2025 2D/Graphic Design Gallery

BUENA PARK

ODYSSEY OF DISCOVERY
Cynthia Gonzalez
Idea: How can we change our existing perspectives to seek enlightenment? This surrealist piece demonstrates unpredictability in my own life. It depicts the chaotic rollercoaster of my spiritual journey and acceptance of all situations that guide my path.
Materials: Multi-colored construction paper, water-based markers, watercolor paper, Prismacolor, sharpie, and wall-mounting tape
Process: Mindful doodling with both hands, mixed-media chaotic collage layered with watercolor. Tiger illustration in Prismacolor, then cut colored paper, then layered rollercoaster, sparks, and bar drawings.

 

INTO THE SPIRITUAL
Yvanka Sanchez-Barron
Idea: How can our ethnic upbringing affect how we see the world? Jaguar represents my Hispanic culture and roots. Butterflies symbolize metamorphosis and eyes represent being aware and open-minded.
Materials: Ink, White Gel Pen, Prismacolor, Watercolor
Process: Sketched a jaguar, layered marker as a base, ballpoint pen, highlights white pen. I collaged and cut out flowers & glued them onto my jaguar. I drew butterflies in the background w Prismacolor colored pencils, & texture w watercolor.

WAIT FOR ME!
Alina Camino
Idea: In what ways can a person accept the loss of a loved one? Their memories live through us, but we can't let go. The girl holding onto her loved one can't accept to see him fading away into the sky.
Materials: Marker, Water color, Prismacolor, Sand, White gel pen, Paint
Process: Scribbled with marker, water colored over to make clouds, used Prismacolors, added sand, highlighted sand with white gel pen

STRINGS OF RESONANCE
Sophia Ortega
Idea: How can we become self-aware and break through old habits? Music is an emotional escape. The guitarist channels emotion through swirling colors to depict the motion of sound and fragments, releasing energy, and finding happiness, in his self-expression.
Materials: Prismacolor, Posca Markers, Oil Pastel, Watercolor, Gitter and Disco font
Process: Mixed-media collages transformed ideas, feelings, or memories into art. Starting with sketches and experimentation, I build layers of color, shape, and texture, embracing imperfection and intuition to create work that captures movement, emotion, and transformation.

 

TIMELESS CHAOS
Jaylynn Alvear
Idea: Why is it important to overcome fears to accomplish goals? Trying to figure out what to do with your life at an early age is stressful. Running out of time, and the pressure of how valuable time is causes feelings of fear & internal chaos.
Materials: Soft pastels, Oil Pastels, Charcoal, Watercolor, Acrylic, Graphite
Process: Mixed media collage, cut of drawings and paintings. Layered images and added more details of various colors to show feelings of anger & chaos scribbling w/ both hands in the background, devil in platter paint. Full value ranges including teeth border.

CLING TO THE LIGHT
Brianna Ibarra
Idea: What influences can corrupt a determined person? Resilience to keep holding onto dreams despite difficulties. Octopuses represent the challenges of life, the girl's face shows us the emotions that can arise, & movement of wild colors depicts chaos.
Materials: Mixed media collage, layering drawings and paintings of vast hues to emote feelings of helplessness, resilience & perseverance. The movement emotes confusion by drawing w/ both hands to show stress. I illustrated unity of tentacles for the attack.

 

FLUTTERING DREAMS
Isadora Mendez
Idea: How does nature influence a transformation to enlightenment? Butterflies symbolize metamorphosis and light spirit. Feminine inner beauty fluttering self-love, personal growth, and new journeys related to butterfly migrations.
Materials: Photography, Pen, Markers, Photoshop, Graphite
Process: I drew 3 monarch butterflies in different positions cut them out and placed them in different locations. In Photoshop I added the butterflies to a self-portrait and different layers and filters to show unity, contrast, and a dreamlike state.

FULLERTON UNION

METAMORPHOSIS OF THE MIND
Audrey Shu
Idea: With this piece of work, I wanted to capture the beauty of transformation. The moth represents change and growth from within, and the “eyes” of the moth’s wings on the head is symbolic of a newfound enlightenment.
Materials: Charcoal and Digital Media
Process: Took many reference photos of myself and then adjusted it to grayscale and inverted the colors. I then began sketching with graphite on gray paper. Once I was satisfied with my sketch, I began using charcoal, beginning with the darkest darks and slowly making my way to the lightest whites.

CONSTRUCTION
Lucy Stecher
Idea: I found a box filled with dried acrylic paint chips & had been experimenting with making traffic cones with different forms of media, and when I saw the bucket of paint I had the idea to cut them up and piece them together into a new painting from the leftovers of another.
Materials: A sheet of plastic, Hot glue, dried acrylic paint chips(all found), tweezers and scissors.
Process: I started gathering the correct colors of paint chips, it was then a process of piecing together the acrylic paint chips with hot glue & cutting them to shape. Throughout the entire process all of the paint chips I used had been from previous students projects and I didn’t fabricate any new ones forcing me to work inside those bounds.

 
 

LA HABRA

NOTAN
Emilio Resendez
Idea: Insects and critters
Materials: Paper
Process: The process involved a rough sketch of the idea on a square paper. After the idea was finalized it was traced to a square black paper of equal size. I cut the details out of the black paper and flipped them on the opposite side of the cut.

 
 

SONORA

MONKEY’S THANKSGIVING
Angel Salas
Idea: My original idea for this piece I made is that I wanted to make it funny and relatable, so my first thought is my friends. They're funny, dumb, chaotic, and since this I could do anything, I took this as a chance to express myself and my friends in my eyes. Silly, dumb, crazy monkeys who loved to eat.
Materials: Multiple funny pictures of random monkeys, important/ironic food/drink items, and a empty picture of the Last Supper. And Adobe Photoshop.
Process: I use the monkey images and making then have transparent backgrounds, same goes the food and drink items. I sort them in layers so that one is on top of the other, and lastly to put the theme of the background is I got a sand/rough image that goes on top of the rest. Changing the capacity and mode of the image so it can be see though.

 

FAMILY STRUGGLES
Nelson Desmond V Grande
Idea: I have seen lots of albums come out recently which sounded really good. These rappers in particular have come in high which is why I have added them together in an album cover. Family struggles which is the title is based on the struggles that the rappers have had in the past finally coming out into an album for the world to hear.
Materials: Photoshop
Process: I had found a Halloween background and rappers to fit together. Once I made this decision I found pictures that fit and removed the backgrounds. I came up with a title that matched them entirely and added blending to fix them together with each other. I had also cleaned up a little of the lighting issues with the images.

AUTUMN
Ezequiel Carrasco Echeverria
Idea: The Idea of this Design was to have a 19 century picture a barn and make it look old by adding farm animals. I thought of how it would have been when this picture was taken and how it would have looked like.
Materials: Photoshop, image of the cars and, more images of the bridge,turkeys,birds.and the cows
Process: I downloaded the background which was just the barn. Then I looked for the images of the animals and used Ai to generate me a bridge because I could not find one and the cars also. Then I added a texture and a filler to the images, so they can have a color burned image texture. I had to mask the pictures so they could fit perfectly in the image.

 

STARK’S AXE
Jacob Serrano
Idea: I was watching a anime called Frieren and I saw someone's axe that I thought looked cool. So I looked for reference and then modeled it.
Materials: Autodesk Maya
Process: I looked for a reference picture of the axe and then imported the picture into maya. Then I started off with one cube and modeled it to look like the Axe.

GANGSTER MARIO
Cody Flores
Idea: I tried to make Mario have an amazing goatee like myself. The tattoo of my last name Flores because I'm proud of my family. I put an old English T on the hat for my brother, his nickname started with the letter T. I put an A because it symbolizes where i come from (Not Gang Related).
Materials: Photoshop
Process: I had a 64x64 pixel canvas and created Mario based off of me.

 

NORTH AFRICAN SHERMAN
John Carabarin
Idea: My Idea was to just model something on my free time during class, I love modeling. it's an amateur replica of the tank, and It's just something very fun for me to do.
Materials: Autodesk Maya
Process: I started from one block, replicating the shape of the iconic tank used during the allies during the second world war, and from there, got to working on the many different parts of the tank. The treads were especially painful.

SUNNY HILLS

MARIA AND HER SISTERS
Azzy Luu
Idea: People have difficulty comprehending the deaths of thousands of people so I focused on how genocide affected one family in particular. The reindeer references ecocide and the dehumanization of genocide victims.
Materials: iPad and Procreate.
Process: I reviewed several sketch ideas before settling on two sisters surrounded by panicked reindeer. I photo-bashed clippings of deer from hunting paintings to help with the posing of the reindeer and drew inspiration from Nenet culture for the clothing.

 

GLASS CHILD
Ivy Han
Idea: The artwork symbolizes the 'Glass' child in a dysfunctional family, with an angel representing coldness and loneliness, symbolizing the child's lack of attention and love.
Materials: Ibis Paintx
Process: The angel is drawn in grayscale and colored teal and red. Teal is universally recognized for bringing awareness to OCD, fitting well with glass children who often have OCD. Then the red represents desire.

AIRPLANE
Jiwon Baek
Idea: To capture childhood wonder through a nostalgic moment of playing with a toy airplane, showcasing a child’s boundless imagination with whimsical, playful elements like the doodles on the background, clouds, and a toy airplane with a vibrant palette.
Materials: Digital Art (MediBang Paint Pro)
Process: I started with a realistic approach, initially planning to draw realistic clouds, but shifted to a playful style to reflect childhood creativity. I attempted to blend the subject's realism with childlike elements to capture the magic of imagination.

 

MIRROR
Charlene Tsai
Idea: This piece is on how the mirror is a way we perceive ourselves as a stranger. Nowadays we see ourselves too much in the mirror and I feel the more people are analyzing themselves in the mirror, the more their depiction of themselves are altered.
Materials: Canvas, acrylic paint, collage, mirror film
Process: For this piece, I created a bathroom scene, showing where people tend to look at themselves in the mirror. Around the mirror, I cutout magazine cutouts of people/strangers, so the viewer looks at their distorted reflection amongst a sea of strangers.

MENU
Emily Choi
Idea: My friends and I spend a lot of time sipping on our drinks while chatting in cafes, each conversation holds a special place in my mind. The drinks represent a “menu” of different memories that I had with friends.
Materials: Acrylic paint, Gouache, Colored Pencils, Wooden board, paper
Process: I used different mediums for the cups to enhance the idea that they are all different memories, and levels to show a chronological order. I also added hands reaching for the cups to make it more clear that the cups as memories.

TROY

MOONLIT GAZE
Elise Fu
Idea: My interpretation on the physical manifestation of sin. Her innocent expression and youthful face represent temptation. The apple is a symbol from the Garden of Eden. where Eve first sinned, and the skull on her shoulder reveals her ties with death.
Materials: Digital Media. Ibis Paintx
Process: I combined various references with aspects that I liked and felt were thematically linked. I used s round brush to render the skin and skull, and textured brush for the hair. I wanted to emphasize contrast and saturation, exaggerating the skin tones.

DEPERSONALIZATION
Mia Li
Idea: Difficulties that people with depersonalizion disorder may experience
Materials: Procreate
Process: Inspired by depersonalization disorder, I drew from imagination.