*You are reading THE visual Journal of Hong Li Peng. This journal might contain so many errors in grammar and spelling that it will make you feel like a genius. This journal also documents the authors artworks and thought process on how they were created. And Joy.

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For the 3rd lesson on 2D, I was faced with a difficult question that was asked by Prof Ina.

Who inspired my work?

That really caught me by surprise, cause it was needed for our visual journal and I didn’t know much artist, arguably i didn’t know any artist. For someone who came from JC with close to zero art background, this was a challenge. Apart from Leonardo Da Vinci, who I admire for his works that are not art related, the only artist i possibly knew were Mangakas or the few artist the class had to present on during our first lesson.

So I was kind of stuck, wondering how I was gonna make the prints I had made a few weeks ago, related to some random famous artist that i didn’t know or would come to know, if I googled hard enough.

Then I gave up. Looking for an Artist to give me inspiration was hard, but what was harder was doing something that didn’t feel like me. What kind of artist would I be if my work didn’t feel like mine?

So I stuck with my plan, use only paper, and my own will to explore and experiment, and possibly create something new. (All by mono-printing).

So I started working…

This was inspired by my previous work of the rose. I was wondering what else I could come up with. So I thought of stuff similar to the water lilies in a pond. So I twisted the paper towels but left a bit open towards the top. I had a mental image of what it would look like, and it came very close to what I wanted.

Next I wanted to create something more random…

This was also kind of inspired by my rose print. I wanted to create a similar effect by creating a cone with A3 paper, then crush it from top down. It didn’t crush straight down, but started slanting to a side towards the end. This is see by the concentrated patterns towards the top of the print, and less of it at the bottom of the print. It kind of looked like a bunch of weird ice cubes to me. Although it didn’t create the result I wanted, It did make something random and unexpected that still looked decent.

Then I tried out the lilies idea again, but with more twist at the end…

Inspired by vines, i proceeded to twist more paper towels, but all the way through. I got this idea from how i would twist tissue paper last time to stuff up my nose whenever it bled.

And it worked. It was what I had seen in my head. It was really nice and pretty. Like random vines, with their turning and twisting.

So I tried to combine some ideas…

This was a combination of 2 ideas, the rose (Again…) and the vines. The twisted rolls were kept straight this time and i placed the rose in the center. I did this twice, but both effects were not very clear. It was still a decent print, but the thickness of the combined paper towels might have been too thick to be effectively printed.

These were what I came up with. I’m not sure if anyone else out there has done this. But I can tell myself that i worked these ideas out, inspired by the usual things the happen around me. (Though you can argue that mono-printing was thought to me, but lets not go there…)

Think. Try. Create. Cause… Isn’t it more fun that way?

I’ll end this with a quote I learnt from a TV show

“Every martial art in the world was created by someone, So why cant i create my own martial arts” – Some guy from a TV Show.