Reflections Project Introduction

The Reflections Project challenged us to explore the question, “Who am I?” through writing and design. We reflected on our identities and values. Than, we used that. to create projects in Adobe Illustrator and After Effects. One major part of the project was creating personal mandalas. We designed black-and-white and colored versions, experimented with line, color, and repetition, animated the mandala being built, and displayed our final work.

My Personal Mandalas

For this project, I produced a mandala piece. Utilizing Adobe Illustrator to mirror my brush strokes, I used my digital pen to create my design with all the different types of brush strokes Adobe Illustrator offers to create unique strokes all over. I very discreetly, as an easter egg, included loose images of flowers throughout my piece. These flowers, in a way, signify rebirth and the circle of life, which I thin kis beautiful, and is why I included them. Drawing tablets for me aren’t my favorite. Within my design class last year, I utilized these pressure-sensitive brushes directly on a screen, not on a tablet, so it took time getting used to this, and I much prefer drawing on a screen. Within this project, I learned that I have only explored the surface of what Illustrator can do, and confirmed that creating art in Illustrator isn’t just about skill, but also about how you approach situations and your creativity. The best part of my BW Mandala is that it is unique to me; I created it without any external influences. The placement of every single stroke is unique to me, with no mandalas ever being completely identical to one another.

If the images do not display below,
On a Mac, press Command + (plus) then press press Command – (minus)
On a PC, press the Ctrl + (plus) then press the Ctrl – (minus)

Upon seeing my laser engraved mandala for the first time I was in awe of how I could make something so beautiful with such simplistic work. Yet, the analog work lacked some of the details I had in my piece, and the piece was lighter and darker in some areas which I didn’t like so much I chose the wooden pizza board since it could work as a functional piece of art: I could use it as a pizza board or to hold some other food item.

For my colored mandala, I chose to just color in my existing black and white mandala. I did this to help my original elements pop out more. After seeing my mandala printed, I was heavily pleased with the final product as the colors looked better on the print than on the screen. I wanted a vibrant color scheme to mimic tropical flowers and plants with their vibrant appearances. I surprised myself with how well my idea was expressed by just adding in color. Through this project, I can apply the skills of what I have learned into future projects

To create my mandala build reveal build I used after effects. At first, it was difficult as. I had not used it for a while. But seeing my final product made me grateful for the process.

Reflecting on this entire product, using only black strokes forced me to find contrast only through my line work. In the colored mandala it let me make my work contrast through the use of different colors. In future projects, I will use the ideas I’ve learned around design to make my future pieces more visually appealing. This project helped me see and value how unique and different everyone’s art style is from one another, and how everyone tackled this assignment differently.

Why I {Create Visual Art} Essay

In English, to explore ourselves, we made an essay on why we do a creative medium of our choosing.