For anxiety,
I wanted to capture the suffocation that I felt during a panic attack. I used thick and thin lines to create the illusion of depth and the idea of negativity piling atop one another. I used straight lines to reinforce tension (and it also reps the tension I felt during an attack-numbed hands and legs). I used a bandage as the texture because a) anxiety is my equivalence of a physical wound that requires bandaging and b) the ink bleeds out nicely and you can see the grey consuming the white-gives a claustrophobic feel and signifies the many thoughts and negativity clouding one’s mind.
For loneliness, the challenge I faced was making the ‘self’ different yet not outstanding (as when you’re lonely, you’re more invisible than you are outstanding) hence I put the self in a corner to make it insignificant but differed its colour from the rest to make it different. The colour white suggests emptiness, and an absence which was how loneliness made me feel, void and numb. When I felt lonely I felt a bit dark and angsty as to why people left me alone, hence I saw them as “enemies” in a period of time and saw them as dark entities which was why I chose to represent the others with dark ink. I didn’t use a mold but hand painted them as I feel that using a mold is too restrictive and does not represent accurately the dynamism and uniqueness of every individual. I used tracing paper for the texture as Ionliness has once pushed me into copying and mimicking others in order to be accepted and having felt ashamed for my originality. Hence, as tracing paper captures that idea of not being original and coping from another piece, I decided to make that the texture.
For happiness, I used bold black strokes and curves to convey energy and motion. The contrast between the white and black (without any grey) makes it not look gloomy and I varied the curves as I feel that happiness is not all intense feelings of happiness, it can be slight happiness and I wanted to represent the different degrees of happiness and remind one the importance of cherishing them all.
For surprise, I used a rubrik’s cube because of how standard it is (6 faces of the exact 9 cubes of same sizes) and hence it made a nice standard pattern I was looking for to interrupt. I interrupted it with ink that I flicked on and that flicking captures the motion and gives more strength to the shocking component as I feel that surprise involves a certain amount of energy/force ( to a small extent).
For longing, I depicted 2 entities trying to sustain a connection. Although one may argue that if you long for someone, it means they are far away or have left and are no longer linked to you, however, the thin line connecting the 2 , to me, represented the memories that the 2 people shared together and the mutual emotions that had for one another. Hence although one may not be physically in touch with another, emotionally and mentally, they kind of still are. I used a disposable panty to push the idea of human intimacy and not just emotionally but also perhaps physically as undergarments concerns very private and intimate parts of the human body. Also, the disposability conveys the idea of possessing something to be lost/thrown away that will then lead to longing/desire to recover it/her/him.
For anger, I used crumpled paper as I felt that it makes the pattern more erratic and chaotic and I wanted to express the messiness from frustration and anger. Whipping the paper with a rope dipped in ink makes the ink splatter in interesting ways (in huge and very tiny strokes, so they are very dynamic) and this captures the violence and motion of the anger that I was trying to express.