[ Introduction ]

Starting out on this project, I was really confused as to how a line or more specifically the marks that make up the line could be used to express emotions, especially when cropped to a small line.

My initial impression of abstract art was that it was an emotion put on paper. Usually large and with a certain choice of colours to evoke a certain emotion when viewing the piece. This project challenged that view entirely with it’s requirement for small monochrome lines cropped and curated from a big piece. This forced me to focus on the values, the texture and the basic elements of design and make use of them to convey my intended emotions.

I first started out researching on the suggested reference artists to observe the mediums and methods that they played with and how it reflected in their work.

[ Research on Artists ]

ED MOSES

Medium: Ed Moses often worked with industrial materials such as polyester resin and latex, which he mixed with paint to create textures and marks.He also painted resin on the back of the canvases so that the liquid could seep through. Other examples of materials that he tried on his work include masking tape and snapped chalk. An example of works where such materials were applied are:

This untitled 3 set piece made in 1975-77 was made on Strathmore boards with acrylic and masking tape. (With the exception of the last piece which was made with charcoal and ink as well.)

Technique: He often layered his different mediums which created different values on paper to invoke a sense of depth on his art pieces. Another way he achieved this was by paper collage where the paintings seem to be hiding under another layer that has been torn open. E.g:

 

SOL LEWITT 

Lewitt as an artist is intriguing in that he brought to question how much authority an artists needs in his art. He believes that the idea and concept of an artwork is an art on its own. Thus he gives instructions for his work to his assistants in “blueprints” that are deliberately vague so that the end result is not controlled by the artist that conceived the work.

Medium: Lewitt emphasized very often on the process or the lack thereof. Thus, he varies in terms of the simplicity of his materials. As compared to the other artists in this list, he does not use industrial materials to create his work, instead opting for more traditional materials such as wood, canvas and paint.

Techniques: Lewitt often used scribbles, doodles and geometric shapes to create a sense of chiaroscuro in his pieces which give them a 3D feeling on their 2D form.

For example in Sol Lewitt’s Scribbles, the works are built up using basic shapes and simple marks  of layered graphite scribbles. The end result “renders for without space” and create a sense of depth and curvature despite being on a flat wall. The varying layers and density of the gray bands of graphite scribbles thus take on a temporal, undulating quality.

 

CAI GUO QIANG

Cai’s work can be considered by some as a performance pieces. Often due to the massive scale of the marks made, he makes them on location before installing them directly.

Medium: He works mainly with gunpowder and fire on specially made paper as he “wanted to investigate both the destructive and the constructive nature of gunpowder, and to look at how destruction can create something as well.”

Technique: He arranges gunpowder fuses, loose explosive powders and some times cardboard and paper stencils on sheets to create silhouetted forms on the sheet. He also adds wooden boards to disperse the patterns formed on the paper from the smoke and adds rocks to intensify the explosion.

The resulting marks created by the explosions and resulting fire create a long flowing pattern across the sheet with tinges of yellow and varying shades of brown and black creating an interesting texture.

One example how such looks were applied was in his large-scale explosion events, “Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Meters: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 10 (1993)”, for which Cai ignited a line of fire—evocative of a dragon gliding across the land—using 10,000 meters of fuse extending from the end of the Great Wall into the Gobi Desert. The drawing is mounted on 12 oversized panels, and the viewer must walk along the length of the work to fully experience it. The panels of the folding screen are displayed in a pattern that shifts the perspective of the drawing in and out, mimicking the peaks and valleys of the Great Wall while also suggesting, as does the wall itself, the undulating body of a dragon.

 

[ LET THE FUN BEGIN ]

During this session, I wanted to experiment on just to see how texture and the hardness of the medium affecting the emotions they generated in the viewer due to the marks as well as how the techniques the materials were used in would affect the final outcome.

I realised that most of the marks I made with soft materials or when I mixed ink with water generated more happy and gentler emotions.

For example, I mixed bubble solution and ink and blew bubbles onto paper to form a fairly consistent and soft pattern.

However not all “soft” materials were a success. I tried imprinting the dried flowers from my graduation bouquet but they just fell apart in the ink.

I also experimented with a makeup sponge. As the one I brought was a triangular one, I was able to make geometric shapes on the paper. When layered it formed an interesting, spray paint like quality.

 

On the other hand, sharp objects with hard edges often projected harsher emotions or emotions with more energy due to the tight distance between the marks and their high contrast. For example, I experimented with satay sticks, metal, brushes, straws and seashells. I particularly liked the variation in the thickness of the marks for the satay stick.

I also experimented using the hard objects in varying movements. Hitting the paper, dragging across the paper and rolling the material across the paper. The movement often  generated elongated and explosive  splatters which conveyed a sense of energy and guided the viewer’s eye across the canvas due to the decreasing size of the “dots” the further they were from the source of impact.

Consult Critique

My original idea of using mark making to express my emotions“Growing Up” was first born when using the medium of bubble blowing. Firstly the medium and messiness of it reminded me of my childhood.

From there, I started crafting my concept around the theme of childhood. I started using materials that related to childhood to see how they translated on paper.

Materials such as bubbles and the makeup sponge translated quite well on the paper. 

The memories I associated with the materials and emotion all seemed to revolve around my mother and thus Joy suggested that I narrow down my theme to my childhood memories with my mother. This led to the idea of doing a collaboration piece with my mom and make it a sort of dialogue between the two of us as we revisit portions of my growing up.

[ ROUND 2 ]

Bubbles

The bubbles turned out well in the original attempt but the emotion I was trying to convey was drawn from the memory of my annoying habit of blowing bubbles in my drink. (And doing it further to because I knew how much it annoyed my mother.) The emotion I concluded was akin to glee.

However mainly due to it’s consistent and equally dark pattern of the bubbles formed by bubble solution, I decided to experiment with other kinds of bubble making solutions to see if I could form a more chaotic pattern which would create more texture and a variation of dot sizes on the paper.

The original test runs with body soap and ink solution were a failure as I tried to figure out the right balance of ink and soap. The bubbles were either too dark or too light. But I soon got the hang of it. I created patterns by blowing into the mixture with a straw before scooping up the bubbles and spreading it on the paper.

The makeup sponge

The original imprint created shapes that made a spray paint like pattern across the work giving it an interesting texture and depth. However  when I chose to squeeze the makeup sponge instead, the whole look of the piece changed.

This created soft swirls which were darker on the center of the mark creating emphasis. This felt really interesting to me because it felt as if I were trying to pinch and mould the mark.

Cling Wrap

I wanted to use cling wrap to show how frustration at my childhood messes not only came from myself for making a mess but also from my mother who often had to clean up after me. So my original intention was to make a mark using cling wrap and have my mother literally “clean it up”. Unfortunately it didn’t translate as well on paper and the smudges ended up destroying what original marks were left.

Water

I wanted to convey saddness and remorse with water and so I tried wettting the whole calligraphy paper and dripped black ink at the top and let it seep down. However all it created was a gradient. I also needed a way to insert my mom into it to show her side of causing my remorse.

[ FINAL ROUND ]

Making art with my mom was probably the most fun both of us have had in awhile. Busy as we are, we never really found much time to do stuff together and my mother has always never really been all that supportive of art dreams. So this making art together thing was really a first.

For each of the pieces, we both created a portion of the art. How or where we did it varied in terms of the piece.

Bubbles – Glee

For the first piece with bubbles, I gave my mom a crash course on blowing bubbles into a “drink”.

It was fun making my mom do something she abhorred so much in my childhood and making her the “child” for once. I would daresay what I felt was very much the “glee” i was trying to express.

She clearly hasn’t had much practice.

Although, in the end, her fear of ruining my “section” of the piece made her kind of stick to her own corner of the paper. Thus the distance between the two sections made me decide to just crop out a part of mine and a part of hers before piecing it together to the final piece.

This difference in our bubbles (my tightly packed layered and darker bubbles vs her widely spaced lighter ones with dark accidental drops of ink) created an interesting contrast that met in the middle thus looking like how we clashed over this issue.

I believe the viewer would have gotten the emotion of glee from this line firstly due to how obvious the medium used was. Bubbles are often associated with fun and happiness. Secondly, the contrast due to the varying the number of bubbles suggest that one person is having more fun than the other. Which I feel sums out glee about right because glee is defined as “great delight, especially from another’s misfortune.”

Cling Wrap – Frustration

From my second experiment, I had knew I had to find another way to show my mom’s side on the piece. Remembering how Ed Moses painted on the back of his canvas and let the paint seep through, I decided to do the same with cling wrap by having my mom place the cling wrap marking on the other side of the paper to give her mark a more faded quality to show where the “mess” I made on the front used to be. Also, the faded quality of her mark also gave a sense that her “frustration” was boiling below the surface and as a child I could not perceive it as well as my own.

 

Again, this piece uses contrast to show the two different perspectives in the mark. I believe frustration can also be conveyed through the marks due to the jagged and generally dark texture of the marks as well as how tightly spaced the marks are between each other creating a sense of tension and chaos.

 

Friction Mat – Surprise

Here the restrictions of working with my mom finally made itself known. She was fine with using bubbles and cling wrap but she drew the line at our bike.She “wasn’t spending the weekend cleaning tracks up”. So I had to make do with friction mats that were placed under a lot of things on my desk. This is mainly because of how clumsy I was. I wanted to use the bike originally to convey the surprise I felt learning to ride a bike and getting it right on my first try and also the surprise that came when I crashed into someone within one minute of being let out into the proper cycling track.

I had to find something with a similar texture to wheel marks which I originally intended to use as the constant appearing and disappearing marks as well as the drag marks it would have made on paper.

Friction pads had a similar effect, but on a smaller scale. In fact they reminded me a bit of the black tire marks I’d get on my leg after every cycling trip because I kept bumping my legs into the tires.

I made the marks by letting my mom make the constant marks until when she decided to “let go” of the bike. I then added the drag marks where her prints stopped to show the surprise of suddenly having to do something on your own.

I believe viewers can get the feeling of surprise from this line due to the sudden variation of texture. The constant flow of the friction mat’s almost dot like texture also leads the viewer’s eyes across the line before it suddenly smoothes. This variation in texture also creates a sudden contrast thus also invoking a sense of surprise.

 

Makeup Sponge – Adoration

Growing up, I remember constantly being fascinated by makeup. I would sit and watch as my mother put it on her face and hope that she’d offer to do me too. Never happened until I grew older and I could buy makeup on my own. In a way, this sense and need to use makeup to make myself look prettier has thus always been ingrained since young.

To show this emotion, I let my mom apply the ink to the center of the canvas using the sponge however she liked. Layering it till it created a dark circular shape. I then surrounded her marks with mine. But as I was making my marks, I squeezed the sponge as I tried out in the test run. This created a dark dot surrounded by a soft swirl which I layered more nearer to my mother’s marks. I left more negative space the further I got from the center.

This created an emphasis on the center of the piece and thus my mother’s marks, which was what I felt I was doing as a child. She was the main ideal and I was always moulding and shaping myself to be like her.

I feel that adoration could be conveyed to the viewers through this line once they know the medium used. The more darker marks made by my mom as well as the use of circular swirls  on the sides also create a sense of movement that lead the eye to the center of the image. Makeup and it being the centre of attention would lead the viewer to infer that makeup was a means to achieve an ideal that was in the middle.

 

Pencil on Essay Papers – Anxiety

The use of the pencil was originally inspired by the satay sticks. I liked the sharp meandering lines made by the sticks but I wanted to use a medium with more significance to make the mark. Thus I chose the pencil due to it’s similar shape and greater symbolism in terms of study.

My mom is a chinese tuition teacher and thus the pressure to do well in chinese was very prominent growing up. This was an essay I got my mom to pick out for me from a stack. I did particularly badly for it scoring 17/30. Ironically, it was an essay on how I got lost in a shopping mall because  I didn’t listen to my mother.

I printed it out on two a4 papers to make it monochrome before using a pencil dipped in ink to make swirling patterns all over it. I tried to apply principals of automative drawing and tried not to think about where my pencil was moving. Interestingly, I appeared to be subconsciously trying to cover up my mistakes.

The marks made by the pencil worked well in conveying anxiety due to it’s tapered tip. It ended up making uneven marks across the paper that conveyed a sense of uncertainty as it guides the viewer’s eyes across the piece and also my horrendous essay.

I think the viewers would be able to get the feeling of anxiety from this piece firstly due to the commonality of how much anxiety the learning mandarin brings, especially to the Singaporean audience. The meandering lines and it’s uneven texture also leads the audience in crossing leading lines across the essay showing how anxiety leads one in meanders across the mistakes and how in the end they form a cage on the whole thing.

Remorse – Paintbrush and water

I decided to let my mom use a paintbrush dipped in ink and make a caning motion on paper. I then sprayed water on the canvas and let the ink smudge. When the piece dried, the caked ink at the point of impact also cracked.

I felt that making this piece also did well in conveying my mother’s emotions on caning as well. She does not like caning us as she always said it felt like she was caning her own flesh. The cracked ink did well to show the heartbreak it brought her to cane me growing up as well.

I then proceeded to spray the cane marks to symbolise my tears of remorse after getting caned.

The cane marks on the paper formed dynamic stroked across the paper which contrasted nicely with the soft lines that were formed by the water smudging the ink which gives the marks the impression that they are bleeding.

I believe that viewers will be able to derive the feeling of remorse from the marks due to this contrast and would be able to understand it even more due to the method used to create the marks. Caning after all seems to be a pretty common part and parcel of growing up and making mistakes.

[THE FINAL PRODUCT ]

 

 

Final Critique from Joy: 

Good use of theme to bring together the whole concept. However how the marks have been curated ( i.e why this section of the entire piece has been picked) can be further expanded on. The original piece was placed vertically and would work better when viewed horizontally so the audience can see the dialogue and contrast between mother and daughter more clearly.

 

Critique from classmates: