After few weeks of research and exploration, finally we finish the first assignment and here are the final work!
Caring
The definition of caring is shows someone kindness and concern. When people talk about caring and concern, mother is the first word most of us think of because this is the first love and care we feel, even before we were born. When foetus are grown in womb they feel safe and the emotion from mother, that why people feel calm and safe in water. So for my understanding, caring is a emotion that can make people feel safety and heal their heart.
Based on this understanding, I choose to use curve line, since it represent pleasant and feminine. The curve line also look like sea wave which help people feel calm. The mark should be smooth so I choose marker and normal paper. The top part I leave it empty for breathe so the whole picture won’t be too crowded and anxious. I add one more grey curve line on top to create a fade-out effect so the curves don’t suddenly stop like a brake.
Joy
Joy means a feeling of great pleasure and happiness. From the definition we know that joy is a level-up happiness, for example if happiness is a smiling face, then joy is a smiling face PLUS some flowers and sparkles surround it. So my definition of joy is a small burst of happiness.
Now, how to show the sparkles and burst? When I did research, the mark-making done by bubble has left a deep impression on me, and I realise I can use it for Joy because kids feel joyful when they blow and play with bubbles. So I mixed shampoo, water and ink, then use wire to make a circle as the hook and blowed bubbles on the foam sheet. Yes, for this one I didn’t use paper because the bubbles are too wet, and the foam sheet has many shallow holes on the surface, which help to soften the marks and has a bling-bling effect when everything is dried. When the bubbles touch the sheet it burst immediately and leave many nice splash on the foam. The bubble in the middle is drawn by brush because it’s really hard to make the bubble stay on sheet and make a nice circle. I use sponge to wipe the central part to imitate the transparent looking of bubble.
Surprise
Surprise is an unexpected or astonishing event, fact, etc. The definition doesn’t identify this is a positive or negative emotion, means surprise may not be a good thing in some case. Maybe because I did two positive emotion just now, this one I want to try something negative. I do have many happy memories about surprise, but the first thing it reminds me is one time I need to redo my painting for a poster one day before assignment deadline because I realised I use the wrong color at final stage. I also heard my friends complained somethings similar to me, her cat jumped on to her table while she was painting and it flipped the color palette. So I want to show this kind of surprise that destroy the hardwork or break the pattern, which makes people really annoyed.
The technique for this one is quite simple, I use marker to full fill diagonal lines on paper, then soak tissue with Chinese painting ink and smash it on paper. After that I find only one mark is a bit empty, so i drip some ink on the other side as well. The reason why I choose diagonal line is try to make a energetic atmosphere for the paint, vertical lines are too calm while horizontal lines are too dramatic. Also I only make a few marks because too much marks will distract people’s attention and they won’t know where is the focus point.
Anger
The definition of anger is a strong feeling of annoyance, displeasure, or hostility. This is quite abstract, in my mind, anger is an image that someone is shouting at you. The person just burst out and vent all the emotion on you.
The tools I used is sugar cane, after press out all the juice, the dry faber can use as hard brush and create this kind of mark. And because anger is burst out the emotion, so I brush the stroke hardly in different direction. The paper is newsprint paper because it dry out very fast.
Loneliness
Loneliness is the sadness because one has no friend or company. It’s different from alone, one person stands in a room that is alone, but loneliness is a group of people inside the room but one stands in the middle because only that person has nobody to talk with. People will feel lonely only when compare with others who are in groups.
At first I tried to draw the white line but I find it always break in between and the thickness is not even, so I shifted to stick strings on black cardboard. There are some benefits about using string. Firstly, the line is thin and even. Second is that if I draw many lines they will merge together and looks like a thick stroke, if use string people can easily find out that they are two bunch of lines overlap each others. Loneliness is a negative emotion so I choose black as background, and it’s a low-key emotion so the lines direction is horizontal.
Nervousness
The meaning of nervous is easily agitated. From my own experience I find out that people are tend to feel nervous when facing crowded, like giving a speech in front of public, looking at a picture that is filled with small dots, even when entered a crowded MRT station we also feel nervous and annoying. My understanding of nervousness is crowded.
The tools I used for this piece are white acrylic, chenille stem and black foam sheet. Chenille stem is a wire with many faber around it, and as I have mentioned previously, the foam has many small holes on surface, then plus the faber they can make a thicky-dotted texture. I roll the wire to coil, put white acrylic on one side then keep stamping it on the foam sheet. Why I roll up the wire is because I want to make this crowded texture warp and twisted, like what those artist do in horror manga, when the character are heading to a creepy place, they will draw a lot dots and warp them to swirl, to make reader feel the anxiety and nervousness.
From this assignment, I have learnt a lot of line language, different kind of line has different characteristics, and I have tried to apply the knowledge in the final work consciously. Also I have explored a variety of tools and materials for mark-making. Personally I realised that things can come out very different from sketches and real piece, so just try it out. Don’t fix your mind into your ideas, it adds limitations to yourself, try something you didn’t think of before and sometimes a good surprise will come to you.
One more thing is that when you finish your work, choose the final one objectively. For this assignment I have done several pieces for each emotions, some I spend half an hour, some just finish in few minutes, which turns out better than the half-an- hour work. Keep your focus point in mind and choose the work that best representative to your idea. Don’t let the money, time and effort you have spend affect your choice. The audience can’t know how much you have spend behind the work, the only thing they can see is the final outcome.
