————————————-WEEK 1———————————————–
I used to do some handicraft and I like to stock many staff so I believed that I should have some left-over material, if I never threw them way when I moved into hall.
Let’s me list down the material that I will use first.
- Yarn Ball
- Tree Leaf
- Cabbage
- Ruber Band
- Wool Felt
- Salt
- Brush
- …..
So this is the first item I find.
I bought this yarn last time with my friends because we want to make a holder for our gudetama, but in the end I never do and it’s totally new.
I think one string is too tiny, so I made a mini yarn ball, follow the instruction on youtube.
How to Make Mini Yarn Pom Poms Easy DIY By giddyupworkshop
I have tried to do some mark making, and I find out that I like this texture, a bit rusty but not so boring.
OKAY NEXT!
I brought back a leaf on the way back to hall, but it’s too dry and I scare it will broken into pieces once I pressed it. So I washed and softened it first.
Then I try it with my stamp pad.
Still can see the texture but very shallow, and too much extract stuff. So what I decided to do is to brush away them, only leave the nervation. (Remind me of those handicraft class in primary school.)
Usually what we will do is boil the leaf in soap water, however, I can’t damage my only mini cooker, so I choose to soak it in hot soap water for few hours. But this will take longer time.
After half an hour, it turns out a bit transparent now, I hope it works well.
AND HERE WE HAVE ONE MORE!
Yep, is cabbage.
Trust me I’m not kidding, because I saw something like this before.
And I want to try it long time ago! Let’s start!
I cut off the bottom part and stamped it immediately, and because I was too excited that I forgot to take a picture for half-way done.
So what we have is this.
Ummmmm… a nice… half flower shape…
I think is because my knife is too small and I didn’t cut it evenly, what’s more I should cut a bit more so still can adjust to make the surface smooth.
Never mind, I still got one more.
Now I think I need to eat cabbage for the rest of this week 🙂
(Can someone give me a suggestion about what I can do with these cabbage beside eating T_T）
——————————————-WEEK 2—————————————-
This week mostly I spend time on doing mark-making and forming ideas.
First let’s see what tools I’m going to use in mark-making.
And below are the lines and marks.
It’s like normal brush, but the texture is interesting when I keep stamping the ball to paper.
This one didn’t come out what I want to see because the pearl is too thick and hard to leave texture on paper. But the dots can also form rhythm and pattern.
The line draw by rubber band is very thin and clear, I think I can use that for “Loneliness”.
So based on the mark-making I have tried, I did some sketches for the emotions I choose.
The six emotions I choose are Caring, Joy, Surprise, Anger, Loneliness and Nervousness.
For caring I want something soft and make people feel safe, so the first thing I think of is sea wave, and also flower. But the flower idea turns out not so good because the curve line are broken, it’s more anxious to me.
For surprise my focus point is that you don’t expect something happens, it breaks the original routine or pattern.
For loneliness my idea is showing a thin line on the plain background. So I tear the black paper and split them a bit to show a tiny white line in between, what’s more the edge of this “line” is not smooth because of the paper fiber. The second one I want to show two thick lines go from right to left while the thin line in the middle goes from left to right.
For the nervousness I get inspiration from those horror manga, there are always many dots that are warp and distort on the background, that’s the kind of effect I want to achieve.
———————————– WEEK 3 ————————————————
This week I spend more time on making the real stuff instead of just sketching. The lecture also said things will turns out very different from sketch to real stuff, and to be honest, I also feel that from sketch book I can’t real estimate what the end product will look like.
Since I already have many idea in mind, I’d like to straight away start on working on the concepts I have already sketched.
First I start with “Caring”. My concept is to draw some curve line that looks like see wave. We know that people feel safe in water because fetus are grown up in amnionic fluid, and curve line always represent smooth, tender soft and feminine. The tool I use is normal paper and maker, because I can’t really find a tool which can create a smooth curve line. Having some try on paper first.
One thing I like marker is that the flat head can change the thickness of the curve, which make the line look more interesting.
I have some different plans and I drawn all of them. In order to avoid the paint looks crowded, I leave some white space on the top for breathe. Then I find if suddenly stop in the half way looks like a brake, so I decide to add one more grey curve to make a gradient fade-out effect, but two grey lines looks a bit too much, end up I decide one put one.
Then we move on to “Surprise”, for this one my concept is drawing diagonal full fill the paper nicely, then drop ink marks on it to “destory” the whole thing. For the ink mark I soak tissue into ink and throw it on the paper to create the dropping effect.
Look nice! I like the splash effect!
Next one is “Joy”. For joy I want to use bubble because it’s round shape and playing with bubble alway make people remind of kids and childhood, which is link to joy.
Instead of normal paper, I choose foam sheet for this one because form has it’s own texture on the surface.
Can you see those small holes and the dot texture on the foam? It varies the value of black and soften the the paint as well.
Making soap water with ink, ah I like the surface of this liquid.
At first I tried to use the small scissor hook to make bubble, but it didn’t really work, I think is because the hook too small and the shape not easy to put in the soap water. So I find this wire to make a hook for blowing bubbles.
Well a bit different from what I think, but at least this time we have bubbles on the sheet. And we can see when the bubbles are bursted, they leave a lot splashing ink mark on it, looks like spider silk.
I have tried some different material, which proved that the form works out the best. I have added some water in ink so this liquid is too wet for newsprint paper, and the edge is very clear on paper, but foam can soften it so make it not so hard.
But this one is too messy, when there are too much splashing the energy it shows is more than just joy, so for my final one should be cleaner than the one above. And it doesn’t really have a nice rounded bubble shape on it, which make people hard to understand what it is trying to tell. In the end I decide to draw some bubble on it.
This one looks cleaner and easier for people to recognize that “okay this one is showing us bubbles”.
Next is “Anger”, and I want to use hard brush to make those crazy marks on the paper, from all the tools I have I choose to use sugar cane.
I have some crepe paper and I think the texture on it might help to exaggerate the emotion, so I try on both vertical direction and horizontal direction.
The pictures look fine, but actually for the real stuff, the texture cut off those brush line and make it look less angry, I think is because when the line is cut off, the energy it shown also been cut and broken, so plain paper works better, to directly burst out the anger.
Then for “Loneliness”, firstly I change the background to black and line to white because I feel when there is more black the emotion more toward to negative. I try to draw lines by using white acrylic paint.
As we can see the line is not so smooth and when many lines come together they are just merge with each other and looks like one thick stroke, so I decide to change to use white string, which make sure I can have a thin line and won’t merge together as well. I use my glue to stick the line. But when it dry I find other problem.
Yeah the glue is transparent but it leaves a very ugly layer on the cardboard, that will definitely destroy the whole thing, so I need to change another type of glue.
This glue with a head allows me to draw a thin line on the card board so the glue mark won’t be so obviously.
And finally! Nervousness! For this one I choose chenille stem, with the texture of the small faber around plus the foam surface texture, I believe it can create a thickly dotted and compressed effect. I roll the string to a coil, to make it looks like the screen tone that some horror manga always use, when character enter or heading to some creepy place.
The I put white acyclic on one side of the coil, and now LET’S STAMP IT!
Looks quite creepy, and it do make people sense of nervousness, especially those who have Trypophobia. At the beginning the texture is not so clear because of too much paint, but later it works out better, and makes a grey shade on the foam sheet.
I have tried on black card board also, but the result doesn’t look so good without the foam surface texture.
To have more choices, I did several more rounds of each emotion, and choose the best one to stick on mounting board.
And now good luck for the presentation!