Project 1 “Therapeutic Graphics” – Further Exploration and Final

After getting feedback from the class, I decided to do more research on the kinds of landscapes that could inspire me to create new forms of therapeutic art.

I turned to Japanese woodblock prints, both traditional (e.g. Hokusai) and modern as I felt that the clean shapes and natural forms depicted in the prints suited the style of my work.

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While both styles of Japanese woodblock prints often derived inspiration and subject matter from scenes in nature, he more modern woodblock print works were even more simplistic in style than the traditional ones and often reduced the landscape into simple silhouettes.

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bird-with-trees

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There were also a lot of overlapping shapes and colours to create texture. Hence, emulating that, I created my piece based on the idea of depicting one of the 4 seasons, spring.

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Spring – Field of Flowers

For this piece, I chose to depict spring as I wanted to explore a series based on the 4 seasons, and I felt that spring fitted the purple colour scheme the most. I played around with the various opacities and colour combinations to create variation in the work while still maintaining the clean cut shapes similar to the style of the woodblock prints.

 

I also explored an alternative composition (Summer) to explore the possibility of developing the format of the work into a series.

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Summer – Dunes of Sand

 

Project 1 “Therapeutic Graphics” – Initial Colour and Composition

After the initial experimentation with abstract compositions, I was dissatisfied with what I came up with and hence decided to branch into more narrative-based compositions.

I came up with a basic composition of a character within an imaginary landscape to create a dreamy atmosphere that the viewer could immerse within. To frame the image, I used the idea of a window-within-a-window by creating a porthole frame – to give the experience of peering out from a vessel (e.g. a submarine) to see new lands.

For the colour palettes, I picked colours from various nature photographs to compose a variety of colour palettes. Then I superimposed that colour palettes on the composition to test out the mood each colour palette could create.

Colour Palette

Colour Palette

(From top) Earth/Forest

Sky

Woods

Sunset

Colour Composition 1 (Earth/ Forest)

Colour Composition 1 (Earth/ Forest)

Colour Composition 02 - Sky

Colour Composition 02 (Sky)

Colour Composition 02

Colour Composition 03 (Woods)

Colour Composition 04 (Sunset)

Colour Composition 04 (Sunset)

Based on the critique from the class, most of them liked the second colour palette (sky) and thought it to be the most dreamy (and thus the most therapeutic). In contrast, many people found the presence of the figure slightly disturbing and to hold pretty negative connotations with regards to the viewer and the hospital environment – something that I didn’t really notice until I was done with the work.

Hence, I decided to

  1. Branch out on purple/ blue colour scheme
  2. Do up a more general landscape (without the character)

(to be continued in next post!)