Introduction to Reflections

Our first unit at freestyle for our senior year is titled Reflections. In the unit, we learn how to reflect upon ourselves and what makes us us. In English, we looked into our past to learn about how it influenced the person we are today. We proceeded to write an essay about those events and elaborate on how our past influenced our current day traits. In Digital Media, we did something similar by making a mandala. The mandala is supposed to represent who we are and our values. For animation, we created Original Characters(OC’s) and brought them to life in 3D using software like Maya, ZBrush, and Adobe Substance Painter.

Personal Mandalas

As an introduction to the Reflections unit, we were tasked to create a mandala that represents us and our values. This project was done using Adobe Illustrator. The whole process of using Illustrator for me had it’s ups and downs but was overall a fun experience. I got to use different brushes to add detail to my art and how to create a mandala. I overall really liked the mandala project because I got to just draw without really thinking too much and I learned a new way to use Adobe Illustrator.

>ATTENTION!<

> IF THE IMAGES BELOW DO NOT DISPLAY<

>for Mac users: Command + (plus) > Command – (minus)<

>for PC users: Ctrl + (plus) > Ctrl – (minus)<

>Thank You For Your Attention<

 When I first saw my finished engraved mandala, I was quite excited since I had never made anything like it before. I think my material of choice, Black and golden plastic, was a good choice. When I compared it to my digital Black & White mandala, I did see that some of the details were lost. I was sort of expecting something like that to happen however so it didn’t really bother me much. To be honest, I didn’t choose my mandala material for any reasons outside of the Black & Gold looking cool and the colors going well with my design. I just generally think that Black and Gold are a good color combination; and when I saw the Black & Gold material available, I just thought to myself “Oh, That Looks Cool”. The reason I thought that this particular material would look good with the design that I made is because of the contrast of the 2 different colors and also how shiny the gold was. I honestly could’ve chosen any other secondary color like silver or white, but I just like gold more.

The whole process of creating the mandala was fun but also really time consuming for me. That was mostly due to me just letting my mind wander, hence why I named my Black & White mandala “Wandering of the mind”. I think the most annoying part of making the mandala was using the “pressure” brush. The brush was made to mimic a pressure sensitive brush since Illustrator doesn’t have a pressure based brush. It was really finicky to use and it was just a general pain getting strokes to look the way I wanted them to look. I think that if I try to make another engraved mandala, I’m going to invert the colors to see if that helps with making the design closer to the online version. Between the two mandalas that I created, I’ve gotta say that I liked making the colored one more than the Black & White one. not only did my colored mandala take less time, but it was generally easier and more fun for me to make. I only used 1 brush for the whole thing. The only setting I ever changed on the brush was the size. The hardest part of the Colored Mandala was the colors. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what colors I wanted to use, it was trying to find where to put the colors to make sure that they all balanced out properly I’m most proud of the whole thing. I’m proud of everything that I made.

For the colored mandala, I decided to go with a more concise theme centered around the style of Art Deco. My colored mandala differs from my black and white mandala because for this one, I decided to go with an actual theme instead of being capricious. The reason I decided to make a new mandala was…well…my original black and white mandala was wayyyy too complicated and I felt like it was too chaotic to work. It would’ve taken me way too long to color that thing in and I was already thinking of making another mandala. The reason I landed on art deco was because of just how the style looks overall. Its geometrical shapes and curves entice me. I learned about the style while taking an architecture class and it’s just stuck with me since. I just generally love how the whole style flows together and how the colors work together. It’s a shame that styles like Art Deco aren’t really being used anymore. My reaction to seeing my printed mandala was amusement. I was pleased with how it came out. There were a few small issues like some of the lines in the center being blurred, but I got over it quickly because the rest of the piece looked really nice. All the colors were basically one to one with my original design.

I think the part that stands out the most to me personally is the outermost ring of my mandala. This is because it has the largest designs and color variance out of the whole piece in my mind. I think one reflection I have on my colored mandala is that I should’ve made my lines a bit bigger so they would’ve stood out more. The only issue I’d have with doing this is that I may end up losing some of the smaller details that I put in or some of the patterns might get messed up.

In this video, you will see part of my process in creating my colored mandala. It took a good bit to produce it close to the way i wanted it to look. The hardest part was syncing the reveal of layers to the music since I had so many layers that Illustrator was lagging. I used premiere pro to produce this video

<Video Is Temporarily Unavailable>

Final Thoughts
I think the part that stands out the most to me personally is the outermost ring of my mandala. This is because it has the largest designs and color variance out of the whole piece in my mind. I think one reflection I have on my colored mandala is that I should’ve made my lines a bit bigger so they would’ve stood out more. The only issue I’d have with doing this is that I may end up losing some of the smaller details that I put in or some of the patterns might get messed up.

Personal Museum Art Curations

The Personal Museum Art Curations project was an assignment that tasked us to find art pieces inside of the San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art that we would display in a museum of our own.

My Process to choose what I would want in my Museum was to first look for a piece that stood out to me and matched my taste. Next, I would observe the smaller details of the piece. I really like it when a piece uses good color combinations and shapes. I feel like the way that I curate my art is a reflection of who I am because all the pieces that I chose, I chose because of preferences that I gained through ought my life. For instance, I really like good line art that exaggerates a piece or can give the piece more interesting qualities. Line art can make a subject seem fluffy and light or hard and heavy. I also like it if a piece makes me feel awe.

I think being an artist has opened my eyes to see the little things in art and made me appreciate art more. I think it is these things that influenced my choice of what art pieces made the cut or not. I value things like color and line art a lot and usually if something has both good line art and good color, 9 out of 10 times, I will like the piece. There are other things that shape my judgement too like what the art subject is and just generally what’s on the canvas. For the pieces that I selected, they either had one or more more of the things that I liked. As for the ones that I didn’t really like, I feel like they both lack direction and their meaning is sort of unclear. The art doesn’t “speak” to me; it doesn’t show much of what the artist is trying to portray or capture.