The equations are:
Me when I was young + Father’s encouragement and influence=growth
Me when I was in school + expectations from school and parents = desire to escape
Me venturing out to achieve my dreams + rejection = devastation
Me at the brink of losing all hope + ADM’s acceptance = search for a new sense of identity
For the first panel, I use split complementary as it gives a more vibrant feel to it which was what I was going for as the first panel was my childhood that was the starting point of my art journey where my passion and enthusiasm is at its highest. I used green for the girl’s head and the plant as green typically represents health and it shows that I had a healthy mental state (rep by the plant AKA me) and a healthy environment (rep by the girl’s head) as compared to now and the green I used is often the green associated to fresh vegetables. I also tilted the girl’s head upwards to portray hope and more literally “looking up to” my father who used to be an artist and designer, the one who first taught me art.
For the second and third panel, I used analogous color scheme as such a scheme do not have much variation and looks duller which coincides with what I was trying to portray. I did grow artistically, from my friends and art teacher (hence I did not use a monochromatic scheme) but the growth was minimal and not as much as I would like it to be. The heads of the girl is also dull in color to show the misery and sadness I felt during those periods. In the second panel, the head is looking straight forward, no longer smiling and the head is not tilted because I think this position shows the “one track” mindset that people were trying to force onto me (that I have to get good grades and get into uni to be successful) and for the third panel, I tilted her head downwards slightly to show the sadness and disappointment after rejection/ after abandoning the one track mindset and deciding to go against my parents’ wishes and school’s expectations. I used crows for the last square in the third panel as they represent death and autumn colors too as autumn is a season of “dying” (withering). I did some foreshortening to the axe as I wanted it to feel like the axe pops out from the girl’s head in a way to show that it was an external factor and not my environment that caused my rejection (in fact, it was trying to break out of my environment and looking to external means for hope-e.g. poly that resulted in my rejection). For the second panel, the tree’s growth is restricted by the girl’s head that represents my environment and for the first square of the third panel, I dispelled half the girl’s head as it is “Me venturing out to achieve my dreams” and my dream was to be an author and to be recognised for the characters in my head. Hence, my dream was not bound by reality and so the tree would not be restricted.
In the last panel, I used complementary colors orange and blue as it is more bright and vibrant and signifies more positive things which is the main point of the last panel. I made half the girl’s head into a sun to portray the “daylight after night” idea and so the sky clears up and is not as dark anymore. Also, as ADM’s acceptance signifies that now the characters in my head and my plots are recognised and that gives me hope, the sun coming out of her mind fits that idea and I made the hair of the girl more wavy to signify more dynamism (not confined/restricted to straight lines or curves).