1. neutral / 2. anger / 3. calm / 4. frustration / 5. excitement
1. neutral – the lines are orderly and straight, with the ends tapered off. this is to show the feeling of being “solid” and even though the emotions may fade off, it does not take away from the fact that you are level-headed in any situation.
2. anger – the lines are haphazard and jagged to show the lack of control when one is truly enraged. if you feel the paper, you can also feel the indents where i “”””stabbed”””” the paper in an effort to simulate the sharp bursts of unbridled rage we feel at times. the white spaces symbolise temperature – when you experience “white hot” anger.
3. calm – the black symbolises existing darkness in the world, whereas the waves show the calm within the chaos. i chose grey not just because aesthetically it was less jarring than white, but also to show that even when the black taints the calm white (to form grey), the motion and flow is unaffected and still carries on.
4. frustration – often we see in films when people, e.g. bosses in the office, get frustrated, they slam their hands onto the table before going on an annoyed rant about something. so i did the same and stamped my hands onto the paper while i was actually feeling frustrated.
5. excitement – this took a long time to think of, and hopefully this makes sense. the ink symbolises a film strip. a film strip reminds me of those we take with film cameras at home. so essentially to me it symbolises a part of your life. the holepunch-confetti is the things that are thrown at you in life. the black, being the bad, and the white being the good. as life goes on (hence the tapering) we experience good and bad things, but it’s the good things that we look forward to that keeps us going. in other words, the good things excite us and make us look forward to another day. sounds a lot more philosophical than how i thought it would be haha
6. disappointment / 7. relief / 8. shock / 9. confusion / 10. gloom
6. disappointment – disappointment to me is like a sharp ice-pick. it’s stabby and it is one of the worst feelings ever (personally). the black and white symbolise the good and bad that we experience. the grey clouds represent where things get mixed up and, as a result of us trying to push for the “white”, the “black” prevails and so the disappointment hits in the shape of a pointy icicle-shaped thing.
7. relief – more colour symbolism. (it’ll be like this for a lot of the strips!) the black represents the negative event that occurs. the colour desaturates down to white, which is to show the dissipation of the negativity. = relief
8. shock – simply the heart-rate of someone when they experience shock.
9. confusion – the shape, resembling the question mark, is hap-hazard and there is no clear direction. it’s kind of similar to us when we’re confused.
10. gloom – this is what i envision the result to be when the positives try to outdo the negatives but end up drowning in the negative. this attempt and subsequent failure to be optimistic to me is gloomy. and the random pattern combined with the subtle colour give it a gloomy feel.
11. exhaustion / 12. sadness / 13. happiness / 14. anxiety / 15. fear
11. exhaustion – the darker spots are the bursts of energy we have initially. the opacity and thickness of the line tapers off as our energy declines.
12. sadness – these lines represent tears. the breaks in the lines = the breaks in between when we’re too tired to cry at that moment. the groupings represent who we’re with and whether we suffer in sadness alone, with a loved one, or with multiple loved ones. (sounds a lot sadder than i expected it to be !!!!!)
13. happiness – the curves are like jumping motions and was painted with a light hand as i was happily dancing (because this was the last strip i did so i was happy to finish the assignment haha). the faded ends show that happiness can start suddenly or even slowly and eventually go away, but the moment will always remain and happiness will be back. (hence the repeated arcs)
14. anxiety – the harsh white lines represent our attempts to make ourselves see positivity, but the white is overwhelmed by the black “negativity”. the sharpness of the lines so the harshness of the emotion onto our psyche.
15. fear – when we’re scared we start sweating and we become pale. that’s what the white is supposed to be. and the black is what is causing the fear. the pointy lines are our heart rate when we’re scared. (unlike shock, where the heart rate only spikes, for fear the increase in heart rate is constant so there is no straight line like in shock) also, the texture is bumpy, just like the goosebumps we get when we feel true fear.
16. shame / 17. guilt / 18. doubt
16. shame – when i feel shameful, i feel like part of me is lost in the embarrassment, when i try to change the part of me (and in a sense “lose” that part) that caused the shame in order to distance myself from the thing and pretend like it never happened.
17. guilt – the background pattern is meant to represent prayer, as it is common for people to pray for forgiveness when they’ve done something wrong. like in the movies, we see people going to confessionals when they’ve done wrong and go “forgive me, father, for i have sinned”, so this pattern was derived from the forearms when we are in prayer. the rope – is a little dark. it’s meant to be nooses. it’s not uncommon for people to relinquish responsibility for their actions / people who cannot take the guilt anymore to hang themselves.
18. doubt – when we’re feeling doubt it’s like a cloud comes over us and hazes over our thoughts and we begin to question decisions that we would otherwise be clear about, like a cloud on a sunny day.
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so those are my 18 strips! this assignment was quite interesting and it was fun to try and fit emotions into 257mm x 60mm pieces of paper using abstract art. i generally struggle to exhibit emotions so this was an interesting experience and i hope i can improve on my ability to tell stories through art1
