For our first project of the year, Seniors at Freestyle Academy were taught how to create personal mandalas. For me this was a great project as I got to express my emotions and relax all while learning new tools in Adobe Illustrator and picking up some new drawing skills. After finishing the Mandala Project students were then instructed to create a behind the scenes video where they got to refresh their skills in Adobe After Effects, a program that we hadn’t experimented with as much with recently.
Crating my mandala for this project helped me put my mind at ease so that I could really focus on myself. The approach I took for my mandala was to just get out all of my thoughts and feelings onto the digital artboard. After taking another look at the finished product I began to notice how some of the shapes I drew could connect to become creatures as opposed to the abstract objects that I initially intended to draw. Each one of these creatures illustrates an emotion that I was feeling when creating this Mandala.
If I could change one thing about this project it would be to take more time on it. Although it was a very relaxing start to the year, I still wish I could’ve put more time into it and maybe create a few other Mandalas to go along with this one. Overall, the Mandala project has been one of my favorites so far as a Senior at Freestyle and I am very excited for what is to come this year.
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