Throughout the first semester of my digital media and Design experience, I have learned so much about pushing my creativity and taking my skills beyond checking off points on a rubric. I learned to push myself to take risks, and learn to take my time to make amazing products. For example in English, I was able to improve my writing skills a lot, by using imagery and personification skills and even mixed artistic talents in my writing; I learned to fully paint a picture with my stories. In digital media, I was able to make my own website using my skills to appeal to the viewer’s eyes and to use my organizational and Design skills. I also had the opportunity to gain a little experience with Adobe applications, whether it was creating music, editing photos, and creating websites. Finally, Design has been amazing, I have been able to really create art digitally, and this has furthered my artistic abilities through photography, and drawings.

I have been able to do more hands-on learning and creativity than I have ever before in high school, and I have had so much fun along the way. In all these classes, I’ve pushed myself to do my best and go beyond requirements and specific rules. Especially in English, before we would have to follow an MLA format and need to have specific rhetorical analysis, but in freestyle, I could produce beautiful writing with the freedom and knowledge of being allowed to go beyond. I now use my skills in digital media and Design in my other classes as well. It’s so much easier creating pleasing school projects when you understand the principles of art and how to appeal to the viewer’s eyes. I can’t thank my freestyle teachers enough for opening my eyes up to a more creative and brilliant side of my visions and abilities.

Poem Photo and Recording

In the poetry unit, we wrote three different types of poems based on different styles. The first one was a haiku, in which both our skills in English and digital media worked together on this project. We were challenged to represent developing a feeling through a certain experience in just three lines of poetry. This project required us to learn the proper word usage and diction, as there were only three lines. The second project was an ekphrastic poem, which is basically a poem written inspired by another piece of work, in appreciation of it. And finally, we created our own complete free verse poem, with few designated rules. This poem could have been based on our previous ones, a continuation, a completely new one. The photo I chose to represent this poem is represented below.

This poem “Waterfall and The Blue” is a free verse poem about one of my favorite experiences at my summer camp: hiking down to a beautiful waterfall. The speaker in this poem is me, but I’m telling this poem as I’m reflecting on this moment. In the first stanza, I begin to describe what this moment looked like to me including imagery of the nature surrounding me, the sand crystals that I saw below my feet, and the ‘mosaic of color’ which really, was the beautify of the green and all the trees surrounding us on this mountain. When I write “beauty, born not of warmth and hugs each,” I’m explaining how this moment made me feel so happy and warm and loved, and in the next line, I have a change of tone into a darker and reflective tone, I remember how this moment won’t last forever, and soon we’ll all be having to leave the beautiful sight. Additionally, in each stanza, I made it so that the first and third lines ended with words that rhymed. I wanted to follow a rhyme scheme, but in a way that it would continue to flow and tell a story. In the next few stanzas, I begin to repeat my words a little bit, almost as If I’m singing a song. My friends and I, while we were up on this mountain, had started playing our favorite song, and we had all started dancing with each other, almost falling off the mountains, but we didn’t worry because we were having such a great time. This moment was so beautiful to me, I was completely lost in the moment, and was overwhelmed with joy. One important thing to notice is that I began my stanzas with a description of actions in the past tense, this changes towards the end. Towards the end, I start wishing that I could relive this moment, my words become more of commands, then of telling a story. I’m wishing for someone to take me back to this moment, to let me have another minute of such a beautiful time. I’m asking for someone to grab me by the hand and take me back. This moment and this summer camp are two things that are extremely important to me, as they’re some of my favorite things in my life, and this is the main reason why I wanted to describe this amazing and so memorable moment.

A screenshot of my pro tools set up. It includes my choice of music selection, my intention statement recording, and the recording of my free verse poem.

This is a screenshot of my photoshop interface. I used a divide blend mode layer to bring out the whites in the photo and to neutralize the black, so the text was most visible.

Haiku Recording and Video

In English, we had a google doc where we were assigned “a feeling” and an “experience” in which we develop that feeling. Mine was developing the feeling of regret from trying new foods. I decided to represent the development of addiction to coffee when trying it for the first time. Then we were assigned to create a haiku poem, which consists of three lines and follow the 5-7-5 syllable rules. This image goes to further demonstrate the topic. After brainstorming in class, we started in digital media, by producing a recording of us saying our haiku. With Premiere Pro, we added an animated video of text and our photo which represents our haiku.

This is the final production of my haiku video.

The Haiku poetry project was super fun for me, I was able to develop my poetry writing skills and valued having the ability to represent writing through photography. I had to revise my haiku a few times because it did not fit with the stanzas, so this challenged me to be more patient and take my time with my writing.

This is a picture of my premier pros haiku workspace. It includes the keyframing practice that I used for the introduction and the animation into the photo.

Elements and Principles of Art

In digital media, we watched videos and took notes about the principles of art, all the properties we use when creating any type of art of taking photos. My main takeaway from this project was that everything around us can be looked at in an artistic view. Architecture has lines and symmetry, and nature has beautiful colors and natural perspectives.

Preview of Design Assignments

In Design, we have been so lucky to work with Ms.Parkinson and develop our skills. We’ve learned how to use elements and principles of art in all our work and have been able to demonstrate our creativity and artistic styles. I have valued learning. to take my time with assignments and really develop them to the best of my abilities. Design has been really fun, and I’ve loved every project we have gotten to do this semester.

Conceptual Photo

Our first project in Design was the conceptual photo. We worked together with English where we were assigned a conceptual statement, but this time we had to represent it through photography. We had to represent one object for each “feeling” and connect them in a photograph. My conceptual statement was “I am exploring the feeling of regret through trying new foods.” I wanted to explore this feeling with demonstrating a closet and a person feeling as if they’re not the same person and don’t look the same in their own clothes anymore.

This is a screenshot of my Photoshop interface for this project. I used the vibrance, curves, brightness, and levels layers. I wanted to darken the background and bring attention to the fries, by making them brighter.

Linear Perspective Bedroom

For this project, we were required to use our linear perspective skills to create our bedroom. In Illustrator, we had been practicing linear perspective with one point and two points, and this was our final project to demonstrate what we had learned by illustrating what our own room looks like in linear perspective.

This is a screenshot of my Illustrator interface. You can see all the layers I used for the different parts of the room.

This is what the final product looks like.

Macro Photo

For this assignment we were assigned to take pictures with a macro lens on our camera. A macro lens makes the picture super zoomed in and you can focus on smaller objects with it. For this project, I decided to take a picture of a small plant and zoom in on it.

This is what my photoshop interface looks like. I used a curves layer to bring out the color in the flower. I also used the brush tool to unify the background as some of the colorings was off.

Negative/Positive Space Halloween Project

For this project, we were assigned to create a Negative Positive space design under the Halloween theme. A Negative Positive design is basically where both sides are exactly the same, but one is “darker” and one “lighter.” To create it, we used an X-acto knife to cut out the shape of our creature and then trace it over the next colored paper to create a cut out, and then glued it back on.

This is what my final project looked like.

Illustrator Technique Tutorial Menu

One of the illustrator projects we were assigned to do was to watch a video and follow the instructions to create our own illustrator design.