Hello! My name is Alayna Lee and I am currently a Design senior at Freestyle Academy. Aside from having taken Design I and Design II at Freestyle, I have been taking Digital Media and English classes alongside them. Before Freestyle, I worked on a variety of different hobbies but mainly focused on creating watercolor art, making digital illustrations, and doing video editing. I also really enjoy other types of traditional art I picked up during my high school years including crocheting, glass painting, cardboard art projects, air dry ceramics, keychain making, and acrylic painting.

The projects I chose to feature are my Documentary Article and Reflection Aboriginal Art. The reason I selected these pieces specifically is that I put a large amount of time and effort into both of them and am really proud of them. There is so much meaning in both of these pieces for me personally and Freestyle gave me a lot of time to research and reflect on topics I really enjoyed. Not only that but Freestyle gave me the materials and knowledge to do these fun projects and I couldn’t be happier with the result of my learning experience.

One type of feedback I would really appreciate is knowing how I can improve my use of elements and principles of design. I still think I struggle a lot with pinpointing how I could make a piece look pleasing and more easily readable. It would be great to know of any job opportunities these sorts of pieces could get me into. Since I really enjoyed working on both of these projects, it would be great to know if there is a job that would arise from it.

As I end my final high school year, I will be on my way to start thinking about my continuation in art classes next school year as a Visual Arts: Studio major at the University of California San Diego. If there’s anything you want to reach out to me for, you can email me at alaynal@freestyleacademy.rocks. Thank you so much, and let’s get into the Freestyle Projects!

Project #1: Documentary Article

My first project is my junior year documentary project about the Chinese calligrapher Wai-Hon Lee.

View the embedded Issuu article in fullscreen directly below or press the large cover art below that to view it on the Issuu website.

When figuring out who I was going to interview for this project and what they were going to be interviewed for, I wanted to make sure that I was representing something that was passionate. I instantly thought of my grandfather and all the stories he’s shared with me; all including how he was super interested in learning and teaching Chinese calligraphy and how much his own culture meant to him. It was something I was interested in learning more from him too, having been born in the United States and not usually exposed to my own culture.

Working on the article itself was planning our three major assignments. Creating my English essay about my interview, taking photos and doing video recording, and creating the visual aspect of the article. I recorded all of my audio on a Tascam microphone and recorded/took photos with my Canon DSLR camera. Alongside this part of the process, I worked on the main background and planned out the structure of my article in Adobe InDesign. Once I uploaded all my photos and my essay into the InDesign file, I created additional elements including the gradient strokes and squares.

Project #2: Reflection Aboriginal Art

The second project is my senior year Aquarius-based aboriginal art.

The main idea around the aborigine project was creating an aboriginally stylized piece of art using aboriginal symbols to represent your sun zodiac sign. My zodiac sign is Aquarius, which meant that I had to base my piece around air and water. The symbols around the entire piece are meant to demonstrate the air element’s connection with the other elements of land, water, and fire. Land, represented by the mountain, ties around the water from the Aquarius pitcher. It is also surrounded by the fire of the stars, moon, and sun, further demonstrating the main component of the air element’s humanitarian trait being tied to the rest of the elements. In addition, I decided to use the more well-known Aquarius zigzag design, the air symbol, and the Aquarius constellation. I created my final piece in Adobe Photoshop.

Reflection

Even with all of my different experiences with art, there are still times I find myself thinking over how I can improve each of my pieces. I don’t try to think too much about comparing myself to others and mostly create art for my friends. I love seeing others happy over something I’ve created for them; which is what often inspires me to learn different types of art skills, and continue making art. I want to show my friends and family how much I appreciate them, and what’s a better way than making it personal for them? They’re the reason I don’t beat myself up over whether I may be “good” at art or not, and this perspective makes me improve my art better anyway. In relation to Freestyle, the extra support in all these different art areas helps me to creatively try new art media and prepare myself for the industry. It’s giving me a bridge into an art future I can see is possible now, and I’m extremely excited about it!

Thanks for reading :))