Category: Research

Final: Ego In Different Settings | The Artsy Wallflower

November 13, 2016 by Charlotte·0 Comments

Oh no, I realised I missed out quite a bit on what I wanted to share during the presentation on Thursday… The one project where I’m supposed to be the most calm since it’s something really personal. Guess my nervousness got the better of me, especially since I was the second last to present (for the first time)… Thankfully there’s still this OSS post. Hopefully it makes up a little for the lost content. I felt that the presentation could have been so much better if I did not momentarily blank out! ???

CONCEPT

For this project I knew I wanted to focus on tactility and textures. Thus my initial idea was to do different interpretations based on one same equation using the mediums and colour theories as the varying factors which Joy said was possible. But after going into the brainstorming process, I realised that it wouldn’t be exactly feasible. It’ll probably turn out too monotonous by just having repeating motifs throughout with the change of colours and mediums used.

Scratch that idea, I came up with another based off the project brief that is You + A Setting = You and The Setting Interacting. I decided to make the 12 compositions very me and personal by sharing 4 THINGS ABOUT ME with the application of the colour theories learnt and exploration of mixed medium/techniques that I personally enjoy.

EXECUTION

The basic approach for each of the 12 compositions was to do up a digital “base”/surface first and then treat the surface using various traditional mediums/hands-on art techniques. I vectorised a drawn silhouette of myself to establish a recurring motif of sorts throughout the 12 compositions as well as to use it as a representative motif of “ME” in the equation.

There was also the use of geometric shapes in the background for the compositions for consistency as I didn’t want the background of the compositions to be too plain. On the other hand, colour theories used were mainly analogous, complementary, triadic and monochrome harmonies with some colours used intentionally because of it’s colour symbolism which would be subsequently explained in the respective equations created.

EQUATION 1 – Me + nature/floral = A Calm State Of Mind

I had in mind colours of nature while working on this first equation. I felt that muted light “woody”-brownish colours would best for this as I intended to treat the surface using nature related materials such as dried flowers, leaves, potpourri and wooden chips.

For the first composition I slowly established the theme of the equation by surrounding my silhouette with some of the nature related materials and the second is pretty much establishing the nature setting. In the final composition, a zen and calm state with the leaf patterns being spatially spaced away from one another and a zen symbol surrounding the silhouette is used.

Colour theories used:
Monochrome: Different shades of Brown
Analogous & Triadic: Yellow, Orange, Green , Brown

EQUATION 2: An Uncomfortable Me + More Purple, Less Yellow = A Happier Me

The idea for this second equation came by surprise. I was trying to think of one while exploring the complementary colour theory on Adobe Kuler and these two colours came out which led to my idea!

My favourite and hated colours by coincidence haha. Yellow’s a colour that I dislike because of how in Primary and Secondary School I was placed in the yellow house. Yes, that’s 10 years of being in the same house… ? and not forgetting my hate for anything cheese (cheese is yellow too) which often turns out to be an irony since I still take some cheese foods like pizza… So yes, this was a super appropriate colour. And purple for no particular reason is my favourite colour, 80% of my items owned used to be in this colour.

For the first composition, I flipped my silhouette upside down so as to show discomfort with my disliked colour and by creating a various sized textured circles in the background, I wanted to bring across the idea of a cheese patten. In the second composition I start to balance out the colours on both sides, introducing my favourite colour and my silhouette orientation slowly going back to a normal orientation. Then the last composition, the silhouette’s finally in a normal orientation (a happy me) since it’s totally now in my favourite colour 🙂

Colour theories used:
Complementary: Purple and Yellow
Monochrome: Different shades of Purple and Yellow in the geometrical background

EQUATION 3: Me in Korea + Taiwan = My favourite countries (fusion)

For this equation, I used the medium of collage to bring out tactility and I wanted to share my favourite countries. I’ve travelled to a few countries over the years but these two are my ultimate favourite of all. I think I generally favour Asian countries more.

For this equation in particular, there’s the use of blacks and whites as I wanted to balance out the layers of colours when using the collage medium. I felt the use of the neutral colours made the composition look less messy and helped placed emphasis when necessary (the last composition)

?? Korea (Composition 1): I used the colour red here as it symbolises passion, my passion for the country. I love everything Korean, from the food, the culture, their shows, fashion, music… I guess that’s partially why my friends used to call me “Oriental Korean” haha. I was occasionally disturbed on how I resembled one because of my tiny eyes. Jokes aside, I used magazine and brochures collected from the country, browsed through my old magazine stash to cut out items that are Korean in analogous/monochromatic harmony to fit the colour theory. Collaged it at the bottom of my silhouette.

?? Taiwan (Composition 2): My other favourite country would be Taiwan, similar to the first composition, I made use of tickets, brochures and magazines collected from the trip to create this collage as well.

The Fusion (Composition 3): So since these two countries are my favourites, I decided to make it into a fusion looking composition for the last one. Different elements from each countries are scattered across the composition mixing with each other showing a fusion. For instance, the Korea images that were in line with red monochromes can be found in blue monochromes as well, similarly for the Taiwan images, they can be found in red monochromatic colours too.

Colour theories used:
Monochrome: Different shades of Red and Blue
Triadic: Red, Blue, Yellow (a.k.a. the primary colours)

EQUATION 4: Artsy + Wallflower = An Artsy Wallflower

Last equation! Prior to doing it, I was worried that the first composition of the representing idea of ME with the word Artsy would not be clearly shown as the compositions done up so far have been looking rather artsy because of the textures added using various craft materials. I brought it up during group consultations but Joy and my classmates said that it shouldn’t be too much of a concern that I was overthinking. (I guess I tend to do that all the time haha..)

Guess they were right as eventually I established the idea of Artsy in the first composition by having art splatters all over and the mediums used over it to bring across the idea were craft materials that have appeared in the 9 compositions before this – e.g. dried leaves and flowers, felt, gravel, embroidered patches etc. ?

The second composition had to establish the idea of Wallflower. My personality and since it had to be a setting, I tried to create a visual of it by having a wall dimensionality of sorts in the digital “base” (also like a literal representation of the ‘wall’ in Wallflower. Scaling down my silhouette to fit it inside the square that extends out to form the wall to portray the idea of retreat, with the flower symbol hiding behind the flower/square encasing the silhouette. ?

After completing the composition I realised that the “wall” was not expressed well, it lacked something. Aha, to add dimensionality and emphasis of the idea, I eventually grabbed some suede strings of the similar hue and glued it over the lines forming the wall.

The colour used throughout as the base for the equation is the colour orange as it symbolises creativity which is closely linked to the idea of artsy. There you have it, Artsy Wallflower 🙂

Colour theories used:
Complementary: Blue and Orange
Analogous: Yellow, Orange, Red, Pink, Blue, Purple
Monochrome: Different shades of Blue and Orange

CURATION

This time round for curation, it was based on the big overarching theme that I had in mind: The Artsy Wallflower ??. Friends who follow me on my social media handles or visited my OSS blog might have noticed that under the description bios, I never fail to put the words “artsy wallflower”. At least that’s how I see myself – A wallflower that’s artsy. I’m an introvert by nature and I really love artsy stuff.

I intentionally arranged the equations from the lightest to the darkest shade and I realised they each equation are linked to one another by the analogous colour theory of yellow, red, orange. With the equation of the Artsy Wallflower being the last as I feel it sums up the concept of my project well.

Not sure if you realised but my silhouette is faceless and my facial features are created by a variety of embroidered flower patches taking into consideration the colour theories used in each equation. In some, my face is just covered by a single flower in the centre/they are used to form the cheeks, eyes or even hair accessories. I intended to take the Artsy Wallflower idea up another level by showing it through silhouettes decorated with embroidered flower patches.????????

CHALLENGES FACED

Challenges were inevitable for this project too. Finalising the concept was one of it as I started off shaky and we were working with a really tight timeline of 3 weeks. I had to re-consider my options of wanting to work with various mediums in particular embroidery and patchwork which would definitely take up a lot of time and I managed to find a solution!! ?? I ended up using similar mediums like the already embroidered flower embellishments, patchwork pieces, felt etc.

Another challenge was that as I went ahead to treat the surfaces using the traditional method some of them did not turn out to what I envisioned them to be as my materials did not exactly match the hues of the digital “base” that was designed. I gotta admit the compositions came together pretty much by the feels I got as I did it.

OVERALL THOUGHTS

I loved the project so much as I finally got to do some hands-on craft work again. Thanks to the freedom of the project brief! It didn’t feel like a project per say more like a therapeutic process rather. Just that there was the added slight pressure of a deadline.

I’m so glad I got to bring bring my love for craftwork and my default social media bio to the table for this haha. Personally, I think I’ve gotten way more inspirations and ideas on how to go about doing the project as compared to the previous two.

Also, I think I was lucky with the materials used. As they were all from my art stash, they were one-off materials and I wouldn’t knew if they’d fit the colour theories for each equation but they all did nicely. Thanks to this project I realised how much craft materials I’ve amassed over the years ?

(BONUS) FINAL THOUGHTS ABOUT 2D 1

I SUPER SUPER LOVE 2D 1. It has been such an intense journey of medium exploration and conceptualisation yet it’s still my favourite foundation module of all. Thank you Joy for being such a wonderful teacher to the class. You never fail to provide some of the best suggestions/solutions whenever we’re stuck with our ideas and your inputs on how we can improve are really helpful!

Also, thank you Joy for the class pizza treat last Thursday! 🙂

2D 1, I’ll see you next sem for sure. ?❤️

Process: Ego In Different Settings | The Early Stages

November 13, 2016 by Charlotte·0 Comments

Prior to the execution of the project, Pinterest was my go to site for inspirations. You can pretty much call it a heaven/library for art inspirations. I’ve never used it so Pinterest intensely before and every time I end up browsing off topic because one pin leads to another interesting one. ?

It helped me identified the medium and feel I was going for as this round’s project allowed us to explore any medium we wanted to. Here comes the problem. Whenever there’s more freedom in a project given, there’s so many possibilities and there comes the headache of narrowing down the ideas. It’s hard but it eventually worked out. 🙂 Right off the bat, I had mediums in mind that I wanted to try out on the compositions.

Below are some I was intrigued by and those I already had in mind as mentioned.

EMBROIDERY/PATCHWORK

I love how embroidery is so versatile. It can even be done on plastic bags!!

Izziyana Suhaimi: http://www.izziyanasuhaimi.com/

An artist who does fashion illustrations with embroidered accents and accessories.

COLLAGE

Linking back to the Dadaism art movement, this medium was pretty relevant to the tactility I has in mind for the project as well. Here are some artist references I chanced upon while browsing through Pinterest.

More of her works: http://beciorpin.com/

CRAFTWORK

More of her works: http://anneten.nl/

TYPOGRAPHY (EXTRA)

Example

Another idea I had was to try using word typography and translate it into a literal image from the words. Example would be like the image above. Using the word Cat to form an image of an cat from it. I thought I could apply idea/technique this to this project to form each equation and composition which I thought could’ve been rather interesting.

So in this case, something that represents ME, e.g. A flower. So using the word flower form an image of a flower. But I figured that it’d take a super long time to get the image-typography thing going as it would’ve been a challenge visualising.

COLOUR THEORY RESEARCH & COLOUR INSPIRATIONS ?

For this project a huge component of it was for use to apply colour theories. So before starting on the compositions our homework was to research on what they were. This was a table that I found to be a really helpful summary of the various kinds of colour theories around.

Another interesting aspect of colours was that it could represent one’s emotions and feelings. It could also symbolise something. Some examples of emotions as seen below in the chart. I later on applied this to my compositions as well.

For colours, I really wanted to go for pastel hues or pop hues as they were colours that I recently took a liking to after follower a local embroidery artist and a local designer on Instagram. I particularly enjoy the range of colours they worked with and was inspired to take on a similar colour schemes for my compositions.

@teeteeheehee: https://www.instagram.com/teeteeheehee/

@ultraaviolets: https://www.instagram.com/ultraaviolets/

Besides the above inspirations, I got ideas from design seeds too. It’s this account on Pinterest that provides a wide range of ready mixed colour palettes. Based on these, I generated a colour scheme for each row of compositions using Adobe Kuler since we had to make apply colours in accordance to the colour harmonies we learnt and also taking in account my theme for each equation.

Bright Hues

Another artist that used vibrant colours in her works, Kate Shaw

More of her works: http://www.kateshaw.org/?doing_wp_cron=1478882812.2931230068206787109375

Pastel/Muted Hues

Eventually I think I was leaning more towards the pastel and muted range of colours as my eventual rows of compositions weren’t highly saturated and hard on the eyes. You can see the end-product in my final post so keep reading 🙂

Through all these research, I’ve decided to go with the basic idea of having every composition start off with a digital “base” first and I will treat the surface thereafter with a traditional medium since during consultation Joy mention that the composition shouldn’t be fully 3D, ideally it should still have some 2D flat elements to it.

Colour Notation, Systems

October 29, 2016 by Charlotte·0 Comments

By Charlotte, Hwee Ann and Leehwa

Here’s what that my group and I came up with for our presentation topic for 2D class which would be rather helpful for our final project, Ego In Different Settings.

We covered two areas namely:
Colour Notation – Hue, Value, Chroma
Colour Systems – Additive, Subtractive & Pantone

Final: Forrest Gump | Uniquely Singapore

October 22, 2016 by Charlotte·0 Comments

Here’s a documentation of the final stages of Forrest Gump, a more in-depth explanation of the execution of each of the four compositions, some challenges faced and the concept. Similarly as with the first project, there might be a little overlap of documentation that may/may not have been mentioned in my previous work-in-progress posts.

CONCEPT: This project somehow took on a patriotism theme where all compositions were in Singapore context – the issues/happenings in the Singapore scene. As the first 2 compositions that I’ve came up with were swaying towards that direction.

EXECUTION: In terms of execution, it took me a few tries for some of the compositions to get to how they looked like for submission but there were some that came naturally too.

1. “The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all.” – Mulan (1998)

Based on Singapore’s history

The first composition which also turned out to be the chosen composition for printing onto the tote bag as I felt that it had significance. It felt like the core of all the 4 compositions which would be further explained in the CURATION part of this post at the back.

This quote is based on one of my all-time favourite Disney movies, Mulan and the idea came about after a clarification with Joy on the execution of the assignment and thereafter sharing with her several ideas that I’ve came up with for the chosen quotes. What I did (as with all the other 3 compositions) was to mark out the keywords from the quote and then bring out its essence in the composition created. So I thought it should be literal but I was then told that the quote could totally take on a whole new interpretation – giving it a storyline etc. It need not be related to the movie.

I went back thinking about the quote, the word flower and adversity was still stuck in my head. Then suddenly the thought of Singapore going through the tumultuous times came to mind. Adversity: Represented through the tumultuous times of Singapore – The bus riots, Japanese occupation etc. I found some visuals from that period online. Flower: The national flower of Singapore, Vanda Miss Joaquim. It could represent Singapore in this case, and I intentionally placed it in the centre of the composition, it in bloom to bring out the phrase “blooms in adversity” as well as to show the beauty of it having been through all these adversities.

What you see is the revised version of the composition after having gone through consultation with Joy where she suggested for all the elements to be pointing towards the national flower so that when viewed

If you compare the composition shown in the consultation post and this composition , you’d realise that the bus which reflects the Hock Lee Bus Riots was pointing in another direction whereas the bus here is following the approach of convergence.

2. “I can taste so many flavours!” – Grave Of The Fireflies (1988)

Based on the Singapore music scene

This was the second composition I came up with. It’s based on a quote from one of my favourite Studio Ghibli movies from 1988, Grave of The Fireflies. I couldn’t think of how I want to create the composition at first but wanted to closely relate it to the word taste and bring out the word flavours as well (my identified keywords from the quote).

I searched for the definition of taste and found:

taste

v.tast·ed, tast·ing, tastes

v.tr.

1. To distinguish the flavor of by taking into the mouth.

2. To eat or drink a small quantity of.

3. To partake of, especially for the first time; experience: prisoners finally tasting freedom.

4. Archaic To appreciate or enjoy.

v.intr.

1. To distinguish flavors in the mouth.

2. To have a distinct flavor

3. To eat or drink a small amount.

4. To have experience or enjoyment; partake

Source: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/taste

It could also mean the taste of something you’ve experienced. It need not necessarily be related to tasting food. As I studied Mass Communication in polytechnic, we were exposed heavily to the media scene. Singapore especially. That’s when I slowly got to know of Singapore music and took a huge liking to it. So I figured why not base it on that? This composition is rather personal I guess.

Flavours: In this context, it is the different music genres in the Singapore music scene and Taste: The different music genres I’ve listened to. My reason for choosing these few singers in particular when there are so many around is because over the years and in recent times, these singers have one way or another represented Singapore in countries like China, Korea and many more. They are pretty much the country’s pride and the more popular and prominent ones around to date. Also, they each represent a different music genre. e.g.

The Sam Willows: Folk-pop
Charlie Lim: Jazz/Blues
iNCH: Indie Rock
Gentle Bones: Pop, R&B
Nathan Hartono: Pop, Jazz
JJ Lin/Stefanie Sun: Mandopop

and more. After creating this composition, I realised I was swaying towards the theme of patriotism.

3.“You’re entirely bonkers. But I’ll tell you a secret, all the best people are.” – Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Based on kiasuism in Singapore

The third composition did not turn out like this. If you’ve been following my earlier post on the consultations I had with Joy, you would have realised that it was based off the movie itself (Alice in Wonderland) with the Mad Hatter as the main character not a kid.

The keywords in this quote were bonkers and best. Since I was going along with the concept of patriotism, I changed up the composition with the intention of showing the kiasu (a.k.a scared lose) culture that’s present in Singapore among parents and their young kids, still preserving some of the elements from the initial composition featuring the Mad Hatter.

The phrase “you’re entirely bonkers” is directed to the parents who send their kids to pick up many different skill sets when they young e.g. tuition, arts, music – as seen in the images used in the composition and then “all the best people are” is shown through the focus on the kid where they would definitely stand at advantage as compared to other families’ kids by being the smarter one when they grow older (note: the bow tie used as a symbol for smart).

As mentioned in the consultation post, by having a flat bitmap/image traced image I didn’t think it would bring out the word bonkers in the quote. Through the research done for the original composition, I tweaked the current one to fit the patriotism concept and applied the various art styles of adding a nerdy looking spectacle frame over the kid’s face with blown up proportions of the facial features for emphasis.

I remembered that Joy had suggested that I could use recognisable Singapore logos like the Popular Bookstore logo etc. to give it the additional Singapore touch. I tried but it somehow did not match the aesthetics/look I was trying to achieve for the composition.

4.“Sometimes the right path is not the easiest one.” – Pocahontas (1995)

Based on a stigma in Singapore

A little backstory about this last composition… I didn’t intend on using this quote. I wanted to create another composition based on the second quote: “I can taste so many flavours” but with a more literal approach of having many various flavours in food and how it we taste it through our tastebuds: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, spicy and more.

And for a Singapore context, I wanted to use our local delicacies, each dish/food representing one taste but as i got down to doing it it was tough. As there were way too many local delicacies around and placing them in the composition would just create yet another collage-looking direct representation composition of the same quote. It will look very much similar to the music one.

Plus after exploring bitmap and image trace on the dishes and food, they still looked flat despite trying out the various techniques. It didn’t turn out that nice. So based on another quote, I came up with this composition that’s inspired by this stigma in Singapore quite last minute.

The keywords I identified this time round were right path and not the easiest. In Singapore context, right path: interpreted as following what you think is right in your heart, for example chasing/pursuing your passion. And for the passions that has got to do with the arts, it is more often than not not the easiest path to take. Some parents are still apprehensive of such passions and I portrayed it in the composition through the use of symbolism.

Path: I literally used a path, a winding one in particular and it seems like there’s no end point to show how arduous the journey might be. Placing further emphasis on the phrase “not the easiest path” in the quote.
Hurdles, mountains: Literal representations of obstacles
Flames: As fury from disapproving parents on pursuing the arts in Singapore plus a disapproving looking mouth at the top left corner of the composition
A collage of various arts in Singapore at the bottom right corner of the composition: Esplanade (representing theatre), famous local singer Kit Chan (for music), a ballerina (for dance), art palette (for fine arts) I purposely chose the images based on Singapore context.

CURATION

I had a eureka moment for curating my compositions for presentation day. As I was doing the compositions, the thought of arranging them to form another flower came to mind, bringing me back to the point of the first quote as being the core of all the compositions as mentioned at the start of the post.

The first composition is the bud of the flower (the core) and the other 3 branching out as the flower petals. All of these makes up Singapore, reflects the beauty of the country how it has blossomed over the years.

CHALLENGES FACED: As with all assignments, none of it would be exactly smooth sailing. Maybe slightly better but there’s bound to be hiccups along the way. For this project, it kind of came at close to the end. I believe with most of us, it’s the silkscreen bit where we had to print our chosen design onto the tote bag for submission. Sure it may have turned out fine previously on newsprint paper during the trial week but on the tote bag it came out otherwise… (W-H-Y)

What Joy suggested for us to do before printing onto the tote bag was to test print the design onto a similar material so as to check its results. I only brought one recycled tote bag of similar material to try out but I might have used too much ink and force resulting in a heavily smudged print (bottom left). So I had no choice but to gauge and try out on the final tote bag the second time round.

Failed once again… the fine details of the composition did not come out fully and I was really apprehensive of trying out the third time as it was the last side I had of the tote bag and if I fail once again that meant I had to invest in a new one as it was required for submission on presentation day. Guess it was do or die… Surprisingly the fine details of the composition were printed on nicely this time round and I managed to get l my desired print (bottom right) so yay and phew! 🙂

Silkscreen end product

Overall I really enjoyed this assignment from start to end. At the beginning of the assignment, I would’ve never expected that I would create 4 entirely different patriotic compositions from 4 very different movie quotes. I guess that’s the beauty of art, you’ll never know what you’ll end up creating.

Even though we all were given the same project brief, all of us came up with very different compositions which were all interesting in their own way.

Now onto the final project!! 🙂

Consultations • & Feeling the emotions

September 7, 2016 by Charlotte·0 Comments

Because I’m horrible at updating on my progress regularly… I should finally. Here’s a documentation of the past few weeks of work-in-progress in class.

WEEK 3: My lines were not doing too well… Even though I ended up with a stash of explorations (in particular mark making), I was unable to associate and match them with any of the emotions on a personal level. It was a struggle since I don’t usually express myself often.

I also realised that across the various art techniques I’ve tried, associating an emotion to the strip through means of drawing is easier for me as compared to mark making and the other techniques.

It was individual consultation week that day and I then voiced out these difficulties I faced to Joy. I kind of knew I wanted to do mark making using potpourri or at least the idea of using objects from nature/made from nature since I liked those kind of stuff. But was unable to create a link to the emotions which was a crisis.

The consultation session helped aplenty. 🙂 Joy suggested that I could go about expressing the emotions through three different intensity levels based on the requirement that we were supposed to have 3 emotions each from the same category of primary emotions. The comfort levels of working with the various art techniques and medium.

For example the primary emotion, Love. Attraction (the simplest form of love to me) can be expressed through drawing (the technique I’m most comfortable with. Followed by Love (a neutral form) using both the mark making and drawing technique and lastly, Passion (which is like the most intense form of love) expressed through the technique I am most uncomfortable with which is mark making as I am unable to associate an emotion with the marks made.

An outline of the concept (IN DIAGRAM FORM)

The advice from Joy made things so much clearer for me as I was terribly worried about not having say “an overall theme” per say for this assignment unlike my fellow peers who have their ‘BIG STORY’ that will be weaved/told across all their 18 lines of emotions.

MY IDEA: My expression of emotions on the strips would be more technique based rather than concept based and trying to keep things simple, I’ll be using chinese ink to create the marks, drawings and a mixture of both for my lines. The objects used would be items from or related to nature. No special paper would be used, just normal paper for simplicity. I think mine is focusing heavily on technique.

WEEK 4: The week before submission. Things are slowly starting to take shape as I’ve locked down my concept and layout of the strips (how I want to present it on critique day). Yay 😀

We moved on to group consultations that lesson, where we shared with each other our work progress, ideas and problems we are facing with creating the lines so as to get constructive feedback and creative feedback from each other for improvement. It was a rather productive session as I continued to produce my lines of emotions in class.

A few more experiments.

An interesting tool (see above image) I chanced upon in the 2D lab while working on my lines A bunch of calligraphy brushes stuck together to form this one huge & broad brush. I used the back of the brush to create these hole patterns which I’ll be using in one of my 18 strips for submission.

Till then, back to the final stages of preparation work for Thursday’s submission! ??????

Process: Of Mark Making and Monoprinting

September 6, 2016 by Charlotte·0 Comments

The first 2 to 3 weeks of the My Line Is Emo project was spent on exploring the possible techniques that I can apply for this project. We took the time in class to try out Monoprinting and was introduced to Mark Making as well.

Prior to 2D class, I had tried something similar to monoprinting before back in polytechnic for an Art & Design elective module. It was to create a linocut print. Whereas for mark making it was something entirely new to me and the fact that you can use almost just about anything and everything around to create marks… it was really fascinating.

But it’s also because of the endless possibilities of mark making that made it hard to narrow down to an overall concept for this project that required us to come up with 18 strips of different emotions.

Having chanced upon a bag of loose potpourri at home, I figured it’d be pretty cool to use the different textures of each potpourri piece to create various marks. Brought it to class the following week to experiment, and it worked! I got a variety of marks.Created some monoprints as well with loose materials found in the 2D studio.

Here are some pieces made from my mark marking and monoprinting exploration in class for the first 3 week and some of the objects I used to create the marks.

Exploration with chinese in and mark making tools.

First attempt at coming up with patterns/marks to associate with the meanings for the ‘My Line Is Emo’ project on the exercise template that was given to us.

This exercise template was then shared with Joy during our individual consultations, to get feedback and to figure out the correct direction for the project, decide what steps to take next.