Reflections Project Introduction
The Reflections Project aims to answer the question, “Who am I?” Using different essays we dive into our experiences and identities and then turn those thoughts into visuals. We learn skills with applications like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Substance Painter, Avid Pro Tools, Autodesk Maya, ZBrush, HTML/CSS/JavaScript, WordPress and Google Apps.
My Personal Mandalas
The Mandala Project is meant to produce personal mandalas to explore reflecting and repeating transformations in Adobe Illustrator while showing images that are meaningful to you. Additionally, we learn how to color our mandalas and make a video showing each step of the process.
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For this piece, I first created different templates of varying numbers of “slices” for the mandala, then I decided to pick the one with 12 slices, then I used the Wacom Tablet to draw my mandala. I often used the technique of the pressure sensitive brushes to make the lines in my piece more elaborate and detailed.
A core value that I wanted to demonstrate through this mandala was perseverance. I did this by drawing the turtle in the center. I think turtles have a lot of perseverance because they are slower animals that carry a heavy shell with them. I think perseverance is one of my core values because I don’t ever want to give up on something. Another “easter egg” I put in my mandala was some flowers and some hearts because they remind me of my family. I really liked using the pressure sensitive digital brushes because it adds a cool effect to the lines that I drew in my mandala. Upon reflecting back, I can see my artistic growth through being able to use the Wacom tablet. Originally, I would draw stuff with the mouse because I couldn’t figure out how to place my hands or use the smaller square of the wacom tablet to draw. However, after this project I have become a lot more comfortable using it and look forward to using it in future projects.
The best part of my BW mandala is the turtle in the middle. I liked how I was able to draw this part by hand and that there was a break in the repeating designs around the mandala. I can now truly appreciate other’s mandala art because it is hard to come up with differing patterns and shapes to put around the mandala that still are cohesive and meaningful.
The colored mandala is different from my BW mandala because I had to use colors to fill in parts of the mandala. My initial reaction to the colored mandala was not knowing what colors would work together and not knowing how to color it. I wasn’t sure if it would be easier to just change the colors of the strokes themselves or color them with a brush. I ended up learning how to use the brush to color the mandala.
My intention with the color scheme was to use earthy colors to make it look very natural, especially because the center piece is a turtle. I really liked the greens and blues that I picked and honestly think I could’ve incorporated the blues more in the turtle itself.
Introduce Build Reveal Video – What did you use to produce the video? (afteraffects)
Working with color allowed me to accentuate certain parts of the piece that I wanted more emphasis on, like the turtle or just little details in the mandala. Working with only black strokes had me focusing on the shape, while working with colored strokes had me focusing on what colors worked well together and what should go where. Through this project, I can apply my new experience with the Wacom tablet and illustrator to create other projects that may have repeating shapes or need to be hand drawn.