Reflections

For this project we were asked to use Adobe Illustrator to create a mandala inspired by who we are. After creating the mandala it is then laser printed onto our choice of medium before creating a colored version.

Art Curation for Personal Museum

Our first project of the year was to select three pieces from our visit to SFMOMA that we would put into our person museum and two pieces we wouldn’t. We were asked to think about what type of art we consider beautiful and deserving of our attention and what art isn’t. The art that we choose shows the types of art that resonates the most with us, whether that’s emotionally or aesthetically.

Personally, I am a painter, and I feel like that impacts what art I like or don’t like. I tend to like art that inspires my own art, so things that aren’t my “style” aren’t things I normally like. My own criticisms of my art is when meaning doesn’t get across, which is why in pieces that I like I want to be able to get something out of the piece beyond looking pretty. The other thing I tend to look for in art that I like is something different, like experimentation or something that makes it stand out from the other pieces in the room. All the pieces that I chose are the things that first stand out to me when I walk into a room. 

My Personal Mandalas

For this piece, we were asked to create a mandala inspired by who we are. I created the mandala in Adobe Illustrator using 12 reflecting slices to make the image. I first created a template to create a mandala before coming up with my own design that I felt represented myself. In Illustrator, I used varying brush sizes to create more detail. The biggest thing I worked on was creating a mandala that flowed together visually and conceptually.

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My initial reaction to seeing the final laser engraved mandala on bamboo was that it looked way cooler printed out than in Illustrator. It’s different viewing it as a physical product versus a digital image because on the digital one I could zoom in, but the physical product made me look at it as a whole. This piece answered “Who am I?” because I think it explored a part of me that I would want people to know about. Besides the fact that it was inspired by gothic architecture it also gives insight to the type of person I am. I view it as a way to introduce people to myself.

My choice of bamboo for my laser mandala best represented me because of the natural grain that showed up after the engraving. The rest of the materials have a pretty even finish, but with the bamboo there are areas where the laser leaves darker lines and areas where it’s lighter. I feel like that represents me because I don’t believe anything is truly perfect or polished, but always could be improved upon. The natural imperfections are what makes my piece special, just as every person will be different. My reflections about the entire mandala project from creating mandala template, BW mandala with pressure sensitive brushes, colored mandala, build reveal video, and final laser engraved mandala is the pride I feel about this whole project. One of my goals for this year was to push myself to do more. I feel I accomplished that with this project. While there’s always areas that I felt like I could improve more, I am incredibly proud of what I was able to create. I will say that I wish I did something slightly different with the color or even added more detail, but there are always things that could be worked on.

After making my BW Mandala, I already had a vision of what I wanted to do for my colored mandala. I love the color blue and that was something I wanted to incorporate into my colored version so I tried figuring out what color contrasted that and added interest to the piece. That’s how I ended up doing yellow and blue. Seeing the colored version makes the piece look more complete and final than the BW version.

My color scheme was mainly yellow and blue to have a (almost) complementary color scheme. I also did yellow only in the center areas so that it looked like the sun was rising from the center. While studying stained glass windows I looked for inspiration on color and design, but I ended up straying away from the reds and oranges that I saw and just going for what I liked. There isn’t anything too elaborate about what I did, but my final vision was to have it be almost like the sky with the blue getting darker further from the center. I think often we associate blue with sadness or a feeling of melancholy, but for me this piece felt like a new beginning, with the sun rising into the new day. The biggest thing I tackled while coloring was my lack of ability to use the live paint tool in Adobe Illustrator. The live paint tool makes coloring extremely easy and convenient because because of the setup for the mandala it wasn’t possible to use it. My choice was between using the brush tool and just hand coloring it in or using the pen tool and tracing the lines I already made to make shapes with the color. I ended up using the pen tool, which gave me more freedom to change things I had already colored in and ended up being more precise and efficient for me.

I wanted my mandala to have a lot of detail and flow in a logical way. I think looking at mandalas can be really interesting because the more you look the more you see. I also wanted to pay homage to the amazing architecture that has come before me, which I hopefully did. Hopefully my colored mandala tells people a little about me and even if it doesn’t I hope it brings people a little bit of joy to look at.

Using After Effects I created my mandala reveal video, showcasing the detail that went into creating the mandala.

Art is always a reflection of who we are, even if it isn’t obvious. From this project, I learned the joy of mixing digital efficiency with the traditional things that I love about art. Through this project I learned a lot of new skills with Illustrator, as well as reinforcing skills that I already knew.

Core Values

We were asked the question of who am I through our different values. We created this video in After Effects, learning how to add transitions and use After Effects. I picked the words that best described myself and aspirations.