Reflections Project Introduction
During the reflection unit we worked on many different skills spanning across adobe illustrate, adobe after effects, and as an animation student I got very accquainted with Maya Autodesk and Zbrush. In our English class we began ‘Why I Write’ essays that basically cover any passions that you follow.
The ‘Why I Write’ essay prompt was really just a gateway into writing deeper and more meaningful essays on why we follow our passions. It began with finding moments in our past that shaped the way we are today. For myself, I found that alot of my artistic desires and intent came from the hardships I faced in the past. In addition we read Octavia Butler’s Positive Obsession in which she details her intro to writing and George Orwell’s ‘Why I Write’; we examined the ways in which they were inspired and responded to their environment.
All things considered I think I answered the “Who am I?” question of the essay very well, drawing feels like such a cemented piece of myself I imagine it’s difficult to think of a world in which I am not artistic to some capacity. Furthermore this essay better helped me understand that a lot of my work has been an uphill battle and that I am very willing and able to continue it if it means I get to continue a life and career with creative endeavors
My Personal Mandalas
This was the first project of digital media in Senior year, in it I learned how to create a template in Adobe illustrator for making mandalas. In addition to this I used pressure sensetive brushes with our wacoms to get unique brush strokes and art styles. I decided to stick with my initial design I made for it’s black and white version and reused it to color.
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My reaction upon seeing my laser engraved mandala were adjacent to awe, I typically do visual arts as an animation student and so it was really interesting to have and to hold a physical work. For this piece I chose to engrave my art on bamboo because like myself I think it’s a nice balanced texture between that of the rough wood and the smooth plastic. Looking back on the project now, I think it’d have been smarter to use thicker lines to create more contrast in the piece rather than the small thin lines I used.
This version of my mandala utilizes a lot of gradients and saturated colors rather than just the lineart. This piece reflects how I experienced life throughout my childhood, For example the first ring of my mandala starts out very deep and saturated my intentions with this were that when we are children we feel all emotions very deeply because it’s the first time we ever really feel these emotions. Then as the rings move further out from the center the colors change, occasionally getting softer and sometimes getting bolder. Working with color changed how I saw the piece, I had trouble working with the amount of lineart I had already added. In my first colored draft it was very jarring and the colors clashed quite a bit. I had to change my initial plan to individually colored parts to just a few accent pieces. In my opinion it looks a lot better this was as the glasses are able to stand out well along with the hot air balloon.
My Mandala Video
When first looking at a mandala I often get lost in the complexity of its lines and design. And when we first started these designs I was really lost on where to start. In this mandala build video you can see the progression of brushstrokes on my adobe illustrator file leading up to my black and white mandala being laser engraved on bamboo.
Ultimately, I found this entire project to be very calming. When I first saw the amount of things that were supposed to come out of it I was admittedly a little intimidated but after breaking the whole thing down piece by piece it became more digestible and I’m very satisfied with how my projects came out. While this piece was about my childhood and all the different ways I changed throughout my life I find that I learned more about my perseverance when creating the before and after functions of my mandala on this website. Because it was very difficult.