished dissecting the tin, I realized I dozed off in the class where he explained the characteristics we should abide by (yea he's quite a boring tisha). So instead of working with the laid out trademarks, I went searching for the era trademarks by myself in textbooks. Last-last, e nor work sha. Eventually I edited it a bit to see if I could jerk up my score, and I'm guessing it helped. But after all is said and done, this picture looked better than the final edit.

The Chattering Saxophonist

TEACHER’S SCORE:          7/10

So that’s it for now my people. I hope you all enjoyed my mini-art exhibition. Term 1 is over now and I’m on break. I will be going in again for another hectic Term 2 by Monday 26^th of August. I guess I’d be updating you guys every two months till my 6^th and final Term.

Love y'all