A line is a dot that went for a walk and you, the reader, are going for a really long walk through my thought process while working on assignment 1 which is unfortunately longer than this unnecessarily long title.

(in a bid to keep an already lengthy post short the images are kept small, but please do click on them to get a more detailed look. or not)

I was really excited when briefed on project 1 as I thought it was a pretty open one with lots of room for free expression. (little did I know jeng jeng jeng…..)

And so I began working on it, where I scribbled random ideas picked up from research in class.

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Those are some of my initial ideas/creative ‘sparks’ I got in class and quickly took them down. I also got exposed to 2 new artists that I really appreciate (whom you should all be familiar with by now ahem): Julie Mehretu and Cai GuoQiang. I really loved how Julie created her pieces using a wide array of lines, forms, random scribbles and colours and I can definitely see myself drawing lots of inspiration from her in my future work. The video shown in class of Mr Cai was really riveting, especially the part where he attached a pen to the end of a broomstick to draw on large pieces of paper. I thought that was really smart of him, and his use of such an uncanny material like gunpowder to create art had a big impact on my final piece.

If you look really closely at the picture of my notes above you might see that I denote important (or more like overly ambitious and highly unfeasible) ideas with a badly drawn star.

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In case you didn’t get it (excuse the horrendous English btw)

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Yeah you’re probably wondering the same thing I did as I wrote that down: “Wah! Sure not?! Where got time bro!”

‘Reuben, you’re right. Our eyes are bigger than our stomachs.’- George Clooney, Ocean’s Eleven.

cannot

So on I went to do some research and began sketching the individual lines. (I was still under the impression at that time that we could just interpret the 18 emotions however we liked, without having a big concept)

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Right click game strong!

Not going to show any individual pictures because you probably also have them in your computer. Now on to the sketches.

 

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And then I crashed head first into the wall right at creative-block street.

Which was when I realised that I didn’t exactly know the definitions of the 18 emotions, and went to look all of them up in the dictionary.

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In hindsight, that didn’t help much, except now I actually knew what ‘sloven’ meant and how much it described me.

On 29th August during lesson I went down to the library, browsed through some books on lines, some of which are shown below. They really helped in generating ideas for certain emotions.

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So there he was, ambitious Andrew with a head full of sensual lines, head slightly tilted upwards as he thought about the extremely productive time spent at the library flipping through pictures of someone else’s sensual lines. The painfully slow pace at which the handicapped lift carried him up was a little more bearable today, and managed to survive the entire trip from basement to second floor without swearing. Not even a little “tsk!”. Strolling into class for consultation, Andrew stifled a grin. 

“So what’s your concept?”

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Andrew wasn’t grinning when he got off the chair.

So long story short I didn’t know an overarching concept was required to link all the lines together. I took the handicapped lift down, cursed a few times, bought a latte from the cafe, reminded myself for the 67th time not to buy that shit again as it is way overpriced, drank it in 3 gulps, and headed back to the library to churn out a concept.

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So as you can see above, I labelled and grouped the emotions into good (G) and bad (B), and had 3 concepts. The first was growing up and the emotions that defined each stage (spontaneous as a kid etc), secondly I thought about grouping the lines based on what time of the day I usually felt those emotions, and finally I settled on the concept of ‘My Creative Process’

The concept was to group the emotions into a cycle that reflected my typical creative process, which would be expressed mainly through drawing. I thought about using different mediums/tools to further express the various stages, like drawing the earlier emotions on a foolscap paper as that is where I tend to jot down my ideas. Pencils/pens/markers could also be used to express development of initial sketches to final drawings.

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Over the weekend I grappled with my idea above as certain emotions/lines were best expressed with certain mediums, thus I had to find a more cohesive concept to show this development of ideas into final pieces. And that was when it hit me. I had forgotten about the big picture.

*cue simpsons intro song*

For some reason I’ve always thought this intro music perfectly captured the ‘a-ha!’ moments people get when blessed with a good idea but anyway back to the story I began to conceptualise.

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Some ideas were of a light bulb, the ADM logo, the ADM building, and even ADM’s old logo for VisCom which was

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How’s that for digging up that past Michael Walsh! (it’s the third from the left btw)

Eventually I settled on the ADM building.

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Don I am really sorry for the horrible shading. And the use of a HB pencil.

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Next I researched on the creative process

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And jotted down any phrases that I found could be expanded on

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And from this long list of possible ideas I began experimenting.

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Actual layout
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I actually felt a little like Cai Guoqiang while drawing these carefully measured lines, minus the broom stick and Caucasian audience watching me behind.
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First attempt at using my arm to create ‘exhausted’ emotion
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Experimenting and initial attempts, which were mostly too dark and flat
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Initially for ‘sloven’ I wanted to use ink to convey/replicate the cross-armed sleeping position of students in lecture halls by placing ink on the underside of my arms, but something must’ve been wrong with my coffee that morning which resulted in me obliviously wearing a white long-sleeved tee to a print-making class so I could only try it out with my fingers. Didn’t turn out so well. I really like my long-sleeved white tee.
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Using stacks of post-it notes to create the silhouette of books for my initial ‘distracted’ concept.
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In clockwise direction, experimenting with ink on strings, crushing paper with ink for ‘aggressive’ and using my finger to create prints for ‘distracted’.
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From clockwise, using the coffee cup from ADM cafe to create prints, twigs with ink, and on the right ink with soap.
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Green tea with ink created some pretty cool prints with a slight tinge of green.

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Unused/discarded prints
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Late nights at the studio. Turn up with GLAD!
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Don’t worry I cleaned the mess up
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Late nights at the studio

So you made it to the end.

In case you’re wondering why I chunked all my research/visual journal into one long post, I felt that everything contributed in some way or another to the final outcome. Be it simple research on artists, sketches in visual journal or my untidy idea generation notes, they were all part of my creative process that ultimately led to the finished piece. Considering that my idea for the 18 lines was to guide you through ‘the ADM creative process’, I thought it would be apt and interesting (I hope so) to show you ‘my creative process’, and boy is it long.

Pardon my language, slightly satirical style of writing and arguably inappropriate use of memes but this is a heavily censored and diluted version of what goes on in my head when I’m ‘in the zone’.

Thoughts after: I may have sacrificed the individual aesthetics of each line in order to create the ‘big picture’ of the ADM building and the techniques used were a little repetitive. I completely agree, and after going down this abstract route for assignment 1 I could perhaps focus more on how my piece looks to the general viewer for the next assignment. I really enjoyed this assignment and can proudly say that this is the first piece of art I created, and am really proud of it.

Challenges faced: Definitely the biggest challenge was trying to come up with ways of expressing the particular emotion with objects found in ADM. Some emotions that I had difficulty with were ‘bizarre’, ’embarrassed’ and ‘lyrical’. I thought of their solutions while taking a walk, which I learned from my research about the creative process, and it really helped clear my mind for ideas to flow.

Even though my visual journal contains way too many words for an arts student and isn’t as appealing as that of my fellow class mates (some of which are really pretty and I would totally pay money for) it is an honest window into my head and thought process. Might be a little too systematic for you but like a slave, it works for me. Okay bad joke.

I hope you look forward to another really long post for assignment 2.

I do.

Too.

Forever