; MY LINE IS EMO: The Phrases That Tells It All [Gallery]

Final Product presented on 4 September 2017

How I decided to approach this project is by first brainstorming about how each emotions resonates with me, and subsequently working with different mark-making techniques to fit the qualities of each emotions to bring out its entity. My brainstorming process can be viewed here. I decided to categorise the emotions according to positive and negative emotions.

Top to bottom:


1.love

Love, that spreads from one end to another

thought process:

Love spreads from one person to another. Be it from your family members or from the people around you, love spreads in an outward motion. Also, we love because we are first loved. The feeling of being loved is similar to having tiny explosions inside of you, the tiny butterflies you feel, the warm and hearty feeling. The organic and fluid shape created shows a gradual outward motion with hard-edges. As the shapes intertwine, it shows the actions 0f love transmitted from one to another.

methodology:

The first panel was created by putting large amounts of ink on the paper and then using a straw to blow the ink in an outward direction, not fearing that they will connect with each other.

2.happiness

Happiness, the high points in life

thought process:

Happiness are the high points in life. There are high points in life when there are low points in life, hence the flowy nature of the second panel created. Life can be seen just like what is created in the panel, much like a roller-coaster. The soft-edges seen are like the times when we are overwhelmed by the tough moments in life when we find it hard to find happiness in life. However, when we try to find happiness in life, we can always find them. This was created on a huge sheet of paper to recreate the large motion of being happy since it is associated with being free-styled and liberal.

methodology:

Using a brush to create large motion of swirls across a huge sheet of paper and cropping out the section that I wanted.

3.surprise

Surprise, the party poppers that make your heart race

thought process:

Surprise is interpreted as good surprise. Good kind of surprises are much like birthday surprises or farewell surprises. In parties, party poppers are very commonly seen, hence it is the main subject in the third panel. The motion of the creation of the third panel also brings out the surprise factor. As a semi-dry brush is jammed onto the paper to create the effect, it gives a sudden fast motion, describing the nature of a surprise. Also, the effect created very perfectly described intensity of shock across time. As time passes, the intensity of shock gradually decreases, therefore, as it goes further away from the middle, the ink lightens, bringing out the element of surprise. Initially, I thought the party popper effect was not clearly brought out, so I added tiny swirls across the paper to mimic the strings that come out of party poppers to add more essence to the panel, and I thought it worked quite well as I do not mistake them as fireworks or explosives.

methodology:

Dabbing semi-dry brush onto the paper, then creating swirls using the back of a brush.

4.anger

Anger, the build up

Anger would most of the time be an accumulation of different events that ultimately build up to the ultimate event of being angry. The gradient seen on the paper also describes the intensity of anger very well. When the limit is met and one is angry, the initial emotion will be fury and hence, it coincides with the darker regions on the panel. Across time, one will be cooled down and that will coincide with the lighter regions on the panel.

methodology:

The forth panel was created by putting ink on my mini toy car and running it across the paper to create the straight strips of ink.

5.sadness

Sadness, the tears we collect in a jar

The first thing that came to my mind when I think about sadness is tears and the act of crying. Also, we tend to be sad over things that are significant and intimate to us, hence the phrase “we collect in a jar”, since they are something we hold close to our hearts, we will keep them in a secret place.  Therefore, the fifth panel is made up of fluid, tears-liked figures mimic the tears that flow down your cheeks when you cry.

methodology:

This panel was created by running black ink down the paper, creating the dripping down effect and cropping the top section of the paper out.

6.horror

Horror, the bloodstains on the wall

 

taken from: http://www.widewalls.ch/andy-warhol-piss-paintings/


I was very inspired by Andy Warhol’s oxidation painting effect as I thought they give off a gory and scary feeling to its audience. It is as if we cannot fully make sense of what is in front of us, but we sort of know its something unpleasant. Working towards that direction, I experimented with a few methods by imprinting ink from different surfaces onto the paper. I worked with different kinds of plastic bags, and tiny ones usually for food storage and found out that I prefer the effect of a zip-lock bag much better due to its smooth texture. As if blood was smeared across the glass wall, the gory effect it gave really resembles that of horror movies I usually watch.

taken from: http://historiadelavidadeblaze.blogspot.sg/2015/07/t2-carmesi.html

 

methodology:

Putting large amount of ink on a zip-lock bag and transferring the ink onto paper and cropping the parts out.

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Critique:

I like the directional element to the work, how the work can be categorised as horizontal, vertical, etc. It brings out a strong visual unity…

I came to realise that how I had categorised my emotions gave a “directional element” to the entire project. Like how anger contrasted with sadness, which then contrasted each emotions even more. I thought that was a good observation by my classmate that I had unintentionally displayed in my work.

I like your idea of using quotes!

As I approached this project, I thought emotions can be hard to express sometimes, hence the word “mixed-feelings”. Truth is sometimes we cannot comprehend or understand how we feel in a certain occasion or event. I thought the quotes really put things into a certain context or situation which can bring out the idea of each emotions even more, enhancing the understanding of each emotion further.


Conclusion:

Overall, I really enjoyed creating each emotions because they truly resonated well with me. Also, looking at how my friends created their prints was really interesting as well as I have classmates who experimented with oil and also capturing the contact print of a ball hitting the ground and et cetera. Even so, I enjoyed experimenting with different objects that I can find at home to create these prints as a final product and am overall encouraged by my lecturer, Joy, and my classmates’ comments and feedbacks for project 1. Although I would have hoped to be riskier with the objects I used, but never really got to try. Despite that, I thought this has been a great opportunity for me as during the process, I constantly found myself on a look out for objects with interesting texture and how I can use them for mark-making. As we close this project, I hope to further try out different mark-making techniques and hope to work with the linoleum and the pressing machine in future!