NATURAL ROADS
The sunrise and nature shapes my life. I feel connected to it and I wanted to show that in my work. The mandala project was a very good project to start the year off with, the mandala was so simple to make and it provided a therapeutic value to my daily life. I always wanted to keep adding to my mandala and it’s so easy to make it look good. I experimented with a lot of different shapes and once I started putting in mountains and roads I kept going with it. How it works is that we had 4 choices for different sided mandala’s, when you draw in one section it copies around the whole mandala so you only have to do an 1/8th of the work it looks like. We started making templates and then we were able to fool around with different brush strokes and sizes.
THIS I BELIEVE
The this I believe project was a way to spread a belief that I firmly agreed with. My whole life I have always been a believer in being original. I have always been uncomftorable with fake people who don’t act like themsleves. Being original to yourself is so important and I wanted to show that belief in my this I believe essay and video.
Don’t be a follower be an original
When I was in middle school I was a follower, I would follow what everyone said and what I was told to do, I was not myself, I acted the way I did because I wanted to be popular. I wasn’t nearly as confident back then as I am today, when I was in middle school I was overweight and not the smartest. I wasn’t happy with myself but as years passed, I matured. I finally started to commit to the passions I thoroughly enjoyed and I learned about myself. I started to lose weight and get better grades as my confidence rose through the roof. In middle school, I would only do things if my friends were doing it but as I started to mature and grow I started doing things for myself rather than following my friends. I started playing water polo, I enrolled in freestyle, and I met new and interesting people. As things changed and I took the giant step into becoming an original, I started to become happier. Every decision I’ve made since then has only made my life better and better. I’m glad that instead of being a follower I’m an original. I believe in originality, I don’t think people should act “fake” due to external factors just to look better on the outside. If you are true to yourself you will be happier and live a more enjoyable life. Everyone is different and that should be celebrated, being different is what makes us original, it’s what makes life interesting, it’s what gives us a reason to live life. The decisions you make no matter how big or how small can change your life, when you make a decision, do it for yourself, you have to follow your gut and act on it. The day I switched from a follower to an original is the day my life changed.
In my This I Believe essay I received help on my story and grammatical errors. I fixed up the grammatical errors to make my essay flow and send my intended message clearly. I was also told that I should be more descriptive in my narrative and have a stronger explanation. I used more detail in my narrative by mentioning the specific decisions I made and how those decisions impacted my life. I explained how those decisions and that change from being a follower to being an original is a universal issue and I wanted to send the message that differences and originality should be celebrated and is a vital part of life.
Editing the video in After Affects was difficult because we had to use new skills we have never used before. It was also time consuming to find photos online and match them with the audio.
PHOTOSHOP ART
I based my painting off of these unique blue lakes that I visited while I was in Croatia during the summer. These lakes are one of a kind in the world and people usually get tickets months in advance but since this was during COVID-19 we were able to get in. This place consisted of the brightest blue water I have ever seen in my life it was amazing. There were many series of lakes and waterfalls and we walked around the whole property around 20 miles. I took this photo of the lake and I was looking back into my pictures for beautiful natural scenes with layers that would be perfect for pastels. I colored in everything with pastels and tried to make this beautiful scene simplified. I had to copy the color of every little layer and brush it in using my drawing pad. It took a steady hand and a lot of time but in the end it was simple, I’m hoping to do this style of watercolor and pastel with more photos I have.
360 Art
The 360 art project was super cool because we were able to play with photoshop and make it into a virtual reality. I took extraordinary photo’s I had of landscapes and put them together into photoshop and made them into framed pictures in a virtual world. For this project it was easier than it looks all we had to do was make a room in photoshop and then convert into a 3-D world.
