The next quote I explored was

Listen, balance, my darling, is not letting anybody love you less than you love yourself.

it was a line from Eat, Pray, Love  by Felipe to Liz when Felipe asked Liz if she loved him and they got into an argument where Felipe screamed this at her and she screamed back that he didn’t know anything. He exposes her inner insecurities about herself and what she wanted to find in her journey and causes her to lose her so called sense-of-balance.

Draft 1, I used the skull to signify life, the heart to signify love, and the scales for balance. I went super literal on this and I felt like it was so plain. SCRAP!

Next, draft 2, I used the girl on a tight rope to show her own inner turmoil of balance. I put her in a plague doctor mask and put her on top of a roaring crowd of fans filtered in a moire pattern. I liked the story aspect of this, because the idea of the girl crossing the tight rope to find her balance, yet there is a distracting crowd pressurising her despite her anonymous look except with a plague doctor mask.

I did feel that this was not a good composition but a good concept to carry on, having a story to go with.

 

Draft 3, it was using the concept of listening to your inner self. The idea is having the silhouette of the maiden balancing and listening to the encased heart in lock and chain to find her inner voice. I’m not sure for this work. There is something off about it, maybe the use of the see- saw. But I liked the idea of listening, so I might continue the idea of encasing the heart and listening.

Draft 4, I carried on the listening concept and used the symbol of balance, yin and yang to encase the figure listening to her heart in a yin-yang symbol.

There’s something off about this image, but I wanted to explore the yin-yang symbol and push the idea even further.

Draft 5, I created the idea of listening to forest of your heart in your head. I really liked this idea, but I felt like it is still literal. I’m getting closer? But I do like the aesthetics of this.

After consultation, my tutor told me that a lot of my ideas began to be too connoted and there was too much to decipher from the image. I decided to scale back.

She told me to take draft 3 and expand the idea to that of a confessional.

I adapted the idea of eaves dropping into this image to include a confessional. The idea was to adapt the concept of eavesdropping into yourself. But I feel like I needed someone to tell to have someone to hear.

I removed the locks because it was too much and left the heart inside the confessional. I also added someone to “tell”. I chose an old woman instead of a younger similar woman. I guess it could show that the old woman is telling younger self to listen to her heart… which brings me to an even more interesting edit to the balance scale.

I added the clock face to the scale. I guess it would make it look like the confessional is a time portal. While I think it might convolute the quote and pack too much ideas into one image, I do think that there is a small value to it than having a simple balance scale.

After consulting Mimi, she told me to use an actual confessional and to blow up the size and to have someone listening to the heart. I came up with this at first and felt like I need to embellish the idea with more and more things.

I ended up increasing the saturation of the mesh to make the person look more ambiguous but seen. while balancing the heart on a see-saw and to encase the person in an actual box, setting a scenery behind their conversation.

I used a mesh technique to create a forest foliage look, I do have to commend myself on that creativity. Haha.

Overall, I do not like this one as much as the ones I have done, because I felt like I should have edited myself more concisely and to not put too many elements.

While I do like the idea of having the background. I could have done away with the see-saw or vice-versa. I could have made the silhouette more obvious by darkening the figure and then using the moire technique for the confessional instead of the other way round.