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As it was in the Beginning it is Now- Anna 

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As it was in the Beginning it is Now- Anna 

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The heart symbol with the thorns around it and fire is the well known symbol in my faith and a reminder of God's love for all of humanity. The color crimson represents this love as well as suffering. The thorns represent the throne's placed on His head before the crucifixion. The rest of the painting is really a tribute to the mothers in my life, both my mom and my grandmother. They have had an enormous impact on my life and spiritual life, especially my grandmother. The M is for mother and is blue because it reminds me of carefreeness which is something I associate with my grandmother. The thorns have flowers which symbolize something that was used to hurt, the thorns, being turned into something beautiful, (similar to the cross). Also I have fond memories of planting flowers with my grandmother in the summer. Finally for left background part I chose dark greys and the light yellow because they represent the battle between good and evil, light and dark.

I'm very proud of the symbolism and imagery of the piece. I'm also proud because I managed to create a piece of artwork that I have an attachment to. I would have made the flowers more pronounced and additionally I might have added some texture or something to the M.

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Write your title, name and answer the following questions: Write down the meaning behind your work. What did each symbol represent, and how did you connect the color to your symbols? What are you most proud of in your piece? What changes/additions would you make? 

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Write your title, name and answer the following questions: Write down the meaning behind your work. What did each symbol represent, and how did you connect the color to your symbols? What are you most proud of in your piece? What changes/additions would you make? 

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The main symbols in my peace were the heart, treble clef, Leo, “process,” and the Gordian knot. I also tried to make a less obvious metaphor of representing the heart as “my sun,” with sun rays coming out from the sides. The heart as my sun represents love, and I decided to make it the sun because the sun is very important in our lives as humans. The reason I chose to make the sun rays yellow and orange was to represent positivity, brightness, and energy. I’m a very enthusiastic and positive person, and I wanted those parts of the painting to reflect my outlook on life. Within the heart, I chose to use blue in all of my symbols. The blue color itself reliability and calmness, because these symbols relate to things that I can rely on not changing when the rest of my life feels more shaken up. Blue also happens to be my favorite color, so it was also chosen to be placed in the center to show how much I value it. I had the treble clef in the center because I really value music as someone who plays an instrument and how much I enjoy listening to it. It’s a darker blue than the knot, process, and Leo because I wanted to differentiate it as the central symbol. However, I wanted the other three symbols to still be the same approximate size and thickness (in terms of line) to show that they’re still important to me. Another reason why I picked music as the “central” symbol is because it’s a “tangible” concept, in that you can do specific actions with it. The process for something is more abstract than music, and I chose it to represent how I value the process of getting to goals or places as much as reaching the endpoint. The Leo is also sort of abstract as my astrological sign, and I chose the Gordian knot to represent my perseverance. I think I’m the most proud of the colors, because I also managed to make different elements of the piece contrast more by having warm colors on the outside and cool colors (although it was just blue) in the center. If I were to change something, I might want to make the treble clef a little bit larger to better demonstrate its value in my life.

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There are mainly three symbols in my project: Pi, a black circle and a white circle,  and a blue square. The pi represents my love for math especially geometry. I use Crimson in order to show my passionate heart. The black and white pair of circles represents chess because it's one of my favorite game. The blue square represents my somehow introverted character and feelings when I'm stressful. The square is a narrow space that make people feeling trapped, which I believe is a good choice. When I was in primary school, I was a shy person so I have few friends. Chess is my only friend at that time, and by playing in tournaments, I made a few friends who share the same hobbies. Since I'm also good at math, I gain my confidence by helping others with math problems. This is the story that I want to tell from my background color, which is black, yellow, and orange. Just like these colors, I became positive and enthusiatic by time. And finally going out of the "blue" block.  Though this work doesn't reach my expectation, I'm most proud of the symbolism and meaning under the piece. The colors and craft could be better if I do it another time. If I were to change something, I would redo the flaws in my drawing and make the color better.

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The main symbols in my piece are the cross, heart, and star. I have a triangle surrounding these symbols and zigzag lines coming out from it. The cross represents my religion, Christianity, which I grew up with and was taught by my family and church community. The heart represents the love that I have for my family and friends and the star represents my aspirations to try my best in everything that I do as well as striving for perfectionism. The zigzags represent my family dynamic in a way, as it is fun but also chaotic or lively at times. I used many different colors in my piece because I felt like it more accurately represents the different parts of my identity and the people and things that have influenced me. I am most proud of the different color combinations I came up with for my piece. In changing this piece, I would probably try to paint the different parts better so the colors would be clearer, if that makes sense. I would probably add black paint surrounding each separate part of my piece so that they could be clearer.

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My symbols in this painting were the flying boar, the square, and the Korean flag. My heritage is really important to me, and I always wanted to include something representing it in this piece. The flag also represents balance, with the red and the blue being positive and negative forces. I painted it differently than it looks in real life to make it a bit more subtle and unique, and I think I liked that change. I chose a square because it also symbolizes balance and structure in its simplicity. However, it also represents a box and the last symbol in my painting, the flying boar, is breaking out of that box. The flying boar is a symbol from Avatar: The Last Airbender, and I chose to include it because it symbolizes my childhood, and my love for fantasy in general. By going outside the box, it is also representing my creativity and inventiveness. If I were to change some things, I would make some of the lines a bit neater, and fix the scale of the objects.

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This piece is about "two sides" of my identity growing up. I tried to make the background as light as possible while still being yellow, a color that symbolizes conflict, which I try to emphasize in the middle of the piece. In the middle in red, is a symbol of the Chinese flag, something central to my identity. To me, red symbolizes love in this context as all of my family is Chinese. I combined that with the California flag in the middle, where I was born and have lived my whole life. Blue represents calm and my sense of familiarity with the place. I tried to make both the colors of red and blue as pronounced and clashing as possible as it to symbolize my sense of conflict these two influences in my identity, as it often seems they create conflict in aspects of my life. In the middle, there is a child symbol being "caught" in the middle of the other symbols. I chose black because I think it is a neutral color and works well both in the context of the piece and does not create conflict. In the midground, there are clouds, as the images in the middle reminded me of long flights to China. Like the background, I tried to make it discreet to highlight the symbols in the middle. I am proud of creating a piece that I feel well encapsulates a part of my identity, and coming up with colors any symbols to convey it. One change I would make is making the painting bigger so I could make the details and contrast more clear.

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I chose three symbols, a lyre, a lotus, and a yin yang sign. The lotus is a symbol to my mother and her Chinese roots. I chose the color pink because it represents childhood and sweetness. The yin yang sign is also a Chinese symbol, and represents the balance that my mother brings to the household. The last symbol I chose was a lyre, which is a Greek symbol that represents music. My mother was the one who introduced me to music, and I now play violin and have been for seven years. It is gold to represent compassion and love. The background color is light blue, and represents tranquility and softness, which is representative of my mother in a way.
I am most proud of the structure I used in my work and playing with different sizes and layering symbols over each other. One thing I would change would be to possibly add more details in the background and make the symbols smaller.

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In this painting, my symbols used were three stacked diamonds and the first three letters of the Hebrew alphabet.  My colors were blue, green, yellow, and purple. When I made this, I wanted each thing I did to relate to me in some sort of way, big or small. The letters bring me back to the memories I have of Hebrew School as a little kid. In first grade, we started the day off my memorizing the alphabet. Aleph Bet Vet, that’s how it always started. The letters were all grouped into pairs of three, sort of like lmnop are paired, and that is what started it off. I still have it singing in my head today. The overlapping diamonds were used to express fading memory in the song. As the letters go on, less and less of the diamonds can be seen. The background is meant to show a broken chain lock. I like to think of this representing the feeling my dad must have gotten when he one day finally got us to stop complaining about going to Sunday School, and the colors represent the skittles that he used to bribe us into doing so. In this painting, I was proud of my emotional attachment to it. When I was thinking about what to paint, I really strived to try and reach into a deep memory that I had. I wanted mine to be something unique to me, and I feel like I’ve accomplished that. I wouldn’t say there is anything I would change in my piece, although I was contemplating using the color red, but I decided that I thought it came off too aggressive.

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The four symbols I used in this painting were yin-yang, a heart, a cross, and a star. The yin-yang represents my Chinese background and balance in life. The cross represents my religion, and the heart represents love that I have for my family. Lastly, the star represents the hope that I have that good things will happen and I will achieve my goals. I went with the original black and white colors for the yin yang because they express the theme of balance in this painting very well. For the star and cross, I chose the color yellow because I feel like yellow has a hopeful, positive connotation to it, just like the star and the cross. The rest of the colors were chosen to match the "balanced" theme, starting from the yin yang symbol. I chose colors that contrasted each other, for example I painted the inner heart blue on the left side and orange on the right side. Since the majority of the left side of the yin-yang is white, I chose a dark blue to contrast, and I similarly chose bright orange for the right side of the yin-yang. Next, I colored the 2 flags in the background, which represent my nationality. The Chinese flag is red, so I chose green for the outline of the heart for contrast. Thus, I colored the left side of the heart outline bright pink to contrast with the green. I am most proud of my color selection for this painting, and how the yin-yang symbol is the first thing people see when they look at the painting. I could have improved on making my USA flag better by adding stars to the blue patch at the bottom left and just using red and white for the stripes. Furthermore, I could have improved on my painting technique because there are some spots where there is rough surfaces(on the yin-yang for example).