Mandala

The image on the left features an up close look of my final design. I decided to design my mandala based on my brothers and I’s favorite video games. For each layer I used assets resembling significant items or characters from each game. From the center going out I have included the games: Kirby, Pokémon, The Last of Us, Portal (2), Celeste, Realm of the Mad God, Hollow Knight, Slime Rancher, and finally Animal Crossing.

Final Design

Summer Collage

Aboriginal Art

Artist Statement

My aboriginal painting is based on the style of art that Australian Aborigines create. Emulating examples of other Aboriginal art, I created a detailed image including my constellation, astrological sign, spirit animal, and 2 Aboriginal symbols representing stars and clouds. Since I’m an air sign, aquarius, I chose to base my painting in the sky. Besides using Aboriginal symbols to show the setting, I created a wind symbol above my spirit animal.  My spirit animal is represented by a black cat skillfully leaping over a constellation. 

To create this piece I used Adobe Photoshop. Using the brush tool was the easiest way to create dots of various sizes quickly for this illustration. Drawing patterns using dots was by far the most fun aspect of this assignment. It was really cool experimenting with creating new designs. Throughout this process I faced many challenges, starting with choosing a color scheme that fit my idea perfectly. Aboriginal art uses desaturated colors and lots of earthy tones, which is quite the opposite of what I’m used to. Another struggle I faced was creating the background. When working, I hadn’t quite figured out what scene I wanted to create so I ended up redoing the entire background a couple of times. A much less time consuming problem was that the Photoshop brush tool would sometimes stop working or glitch out, causing the dots to be dragged a bit. An easy fix to this was closing Photoshop and reopening it or resetting the tool. Overall, I am very pleased with my final product and am glad I took the time to perfect it in certain places. 

PSA