Project 1 Emo – Teng Yu Qing

Memory Drawing [Foundation 2D]

For lesson, we were told to close our eyes and think of a memory related to the emotion words. With this in mind, we were then to use our non-master hand to draw/doodle with our pencil how that memory makes us feel. I used a 6B pencil throughout.

HAPPY:
I did this 3 times. I can’t remember what memories I did for every thought, I just remembered that the last memory I based on was with regards to my first time interacting with dolphins. But I realized that it was very hard for me to pinpoint a happy memory when everything I thought of had very sad or angry emotion attached to it too.

What else I can see in the lines:
Whale
Happy face
Dancing person
Clouds
Peas in a pod
Shoes

Character of lines:
Wiry
Mangled
Circular, curved
Interlocking
Fast slow fast slow strokes on paper

photo 2 - compressed

ANGRY:
Anger at my JC art mentor

What else I can see in the lines:
A person running (I tend to walk very fast if I’m alone)
Some resemblance to Arabic calligraphy (it looks quite therapeutic despite being contrary to how I felt)
Tadpoles

Character of lines:
Organic
Pressed very hard
Short bursts of anger
Thicker lines

photo 3 - compressed

SADNESS:
Sad that the people who I trusted and thought believed in me didn’t stand up for me.
There is a very big contrast in the lines when I think of the same memory at different times. I feel that the first one shows sadness with hints of anger, and that it’s a very loud sobbing kind of cries. Whereas the second one is more of a sniffing cry, a I’m-trying-to-accept-it-and-I’m-still-sad.

What else I can see in the lines:
Hummingbird’s head

Character of lines:
Side of the pencil – grainer, thicker lines
Tip of the pencil – thin lines
Very close together – huddled, barely stops

photo 4 - compressed

NERVOUS:
Riding on an electric bicycle for the first time
Ordering at subway

What else I can see in the lines:
Grass patch
Man/monkey running away

Character of lines:
Much shorter length of strokes
Very stammer-y like

Reflections:
I feel many of these things(matching scribbly lines to shapes and objects) are pure coincidence(?). And if the lines seem to show a subject matter, they mostly don’t relate to the feeling at all – for instance the whale in happiness.
I felt that my feelings are quite hard to emote through lines – maybe it’s a sign I’m not cut out to be an abstract artist. Overall, the lines look about the same for the different emotions. I should immerse myself more and hopefully the lines would come out more differently.
Also, I feel that within an emotion, there are varying degrees – for instance simmering anger vs exploding anger.

Group discussion consolidation:
Generally,
Happy – round lines
Anger – strong, violent, pressed harder lines
Sadness – most vague emotionally (broad) – different memories = different degrees/kinds of sadness. Within the group, all of us translated this different. Zhi Hong had spiky aloe vera like subjects; Yu Lin had foggy, charcoal like usage of pencil; for mine, my depiction of sadness is very similar to nervous+lonely
Nervous – there are differences between the 3 of our takes to it, but the differences are more subtle compared to the sadness ones.

Mark Making & Monoprinting [Foundation 2D]

I really enjoyed this lesson. At first I was very nervous and apprehensive, but it turned out to be very fun and therapeutic at the same time.

The entire lesson was devoted to trying, even if we don’t really know where we are going with it, we just try it out first. We were told to bring mark-making tools for this lesson. I got very stressed out by this as I originally thought I was meant to create a totally new and quirky mark making tool. So I made this very simple tool(which scared me cos I thought I was under-doing) of taking a small fruit juice bottle and wrapping rubber bands around it(especially the widest part of the bottle). I made sure that there are criss-crosses to make it interesting. But it turns out we were meant to bring found objects and use them directly?

The mark making tool I “created”.

These are some of the patterns that were created.

Patterns created using the mark making tool I brought.

Using a comb.

Using cotton wool attached to a pencil.

Using some kind of branch/stem.

Using twigs tied together.

Using aluminium foil. You can compare how the paint actually prints over.

The left side is the same as the above picture. The right side is an inked of the other side of the same aluminium foil. You can observe the slight differences.

Using rambutan skin.

Using bubble wrap. (I did the left first and felt that I applied too much ink hence I tried again with lesser ink to be able to show its texture.)

(I actually videoed the process of using certain tools and the kinds of marks they made, but when I try to upload it it didn’t seem to upload?)

After trying automatic monoprinting, we were each give a square piece of linoleum to do anything we wish to it and print out monoprints. I was unsure of what to do so I just spontaneously carved raindrop like pieces out. I then tore out a small piece of aluminium foil, shaped it a bit and left it there.

This was the first composition print! The void the aluminium foil created looks quite like a lady walking in the rain. However the void looked overly empty? And it seemed to flush with the negative raindrops. I felt that the final print looked quite boring, as if lacking of something. Miss Mimi suggested I apply some paint onto the aluminium foil too before printing.

Hence I retried and this is the second attempt. I’m really happy with this one! Luckily I did crumple the aluminium foil ever so slightly, so when I lightly inked onto the aluminium foil, only certain folds had paint applied on. The print of the aluminium foil has a lovely kaleidoscope-like pattern, which luckily did not overly distract the rest of the composition. It made the negative and positive space from the background and rain more obvious.

I tried another composition. Instead of using the aluminium foil, I placed a leaf. In addition, learning from the previous two tries, I inked the leaf slightly such that the veins of the leaf would have some ink, otherwise it would leave a large negative space which might overpower the composition. Miss Mimi commented that she thought it was quite a graphic design and that she liked it haha. (But I think her swirly composition is nicer though, I still can’t figure out how she drew those many perfect circles.)

(Bonus: Hey you can see some imprints the leaf left. I realized this when I was washing the lino)

18 Emotions

For the first 2D class we were told to choose 18 emotions to express through black and white shapes and lines. I didn’t think that there are 18 emotions but there are subsets to each overarching emotion.

I also feel that emotions are very vague, so I’d probably be tying a memory or action to better express what I’m about to “doodle”. So for instance, torment is a subset of anger. What kind of torment though? Physical mental? They have vastly different manifestations.