This was my first project for this class. The task was to make a symmetrical, radial "mandala" design that reflects who I am as a person.

My subject matter includes vines and tendrils, lilac flowers, rain, clouds, Totoro, and my beloved cat Roswin who went back to her home planet a little over a year ago. I dedicate this piece in her honor.

For my process, I made heavy use of tracing paper and pencil to make repeated images. After finishing the pencil work, I went over it with a Micron. I love how it turned out for the most part but I'm honestly pretty devastated with the center part. I changed my plan slightly at the last minute and it ended up turning into a total mess that left me filled with regret. If I had more time I would redo the entire center circle because I honestly hate everything about it. As far as the rest of it goes, though, I really like how it turned out. I made use of images such as fir tree branches, rain, tendrils, lilacs, and my beloved cat Roswin who passed away last year at the age of 17. The tendrils represent my ADHD and what I call "crazy brain." Lilacs represent my favorite flower and are a nod to the house I grew up in, where they bloomed everywhere outside. The character around the inner circle is Totoro, who is very precious to me and represents my love of nature. The rain goes with the Totoro image but also represents my love of rain and PNW weather in general. I learned a TON doing this project, it was really fun!

This is my radial letter design. The task was to choose a letter, make a stencil of that letter in three different sizes, and then create a radial design on black paper using white pens and pencils.

This one was really fun! I chose the letter A because it's my favorite letter. I tried to keep this one nice and simple, and just focus on little details instead of a really complex design (took a lesson from my first assignment there). It was really nice working with white pens on black paper.

This assignment was very interesting, and definitely challenging. We were tasked with creating an original piece using only lines and shapes found in coloring books. I had the wild idea to create a fantasy map, which subsequently made this entire project probably much more challenging than it originally needed to be. But I wanted to try it!

I bought three second hand coloring books: nature-themed, also sort of nature themed but in a totally different style, and an extremely goofy Keanu Reeves one with images of him doing things such as snowboarding, cooking you a delicious meal, or walking a whole pack of smiling puppies (his sillhouete is actually hidden in the piece somewhere. See if you can find it!). It was good for a chuckle or two while I feverishly mined it and the others for any little bits and pieces that could even remotely resemble something found in a fantasy map. I ended up with enough to create a forest, a desert, some castles and temples, a sea monster, and various other features. It was really fun in the end, but I never ever want to look at those coloring books again.

This one was my absolute favorite to make. The assignment: create a drawing or portrait using only text.

My subject was Joanna Newsom, and the words used to create the piece come from her song lyrics. Seeing as her music is so deeply tied to my soul, and her words are so profound and intricate that I often find myself wanting to write them down just for fun, I instantly knew there could be no better choice for me for this project. I found a great photo of her and went to work tracing it and laying out where all the shading would be. Writing in the lyrics was incredibly relaxing and I very much enjoyed making this piece. I think out of all of them, this is the one I'm most proud of.

The task for this one was to find a timely article and create a three-panel art piece that represents the core concepts of the article, using some quotes, and with the inclusion of a logo that all three panels would share.

This piece is based on a TED Radio Hour segment about the use of technology in gathering data about wildlife that can be used to better understand the natural world (it's the first story in the podcast). It was an interesting article for me because I'm very anti-AI, but the scientist interviewed talked about how when used responsibly like any other tool, AI can actually be extremely helpful in organizing data and finding patterns in ecological studies, so it helped me gain some new perspectives on the idea of AI being used for good. To be clear, it's not talking about things like ChatGPT, but more scientific models that use much less energy and are designed specifically to help scientists sort through the massive amounts of data we're able to collect on nature through citizen science apps like iNaturalist. It's a fascinating topic to me.

As far as the piece itself, I decided to go with a paper-cutout look. I definitely don't feel like it's my best work. I kept running into issues and roadblocks as I put it together, and as time kept marching on and my other classes' finals took up a lot of my time and left me a little overly stressed, I found myself having to scale back what I wanted to do just to be able to get it all done. One of my main issues is that while it was a great article, I realized a little too late that there weren't a lot of short, succinct quotes I could use to really drive the message home. I ended up having to break up longer sentences and stitch the ideas together to make them short enough to fit on each page, while still retaining the original message as best I could. I really hope the main idea of the article shows through, because I have my doubts. It feels a little jumbled to me. I also had some issues with my razor blade not being sharp enough, which made it pretty hard to cut the paper. All in all, though, I like it and I'm glad I was able to finish it in time even if it's not exactly how I originally pictured it.

For the first panel, the idea was to have shapes of animals in an urban setting, reflecting on the concept of their needs being "invisible" against a backdrop of modern human life, represented by the brick wall. For the second panel, I wanted it to convey the idea talked about in the episode (how a citizen scientist can take a photo of a bird in a tree and have it provide lots of information on how it lives and what it needs). The third panel is meant to be a mashup of data and nature, represented by the shinyness of water and fishscales reflecting the shiny metallic aesthetic of technology. Fun fact: the binary used in the last panel is actually part of the paragraph that talks about salmon, ran through a binary translator.