Welcome to the “Reflections” Unit at Freestyle Academy! Since I’m a first year senior, this is the very first unit I took, and the very first page on my website. In this unit, Seniors at Freestyle Academy explore a question that is simple yet deeply complex:

“Who am I?”

Students dug deep into our personal experiences and identities to conceptualize our own individual answers to this question. In all of our classes, we created different forms of visual art and essays, presenting our discoveries into freestyle projects.

Through all of these artworks, I have discovered many things about myself, things that I wouldn’t have been able to learn without these projects. I am Karen Chien, an artist who values empathy, communication, creativity, and passion. I love to Dance, but I find value and possibility in all forms of art. On this page, you will follow along with my self-discovery journey.

My Personal Mandalas

The Personal Mandala project showcases our usage of varying adobe applications, including Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects, and Adobe Photoshop. I explored skills and techniques like duplication and reflecting drawings multiple times in a circular pattern through illustrator to create my own personalized mandala.

Senior Laser Engraved Mandala in DM
HUZZAH!

My initial reaction to seeing the final engraved mandala was super stoked! The bold and thick lines in my mandala were very prominent and transferred very well onto the wooden pizza board. I think the physical analog artwork matched my digital artwork pretty accurately. Because I used thicker line art, you are able to clearly see them even from far away. The texture on the engraved piece also makes it more interesting to look at, and more unique as well!

I chose to engrave my mandala on a Pizza Board because when choosing between my options, my first thought was that I could give it to my little brother to use since he loves to bake. I love eating his baked goods and I hope one day he’ll use it to bake a pizza. I also liked the thickness and shape of the pizza board.

Senior Laser Engraved Mandala in DM
HUZZAH!

For this piece, I first used lots of reference pictures on pinterest to find inspiration regarding graffiti style colors and vibes, and then decided I wanted an extremely saturated and eye-catching color palette. The colored mandala was different from my BW Mandala because I felt that the chaotic and bright/saturated colors really brought the feeling of the art piece to life, and provided an even clearer look into my personality. When I saw it printed, I was super stoked to see all the saturated colors in real life and look at it from different angles instead of just multiple pixels on a flat screen.

The Color scheme in my piece represents my bright and saturated personality. I believe I have a vibrant energy, and I try to bring that energy to everywhere I go. I associate these colors with my artistic hobbies like dance, playing music, and drawing… I also used a lot of hot pink because I am strangely drawn to that color. Maybe because it contrasted well with my darker hair and pants, highlighting the silhouettes of the piece, drawing attention to all the small details that maybe were previously hidden.

Working with color changed the way I thought about how I was going to portray the shapes and dimensions in the piece. Did I want the individual shapes to pop out like they were 3D? Or all blend into one flat surface? Where did I want the lighting to come from? Were these colors clashing? Too similar? I had to think about a lot more while during the coloring process, so this changed my workflow by going slower, and paying more attention to detail. I surprised myself with how well the colors all came together in the end. In the beginning I was afraid of having too many saturated colors clashing for attention, but then I was able to place them next to each other in a way where they actually complimented each other, just enough for each piece to stand out in a less obvious way. Lastly, other reflections about my colored mandala included the fact that I wanted everyone who take even the slightest glance at this piece to remember something bright and memorable.

Mandala Build Reveal Video – This video demonstrates and separates my process into clear steps through the slow building of showing my layers in Adobe Illustrator. The video was made using Adobe After Effects.

Reflecting upon the entire mandala project from creating mandala templates, BW mandala with pressure sensitive brushes, colored mandala, build reveal video, and final laser engraved mandala, my main takeaway was the amount I learned in this short amount of time. Since I am a first year senior, I was scared that I would be behind. But with clear instructions for the assignments, I was able to learn a ton about many different adobe platforms with the reflections unit, as well as create something I’m really really proud of! More specifically, I think I’m most proud of my colored mandala. I put in a lot of time and effort into picking the right colors and putting a lot of attention into detail, and I think it paid off with my finished product! Through my newly acquired knowledge on a variety of adobe platforms, I will be able to further push my boundaries and think outside of the box and take creative liberties with different skills. I will be able to expand this knowledge into my own passions of creating digital art, film, dance and drawing. Techniques like creating mandalas, video editing on after effects, and simply making artwork based on reflecting upon myself will all come to use with the artwork I create in the future. This project really made it clear how differently everyone presents reflections of themselves from their minds to digital media. No one has created something similar in the slightest, and that has made me appreciate everyone’s own individuality as a creative artist.

Art Curation for Personal Museum

This project is a collection of art pieces I would add to my Personal Art Museum. The pictures were taken at the San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts. Here are 3 pieces that I would add to my personal museum, and 2 that I wouldn’t. Overall, I chose to include pieces that had eye catching colors, because I think that’s what I value the most in visual art. I want to be able to feel like I have a lot to see. I really value composition of how colors are used. I think this reflects the question of “Who am I?” because as a loud and expressive person myself that values individuality and authenticity, I connect colors with self expression and like to show that in my own artworks.

When I look at these pieces, I not only want to be visually satisfied, but I also want to be inspired and try to take something I like from the individual pieces, like techniques used in the paintings I chose. In my own artwork, I want to make sure that the composition and colors work together to create the most visually pleasing piece of work. As an artist, I always like to present my artwork as clearly as I can to my audience. I personally don’t like it when looking at my artwork requires an excessive amount of thinking. I do a lot of drawing, so I’m always thinking about the best way I can organize my composition and colors, to properly lead my audiences eyes around the canvas as well as being able to properly capture an emotion or feeling in them. 

Film Reflections

My Freestyle elective is Film. At first I was really intimidated by all the scary buttons on a camera, but I slowly learned to enjoy the process, and I got used to it (the buttons aren’t scary). Alas, these are still my VERY FIRST film projects of my entire life, so there are a ton of things I think I can improve on. But with the time and skill that I had, I wouldn’t say these are the most terrible things you’ve ever seen… I hope.

Reflections Video Essay

The Reflections Video Essay was the very first film I produced, directed and edited all my myself, with guidance from my film teacher, Mr. Taylor. This project intimidated me to the MAX I was so scared to tackle this. Watching it back now there are so many things that don’t make sense, and I’m literally telling myself “Karen why did you do that.” But what I tried to portray through this film was the great significance of being your authentic self, even if you think you might not be as smart or as strong as someone else. You have your own thing to bring to the table, and that’s what’s epic about you. Stay Awesome.

1 Min Collaborative Video

The week that Film was did the Collaborative Film Assignment was probably one of the most memorable weeks at Freestyle Academy for me. Our class was split up into 3 groups, and over the course of 3 days, each group rotated their film to the next group to work on:

Part 1: Pre Production – Storyboarding

This was the story that my group came up with, the Fattest Pig Contest. We were tasked to create a storyboard in one period, and at the end of class, Mr. Taylor surprised us with passing on those storyboards to the group next to us to actually produce the film. This film was produced by Landon, Katie, and Luca.

Part 2: Production – Filming

My group ended producing the “Welcome to Freestyle Academy”, written by Aiden and Stephen. We took the entire period filming around Freestyle Academy based on their story board.

Part 3: Post Production – Editing

Lastly, our group ended up editing the story that Landon, Katie, and Luca made, using the shots that Aiden and Stephen captured. Overall, this project was super fun and totally unexpected, which added to the experience!

1 Period Video

Our group was tasked to create a mini-movie in one period. Which included coming up with a story, filming, and editing. This class was also super memorable, because our inspiration for the film was literally me forgetting my camera that day. We turned that idea into a fun adventure where I had to make sacrifices in order to receive it from the great scary voice in the green screen room. We didn’t end up having time to edit it fully, but we did what we could in one period. Still really proud of this!

Surround Sound Video

A super short and quick film experimenting with the surround sound effect controls on premiere pro!