Hercules

• Born in Thebes, son of Zeus by Alcmene (last mortal woman Zeus seduced).
• Zeus concocted a war and used the king’s absence to turn into him.
• To prolong their pleasure, Hermes arranged the sun god to delay his rising, to be 36 hours instead of 12, by the time it ended, Alcmene was pregnant with Heracles
• The next night, Amphitryon returned and made love with Alcmene and she told him she wasnt as good as last night. He thought she cheated on her, wanted to burn her, Zeus sent rain to put out the flames, told Amphitryon it was Zeus who Alcmene had been with, ordered raise the children as his own.
• Amphitryon was too frightened to touch her again
• Hera sent 2 snakes to kill Heracles but he strangled them and killed them.
• Hera was also tricked into breastfeeding Heracles to kill him but he was so strong she pushed him away and her milk formed the Milky Way. Drinking the milk ensured that Heracles would one day be divine.
• Linus was the first human victim of Heracles’ bad temper and colossal strength, he killed him by hitting him over the head with his lyre after a minor disagreement.
• He had sex with 50 women in 1 night and left them all pregnant.
• King Creon of Thebes gave Heracles his eldest daughter, Megara for his wife and bore him several children.
• Hera wasn’t happy that Heracles was happy and inflicted madness on him and he killed his wife and children. When he regained sanity, he asked the priestess of apollo at Delphy how he might atone for his crime and was told to serve Eurystheus for 12 years.
• Heracles was greatly humiliated by being the servant of a man with no heroic abilities at all, but Zeus soothed by promising that after completing all the tasks he would become immortal
• Performed 12 labours some alone and some with the help of Iolaus son of his mortal brother Iphicles.
• First six labours took place in Peloponnese, where Tiryns is situated and the last six journeyed all over the world known to the Greeks.

1. Nemean lion - Eurys demanded the skin of a lion, neither iron bronze or stone could wound it. Heracles strangled it and skinned it using its own claws. Kept the skin and wore it as a cloak and the head as a cap.
2. Larnaean Hydra - When its head is destroyed 2 more grew. Asked Iolaus for help, each time a head was cut, the youth burned the neck to prevent regrowth. Final head was immortal, Heracles urried it under a huge pile of rocks, dipped his arrows in its blood which made it poisonous. Hera sent a giant crab to help the hydra, Heracles crushed it and Hera placed it in the sky as the constellation Cancer, Hydra was also placed in the sky.
3. Cerynean Hind - Eurys demanded Herc to bring Cerynean hind (beautiful harmless deer with golden horns which was sacred to Artemis) Herc pursued the animal for a year and captured it exhausted and unhurt. Artemis was angry but accepted that Herc just followed orders.
4. Erymanthian boar - required to bring back a stronger beast, a wild boar. He drove it into a snowdrift, captured it in a hunting net, when he returned with it, Eurys was terrified and concealed himself in a huge wine jar which showed how inferior he was to Herc. While pursuing the boar

• Was one of the crew of Argo who went to fetch the Golden Fleece but left the expedition when his lover Hylas disappeared.
• Heracles was captivated by the youthful beauty of Hylas, but some water nymphs was also attracted by his looks, when Hylas approached a spring to get fresh water, the nymphs dragged him down into the water and the hero searched for him in vain.
• One tale was Heracles taking the part in the war of the gods against the giants and says that without his help Zeus wouldve lost the war, but Zeus was warned he would need Hercs.
• Heracles was asked by a friend Iphitus for help to find some missing horses, he mistakenly believed he was accused of stealing them and killed him.
• Heracles went to the Delphic oracle and demanded to be purged of his guilt, which gave him bad dreams. The priestess refused so Heracles smashed up the shrine and carrying off the sacred tripod on which the priestess sat on when giving oracles.
• Apollo arrived to defend his property, things would been very nasty if Zeus didnt separate his sons with a thunderbolt
• Heracles' punishment was to be sold into slavery for a year, his slave price was given to the family of Iphitus as compensation for his loss.
• Heracles was taken to Asia where he was bought by the Queen Omphale, He performed many brave deeds to rid her of enemies and also fathering three of her sons.
• One story tells that the Queen and the Hero swapped clothes and the god Pan decided to seduce the Queen and crept into her bed, but began to fondle the Hero instead and was evicted by a mighty kick which landed him bruised and groaning in one corner of the room.
• When the year of service was over, they parted best of friends.
• Eventually Heracles married the beautiful Deianira after rescuing her from the amorous embrace of the centaur Nessus.
• Deianira was scared that Heracles' was going to replace her with the princess Iole, so she sent him a robe dipped in Nessus' blood which still held the Hydra's poison from the arrow which had killed the centaur. It began to eat into his flesh and nothing could stop it. Deianira killed herself after realising she had killed him.
• With Zeus' promise, the hero's spirit ascended to Olympus, Hera reconciled to him and agreed that he should be given her beautiful daughter Hebe as his final Wife.
• Herales' left atleast 80 sons on earth.
• Heracles originally was only slightly less savage than the monsters he killed. Exemplar of brute strength, courage and endurance but with little intelligence or morality and a complete disaster in his relationships with other humans.
• Writers gradually made him a model of unselfish courage, working hard endlessly for the common good of humanity and enduring undeserved suffering both of which won him the immortality he deserved.
• On one level he represented what every man dreamed of being: strong, brave, persevering and ultimately succesful.
• On another level, he represented the spirit of humanity striving against misfortunes, danger and death itself to reach heaven.
• He was such a diverse character, writers could make him whatever they liked.

Blog

8/2

The ideas that I have chosen for now is : Growth, Experiences and Life.

I am thinking of creating drawings in which you can see the person's experiences throughout his/her life and how it had made them wiser. They've had experienced different things and it had made them realize/learn something and in the end it had made them successful. My ideas aren't final and I may still change my ideas throughout the year. 

Here is the brainstorm that I have done about Stuff I care about

13/3

As of now, I have changed the main theme for this year. I have chosen to do a folio where I show different emotions of different people. I could do this by using different colours for different emotions such as red for anger, blue for sadness etc. I could also use different consistency such as using hard, rough for strong emotions and soft and smooth for calm emotions. 

17/4

These are the works that I have done this year so far in art. For now I am mostly just experimenting how different mediums work and trying to improve my art skills and trying to see how I can portray emotions in different drawings.


2/6
I now have a basic idea on how I want my folio to look. I am planning to start my folio with 4 pieces of A6 pieces which shows the emotions: happy, sad, calm and anger and my next pieces will connect to these main paintings of mine.

12/6

I have finished this painting today and I have chosen to do this painting because for me it shows the emotion of happy through the colour yellow and I can easily connect the flowers at the bottom to future paintings if I wanted to.

30/6

I have finished 4 pieces of A5 works that I am planning to put on my board. i think that the paintings I have done show the happy, sad, angry and calm feelings that I am trying to portray.

3/7

I have done this painting because I really like how it kinda shows how a person can have all these emotions inside of them but still choose to keep it inside. For me it gives a sense of loneliness.

This is the first piece of my board. I really like this pencil sketch of mine because it shows that a person can have different emotions within them which relates to my theme of emotions. 

This pencil sketch goes beside of my other pencil sketch. This work of mine starts to narrow down the emotions to angry, happy and sad which is the main emotions I have focused on in my board.

This is painting I have done using acrylic. I chose a fist and the colour red because it connects to the emotion of anger.

Reading Logs 4 - 6

Reading Log # 4

Title : Wild Things

Artist : Alessia Cara

Text Type : Song

Wild Things is a promotional single released by Alessia Cara. I personally like this song because it’s fast-paced and is anthemic.

I think this song is about accepting yourself and to remind those who don’t feel like they don’t have a place that we can make our own place. The song starts with

Find table spaces, say your social graces

Bow your head, they’re pious here

But you and I, we’re pioneers, we make our own rules

I think this part of the song talks about social norms that people feel like they have to follow in order to ‘fit in’ our society, but it says in the song that we’re pioneers and that we make our own rules. This tells us that we don’t have to follow in anybody’s footsteps or follow social norms to feel like we belong somewhere. I think the lyrics we make our own rules refers to the place in where we feel like we belong and a place where we can be ourself. The idea of ‘fitting in’ or being in the ‘in crowd’ relates to a lot of people in our world today including myself because we feel like if we don’t follow what’s ‘cool’ or what’s ‘in’ in our society, we will end up alone feel like they don’t belong anywhere. But this isn’t the case since we can make our own place as said in the song.

After a few lines it says

And we will leave the empty chairs to those who say we can’t sit there

We’re fine all by ourselves

So hey, we brought our drum and this is how we dance

No mistakin’, we make our breaks, if you don’t like our 808s

Then leave us alone, ‘cause we don’t need your policies

We have no apologies for being

The words we brought our drum refers to our culture, beliefs, attitudes and how we dance refers to how we are as a person. The words ‘cause we don’t need your policies refers to the idea of self-acceptance, which relates to many people especially teenagers who feel like they have to change themselves or that they are ugly, or isn’t up to standards. I relate to this because I myself felt that I needed to change myself or that I am not up to societal standards. But the lines

We will carve our place into time and space

We will find our way, or we'll make a way

Find you're great, don't you hide your face

Let it shine

Tells us that we mean something to this world and that we will soon learn to accept who we are, realise we are all awesome in our own unique way and love ourselves which I have done and is a wonderful feeling. And after you have accepted yourself you will find that you don’t have to change anything about you and that you don’t have to please everyone because what’s more important is self-love and acceptance and no matter what you turn out to be, you are loved.

Reading Log # 5

Title : Don’t beat yourself up

Author : Lucy Hone

Text Type : Article

Don’t beat yourself up is an article written by Lucy Hone which is about being nice to yourself and how to handle situations in which it gets tough.

This article made me understand that feeling stressed, having a rough time or suffering isn’t wrong because we are humans and every human has their own problems and go through rough times.What matters is what you do in those situations, like showing yourself compassion. The author says in the article “The easiest way to understand self-compassion is to think about the compassion we extend to others”. This means that when things get rough, we should think of us helping other people. How we talk to them, how we comfort them like giving them hugs or simply just hugging them could help someone going through something rough feel better even in the slightest way. I think this relates to us in Hornby High School and around the world because some students are going through rough times which can be caused by family problems, academic problems or even life in general, people need to know what to do in those situations because eventually things will get better.

Reading Log #6

Title: Seven Ways We Lie

Author: Riley Redgate

Text Type: Novel

Seven Ways We Lie isn’t an in-depth study on why we lie; it’s a study on how our secrets make us human. Riley Redgate’s deft prose twines and twists between graceful and gritty, weaving seven unique characters into a story with threads so universal yet variegated, it could belong to any one of us. Don’t expect a fairy tale. This is reality at its most raw, most poignant, and most relatable. Art imitating life. Fiction perfected.

This novel was interesting because it’s relatable to many people especially teenagers around the world including myself. An example was when Claire Lombardi - one of the seven main characters in the story - talked about her problems in her life. These included her feeling that she wasn’t enough and that she needed to change herself in order to be liked by people around her. Another problem she had was that she felt like no one really cared about her including her two best friends, This made me think about the people around the world especially teenagers who may be feeling the same as Claire. We should remember that even though others don’t constantly say that they care about us doesn’t mean that they don’t. This relates to me because I have also felt this way.

Another character in the book that was interesting for me was Katrina “Kat” Scott. I found her interesting because she pushes anyone who tries to get close to her away but it was explained that she became this way because their mother left them. This made me sad because she didn’t want to become this way but she did. This relates to sons/daughters around the world who changed because of their families being broken.                                                                   

Folio Layout

28/7

This is the layout that I have chosen for my first board for now.

I have chosen this layout because you can clearly see the connection between the different works and I also like how it looks. I now have to think of what I will place beside the girl with the yellow background that can connect with the other works. I also need to think of what would go on the bottom right of the board that can sort of summarise the works on the first board and that will also connect with the works that I will make in the second board.

Reading Log #3

Reading Log # 3

Title : Noughts & Crosses

Author : Malorie Blackman

Text Type : Novel

Date Finished : 29/6

Callum is a nought - a second-class citizen in a world run by ruling Crosses. Sephy is a Cross - and the daughter of one of the most powerful, ruthless men in the country In their hostile, violent world, noughts and Crosses simply don’t mix, But when Sephy and Callum’s childhood friendship grows into passionate love, they’re determined to find a way to be together.

The book Noughts and Crosses is a very good book which talks about many themes that are relatable in our world now. One of these themes that was tackled about in the book is the theme of racism which made me feel sad about Callum, his family and other noughts iin the book. Racism was clearly shown when Callum - a nought, second class citizen - goes to the Heathcroft, a rich school, which for most of its years established, had close to none noughts. Right from Callum’s first day in Heathcroft, him and other noughts already experienced hate, disgust and almost no acceptance from crosses - people regarded as higher than noughts. This is shown in the book by people - crosses to be specific - chanting “NO BLANKERS (NOUGHTS) IN OUR SCHOOL! NO BLANKERS IN OUR SCHOOL!” when noughts like Callum went to Heathcroft school. And when one nought was hurt people cheered “HOORAY!!”.This is relatable to us and how our world is right now because some people are hurt and/or treated unfairly because of their ethnicity, colour appearance or beliefs.This text made me feel angry to anyone who is racist and is treating someone unfairly or unjust just because they may be different or is not regarded as “normal” because it affects a person’s future In Callum’s case, because his dad was treated unfairly because of racism, it caused him to have such a huge hatred towards crosses and made him do things that he might not have done if only his dad received fair treatment such as turning into the Liberation Militia and have done crimes which was shown he would never do.

I have finished 4 pieces of A5 works that I am planning to put on my board

Reading Log 2

Reading Log # 2

Title : Car Radio

Artist : Twenty One Pilots

Text Type : Song

I personally like this song because it has a steady and calm rhythm and it doesn’t sound boring, or for me atleast. Its lyrics also has a deep meaning to it which can easily be understood if you listen to the lyrics. I also like it because its special, it’s special because the song doesn’t have a chorus.

Car Radio is the 5th song of 14 on twenty one pilots’ album “Vessel”. Car Radio was originally released in 2011 but was re released in 2014. I think the song Car Radio revolves around anxiety and dealing with someone’s thoughts and emotions. I think “car radio” doesn’t literally mean the radio in a car but rather distractions or entertainment. According to the song somebody stole his car radio which causes him to sit in silence. He doesn’t like this silence and this is said in the lines :

Sometimes quiet is violent,

I find it hard to hide it

I think that this means that he is trying to hide the silence which probably refers to his thoughts, thoughts which he is trying to escape using the car radio - distractions or entertainments. The song then continues and says

I’m forced to deal with what I feel

There is no distraction to mask what is real

I can pull the steering wheel

This means that since he is without his car radio he has to deal with his own thoughts which he doesn’t want to. I relate to this because there are thoughts, situations and past that I would rather not encounter again. I do this by having my own car radio, which means I use distractions in order for me to escape these thoughts in which I do not like. I do this by sometimes listening to music and doing things that I enjoy such as drawing, talking to other people, drawing and many more. The last line “I can pull the steering wheel” I don’t really know what they meant by this but an idea I had is that this could be talking about suicide. Since he doesn’t want to deal with his thoughts, emotions or his past, he might be thinking about ending it all. This issue relates to many teenagers because some people experience nasty things that they would rather avoid than face and when they are pushed to their limits they just try and end it all. When I think of this I feel sad. I feel sad to all those who have suffered things which are inhumane and evil. No one should ever suffer things which are not nice and is inhumane. The song then continues and says

I ponder of something terrifying

Cause this time there’s no sound to hide behind

I find over the course of our human existence

One thing consists of consistence

And it’s that we’re all battling fear

I think the lyrics of this song are amazing because it even connects it to the entire human race. It states that “we’re all battling fear” this means that everyone has their own battles. I relate to this and I think so does the entire human race because everyone faces their own battles or problems but not everyone knows about it. And then a thought crossed my mind, What if everyone knows and understands that everyone has their own battles? This made me think that if people could and would understand this, we would have a better world. With this in mind, people would start to treat each other better and would start to look out for one another. If this happens we would have a more joyous and wonderful world without some of the problems that we currently have in our world such as suicide, violence and other more.