The reflections unit was about finding who I am. In Digital Media, we focused on creating a lot of art like a Mandala and multiple Photoshop projects where we learned how to composite photos and paint using the Wacom. For English, we created our personal essay. For design, we continued doing Illustrator and created a PSA and a paper cut out where we were challenged to use negative space.
Through this project, I learned a lot about myself. Through each class, I discovered more about who I am as a writer and artist.
For homework in English, we did lots of brainstorming that helped guide us throughout these projects. Once for homework, we were told to brainstorm a list of things that we enjoyed. Mine consisted of family, friends, my dog, my jacket, and my house.
Mandala
For this project in Digital Media, we were instructed to make a personal mandala. We first learned how to set up the document for the mandala and then we were able to draw our mandala’s from scratch.
While I valued being able to create and express myself through making my mandalas, the thing I valued most was the fact that we now have access to a template that we can use whenever we want. Since we weren’t handed a template, we were able to create one for ourselves. Doing this, we learned about clipping masks, reflections, and other illustrator skills that we can apply in the future. The fun part was making the mandala itself, but the valuable part was knowing how it’s created and being able to do every step of the process.
Now I’m back to the creative aspect of this project. Making these Mandala’s has made me value different styles of artwork. We all had the same playing field, yet all of our projects were so different and unique to ourselves. I tend to compare my art with other people and this helped me realize that each one holds value and meaning in their own ways. I learned that my work is pretty detail oriented on the inside, but simple from the outside, and this may hold true to myself as well.
This I believe
This next project was focused around creating projects based on what we believed in. In Digital Media, we created a This I Believe video using After Effects. In English, we wrote a this I believe essay where we were supposed to highlight a belief that’s important to us and explain why. This project helped me grow as a digital artist as I learn more about After Effects.
Sacrificing Happiness
Since I was a kid I was always interested in popular music. I would listen to new albums once they dropped, try to find hits before they were hits, and listen to artists people hadn’t discovered. This interest brought me into the music production world when I was around 13 years old. I was fascinated with the idea of creating my own work through my computer. So, I bought my first midi controller and always looked forward to using it. Around this time, my inspiration was coming from Youtube, specifically an artist named Aries who used to make videos breaking down popular beats. I watched his videos because of his unique style and work ethic, instead of watching an in-depth tutorial. This allowed me to experiment and find my own unique approach to music. I found that my favorite part about music was melody. Nothing else mattered until the melody was right.
One year into making music, when I felt like my beats were good enough, I started selling them on Beatstars. I would refresh my Beatstars account over and over, hoping that someone would purchase another beat, but most of the time I wouldn’t see any purchases. Sadly, the fact that nobody was buying my beats made me feel like I wasn’t good enough. As a result, I started imitating successful music producers, and I was focused on fitting in. I believed that I had to copy other people to find success. I didn’t believe in myself or the process that it took to get where I wanted to be. I lost track of my creativity. I would be so focused on the business aspect that my music was getting worse and worse until I lost all motivation. So, I stopped everything.
This break was good because it allowed me to step away from what I was used to and helped me evaluate myself and my emotions. I started listening to more music, podcasts, and interviews of people who I could look up to. I learned that they were doing music because they loved it and not for how it benefited them. They also had hardships, but they never gave up. This really inspired me and I slowly started to make music again.
Soon after, everything changed. My friends and I were sitting around in someone’s room during the summer. We were just messing around and thought that it would be fun to record. Lucky for me, I saw potential in them. They had their own stories to tell and unique flows that distinguished themselves from other artists. So, I influenced them to take it seriously and we started going to the studio multiple times a week. My friends felt that making beats was daunting, so they decided to record vocals instead. They ended up really enjoying it and found themselves being successful on platforms such as Spotify and Soundcloud with roughly 100,000 streams. We went to the studio almost every weekend until quarantine and we all had a great time making music and helping each other with feedback. This experience helped me realize that there was more to music than just money. I had a connection to the people I was helping, which gave me much more gratitude than selling to people I didn’t know.
The turning point in my musical journey was during the winter break of my junior year. My family and I took our first trip to the Alps and I was stunned by the beauty. I would wake up at five a.m., stand outside, take in the beauty, and make music. Since there wouldn’t be time during the day, I found time before anyone else was awake. It was here when I made my favorite beat to this day. It was peaceful. No stress. Just making music because I loved doing it.
I don’t believe that we must sacrifice our happiness for success. Throughout these past few years, the one activity that I’ve stuck with is making music, but I’m really doing it because it makes me happy. I’m still not sure if it’s what I’m meant to do, but so far it’s taught me that it’s more important to enjoy what you do than worry about money and success.
Photoshop Art
For this project, I learned a lot about Photoshop. Photoshop has always intrigued me. This was a cool project because I learned a lot about Photoshop and was also able to create digital art.
My photoshop skills grew throughout this project. I learned how to manipulate the painting tool and use filters to make a realistic pastel painting in photoshop. I struggled with remembering how to use Photoshop because it had been a while since I used the program. With the helpful videos, I was able to get back on track. When I was creating this specific project, I continued to reference the videos to make sure that I was doing the right steps. Next time, I would try to not emulate an already existing photo, but instead try to make my own painting completely from scratch. This time, I felt inspired by a fruit bowl. I took a photo of a fruit bowl from online and I emulated it into Photoshop. This gave me more confidence with using the painting tool in Photoshop, but I feel like I stayed inside my comfort zone because it is much harder to make something completely from scratch. Later in life, because I might need to make or brainstorm album covers, the experience that I gained from this project will help me lay out my ideas for future projects. This project helped me realize that the photo you choose to emulate really impacts the quality of your end result. If you choose a professional photo, your project will look more professional, but if you take a cartoon photo, it will look less professional. In the end, I was proud that my painting actually looked good and it maintained the depth of field that was in the reference photo.
Photoshop Conversion
Photoshop 360 art + Artist statement
Design
So far this year, in design class, we went a bit outside what I would consider to be design. We re-learned all the material stuff from last year too. We also were taught how to create a public service announcement and studied advertisements.
My PSA represents how it takes time for good things to happen. I wanted to talk about this because it’s something that i’ve finally accepted in my life. Throughout my life I’ve always expected things to happen, instead of patiently waiting for my hard work to pay off. I chose to show a fisherman waiting for a fish to bite. He is fishing in the ocean and he catches a really big fish. Since fishing takes a lot of patience and effort, I knew it was a great way to represent my PSA. The fisherman is wearing colorful fishing gear and is sitting in a brown fishing boat. The fish is around the same size as the boat because I wanted the “good things to come” to really be emphasized in my art. To make the background more interesting, I added a white and blue gradient to make it look cloudy and foggy.
I made this using Illustrator and the pen tool. I used a pen tool to make everything look clean and precise. In my original rough draft, I had lots of drawn in figures and it resulted in the artwork being more sloppy than I intended. After feedback, I realized that I should use the pen tool and it ended up being very beneficial. I also used the elements and principles of design to create this and make it look more professional. I struggled in finding a way to represent my PSA. At first I imagined a very conceptual idea which would have taken much more effort to complete. I realized that my skills weren’t fully there yet, so I took my conceptual idea and made it more realistic. I also struggled with finding a good color scheme, but I eventually found one in Adobe Color that I really liked.
