Introduction and Art Portfolio

Hi, I’m Mikayla Fischler, a Junior from Connecticut studying Robotics and Computer Science with a passion for art and creativity represented through music, art, and technology.

Ever since I was young, I have loved creating. This began with the generic messy toddler art and eventually became slightly more refined sketching in sketchbooks and on whatever paper I could find. Art has always given me joy, both from creating and from viewing.

More recently, I’ve spent much more time in my sketchbook and working with digital art. This is to be credited to the motivation I have received from artistic friends and the inspiration from meeting a few digital artists that I’ve been a fan of for years (a few of which became close friends of mine afterwards). Some sketches of Pokemon I made during a convention by request of a friend are shown above.

This last term I took the Figure Drawing course at WPI, which furthered my experience with, well, drawing figures. For our final project, we drew self portraits in charcoal, shown above to the left. I also included another charcoal and chalk drawing I did during the last class of the term (above right).

Photography has also been a small hobby of mine, but unfortunately not to a point past using my phone camera. Still, I have always leaned towards phones with superior cameras to allow me to indulge every now and then in the beauty of nature or every day life. Most vacations I go on involve me walking around and taking photos of landscapes, plants, and animals.

I’ve been working with electronics since I was 8 years old, and since then I have developed a passion for computer science and robotics. Part of this passion includes the use of LEDs. Below is a project I began on during my freshman year at WPI, displayed in the windows of my dorm in Riley Hall. The source code can be found at https://github.com/MikaylaFischler/dorm-leds.

This year I have continued with my LED setups and added a simple controller for a small section of LEDs in my room. The main LEDs are controlled with an Arduino Due with an input from a custom audio filtering circuit and the secondary system is controlled with a simple control panel. The main part is mounted on the ceiling and window, the secondary part is above my dresser as shown.

Additionally of note is a simple light painting I did of my FRC robotics team logo that I did in high school, shown below.

In conclusion, art and technology are both very important parts of my life, and without either I would feel incomplete. Art adds the necessary life and creativity to the otherwise highly technical world of computers while also sometimes presenting something for me to do outside of technology.

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