2D Project 1 My Line is Emo — Final

And it comes! The day of final submission! Three weeks of mark-making and it’s now over!

My work:

Top down: Amazement, exasperation, affection, melancholy, mortification, bliss

Infancy — Amazement
  • the marks, while representing amazement, have a touch of inquisitiveness in them
  • the bubble-like marks encapsulates the curiosity and wonder a child feels as he/she interacts with the world for the first time
  • questions and wonders pop up like bubbles in their minds spontaneously
  • every ink blot/circle is unique -> every child interprets our world differently, but their interpretations are all equally mesmerising and filled with precious innocence
Adolescence — Exasperation
  • The marks record our rebellious years where our fluctuating moods and identity confusion causes us to be dissatisfied with and exasperated at many things, be it towards our peers, our family or our parents
  • use of palette knife to slash paint onto the paper is just like how one feels like ‘killing’/’strangling’ a person when that person simply does not understand what you’re driving at
  • the thicker smears of paint is just like the huge SIGHs we make after each gradual build-up of exasperation
  • expresses the uninhibited aggression and frustration a teenager feels at that stage
  • It also portrays teenagers’ urgency to make an impression and assert their identity and importance in this world
Love — affection
  • As we move through our teenage years into adulthood, we start looking for our other ‘half’ (the symmetry in this mark alludes to this)
  • the dreamy and fantasy-like feeling suggests intimacy and sweetness —illustrates our hopes and ideals for our partner
  • the emergence of love-birds-like figures from hazy fumes shows how the search for our true love often begins without us knowing what we are looking for, but it eventually reveals itself to us
  • Notice how the images are similar but not identical -> what I am trying to convey here is that we will find flaws in even our perfect fit, but we must learn to embrace them and accept them for who they are

Mid-Life crisis — Melancholy
  • Looming spectres and the use of lines of different weights and intensity creates the illusion of depth — some of our troubles are further away while others are right in our face
  • Hazy background -> melancholy feelings do not usually have an identifiable source of sadness, yet the feeling is pervasive and omnipresent
  • Sparse marks help to convey the idea of hollowness and emptiness
  • Using the palette knife to slash the paper with ink exemplifies how pangs of grief strike a melancholic person
Illness/the approach to old age — Mortification
  • Paper marche effect created by using newspaper with glue and water
  • The marks were made by crumpling the paper, and then rolling the roller across the creases
  • memory fades, vision darkens, creases appear
  • the use of newspaper: words giving themselves up to the void, along with all the meaning they used to contain
  • fragmentation: highlights the dissonance/ confused state of mind one is in as you grow frail
  • Death looms, close enough to be weighing on your chest
Before the final end — bliss
  • This mark presents a strong juxtaposition to the ‘mortification’ strip
  • One learns to find peace with oneself and finally achieve a sense of serenity and solidarity
  • The cloudy/ dreamy mark prompts one to reminisce about one’s childhood and life experience
  • Death becomes a relief from suffering
  • the soft outlines represents how death is like a restful/gentle sleep

Presentation!

I really love the museum-style presentation — we lay out our works just like how they’ll look in a gallery and we are walked through the works one by one. It was really intriguing to learn about what my peers did and how they interpreted different emotions differently from me.

Thanks friends for the encouraging comments :D

Some Reflections

Overall I’m rather proud of my work but I feel that I could have explored even more with different mediums and materials. I initially thought that this project would be easy, but that was not true at all — it was only through tireless experimentation that I am able to generate my final pieces. But it was only through this process that I came to realise the importance of experimentation as an indispensable part of the creative process because there were so many inspirations that only revealed themselves to me along the way. All in all, mark-making is a highly therapeutic activity. I really had a lot of fun working on this project :)

2D Project 1 My Line is Emo — process

Here are some documentation of the process I’ve been through for mark-making. I realise I’m not a person who can multitask very well, and so I kept on forgetting to whip out my phone to record down my experimentation process.

Initial emotions research:

I wanted to get a clear idea of what each emotions represented. Hence I did several small mind-maps for each emotion category and researched on each specific emotion to ensure that my understanding of that emotion is correct.

Experimentation for melancholy:

The feeling of melancholy is something that I believe everyone can instinctively understand as the wrenching throb in the heart but troubles to eloquently put the emotion into words.  And so when I tried to express melancholy in my marks, I tried to keep the the marks to a minimum so that the empty space (the paper) gives a more pervasive feeling of hollowness and emptiness.

I made this by spreading glue around the paper first, and then sprinkling charcoal crumbs previously crushed. When the glue dries, only the charcoal is left behind, obediently following the trail of glue. I thought the idea was interesting, but I didn’t have any use for it in my final 6 emotions

To see more of my process, please refer to my visual journal :DD

This was what I had after a week of experimentation:

Consultation with Mimi

  • Mimi said that my works were too symmetrical (I agree!!!). I actually did try making some strips that were asymmetrical but I discarded them because they looked too bad. But I should really experiment more with having asymmetrical designs or having the idea of gradual up of emotions in order to make my works more exciting
  • Mimi also mentioned that I shouldn’t be working on newsprint alone. I took her advice and experimented with canvas, watercolour paper and newspaper later on :) I also tried to vary my medium by using acrylic and watercolour (wanted to use oil but it wouldn’t dry in time)
  • Can try collaging the works! See if anything interesting comes out of it!
  • There has to be an overarching theme that can hold the separate emotions together (can be in the form of songs, stories, phenomenon, or just anything)
  • Even though Mimi said that I have a wide variations of line work, she said to be careful when choosing my final 6 strips to prevent having the works looking too similar (especially since I seem to have the tendency to product mark-making that fills up the entire page)

Working on my learning points from the consult, I continued experimenting with more emotions, specifically working on points raised during the consultation.

Working with asymmetry

Working with different medium:

Initial idea was to simply roll a roller over crumpled paper

I decided to work on this idea by introducing newspaper as a medium to create a paper mache effect.

I brainstormed for a suitable theme to make my emotions cohesive and coherent when seen in a certain sequence. I had a few ideas off the top of my mind but they were somewhat random. At the end, since we are dealing with emotions in this project, I started to think about what emotions themselves signify. I felt that emotions are something very ‘raw’ and very ‘unique’ to humans. Yes, some animals can feel emotions as well, but they’re not as varied nor can they reach the same depth as human emotions can. Along this line of thought, I decided that I wanted to do something that ties in very closely to what makes a human human, which is how I arrived at my theme “life”.

Brainstorming:

With this as my starting point, I started to narrow down emotions that I want to deal with. I identified the different stages of life and the emotions one most probably would have felt at that point in time:

  • Infancy
  • Adolescence
  • Teenager – Adulthood
  • Mid-life Crisis
  • Illness/ approaching old age
  • Before the final end

(Check out the journal for the full description for each stage :> )

From my huge pile of emotions, I picked out 6 emotions most representative of what one would have felt at the six identified stages of life:

  • Infancy — Amazement
  • Adolescence — Exasperation
  • Teenager – Adulthood — Lust
  • Mid-life Crisis — Melancholy
  • Illness/ approaching old age — Mortification
  • Before the final end — Bliss

I went on making the final emotions used for submission. However, I realised that the same marks can never be replicated. Even subtle differences can make a big difference to the general mood the marks elicit.

In particular, I couldn’t get ‘Lust’ the way I wanted at all even after multiple, numerous, countless number of tries and kilos of paint wasted (just kidding). In a spurt of frustration, I folded a strip that I was doing halfway, intending to discard it. However, when I opened the strip, it dawned on me how perfect Warhol’s Rorscharch technique can be applied. I started experimenting more with this technique, constantly being pleasantly surprised whenever I open the folded paper.

And so, one day before submission, I changed “Lust” to “Affection”, an emotion I thought best described the ink blot I made.

In the end, my final six emotions were:

  • Infancy — Amazement
  • Adolescence — Exasperation
  • Teenager – Adulthood — Affection
  • Mid-life Crisis — Melancholy
  • Illness/ approaching old age — Mortification
  • Before the final end — Bliss

 

 

2D Project 1 My Line is Emo – first experimentaion

This week’s lesson was thoroughly enjoyable as I tried my hand at mark making. This was my first attempt at mono-printing and the printing machine, which were immensely interesting and fun!

Some mark making tools I brought to experiment:

  • leaves, tree bark, rocks, sea shells
  • aluminium foil, corrugated cardboard, cling wrap, non-slip mat
  • bottle cap, tissue, syringe
  • velcro, thick rubber band, buttons
  • my fingers

Mimi told us not to bother about the aesthetics of our prints and to explore freely — which was what I did. Here are some prints I made:

I managed to get the bold lines by using the handle of the roller. These lines feel very raw and strong — potential marks for the more intense emotions. Also, the mono-printing method is almost unpredictable because I’m just making the marks blindly without being able to see what I’m doing.

Printed a leaf! Can only vaguely see the shape and veins. And it’s too obvious that it’s a leaf — probably not very suitable here since we want to stay away from very literal/ representative marks.

Experimented with the use of combs here. The neat rows of lines produces a very nice effect. The thick rows of lines were created with corrugated cardboard.

Prints of crushed aluminium foil! The effect is really cool if enlarged, but since it’s very condensed and crammed, it doesn’t look very nice from far.

Marks made by dipping a rock into ink and rolling it around the paper. It’s quite beautiful, especially how the ink is concentrated and sparse in different areas.

Linocut! First time working around with the tools. It wasn’t hard to cut the linoleum, but getting the shape/line I wanted was hard. The lines I cut also looked rather similar — the edges are all rounded.

A linocut I made at the end of the class! I didn’t have anything in mind and was just cutting based on instincts. I’m very satisfied with this print :)  (though mildly annoyed that the print I rushed through with minimal thought turned out the nicest)

Some other prints:

With this round of exploration, I’m more familiar with the tools and materials and how we can create different kinds of marks. I have a better idea of what this project is about and I’m ready to experiment and explore a lot more. Excited for the weeks to come! :D