Exhibition: My drawing done on Sketchbook paper with colored pencils is meant to convey just me overall. It's meant to convey my different personalities, my different traits, and different little items that I feel represent who I am as a person and what has made me who I am. I included items I also just really love as well. I wanted this drawing just to convey me overall, what I'm like (depending on my mood) what things I like, what my religion is, what my personality is, and although not many people would be able to tell everything about me from this drawing, I at least wanted them to take away the important factors about me.
Inspiration: Happi_115 My inspiration behind this piece was again Happi_115. She is an artist on Instagram, She is a Viet-Chinese freelance artist and a full time junior designer located in Naarm/Melbourne. As we can see, she tends to enjoy creating whimsical illustrations and graphic work that depicts spaces of the unknown. Bunnies enter from one void into another in all her paintings! She is another one of my inspirations for my drawing because since her paintings are highly abstract and very bright, so I decided to again use her as my inspiration behind this piece to get a similar theme among my art works all together.
Inspiration: ChikuWamiel
My first source of inspiration was primarily from ChikuWamiel. She is an Instagram Artist, Illustrator, and Designer based in Japan. Her paintings primarily consists of very vibrant paintings depicting 'Kawaii' animals, towns, even people. I chose her as my inspiration because I had seen one of her paintings on Pinterest! I personally feel as though her art depicts happiness at such an intense level it was able to remind me of my 'Highs' and 'Lows' I get during my BPD Episodes. I felt using her as a source of my inspiration in my art to depict BPD would be very accurate for myself and others with the same disorder.
Sketches and Planning As for my sketches and planning I actually ended up sticking with my very first attempted sketch I made. I again, tried to plan out a sketch that would look similar to my previous works because when I have my works layed out all together I truly wanted them to be very similar and have a very noticeable, trending theme within all of them. I stuck with the usual bunnies I always do, but I made them very different this time, I made two bunnies hugging in the center. I wanted these two bunnies to convey me, I have a bad habit of seeing myself divided in half, having one side be my positive side and the other being my negative side. Sometimes I don't always get along with myself, but other times I truly am happy and love myself, so I wanted the bunnies to convey me loving and accepting both sides of myself.
Process Following my initial planning sketch, I had just decided to re-sketch it but as I was coloring along the way, I decided to add extra little doodles and designs. I incorporated more designs I felt I liked and made me happy such as bubbles, and stars, and flowers, I kind of began to go with a childish look with this drawing. It sincerely made me joyful when I noticed it began to look that way. With the colors, I made sure to stay very focused with my plan of this drawing, I decided to make one bunny very bright pink, with happy colors to convey my happy, joyful side. The other bunny I established dysphoric colors such as blues, and grey with darker and lighter shades of blues too to convey my sad, more downside of me. But, when including the bunnies together I made sure to include these separate colors together, blending in together to show my appreciation for both sides of myself, and to convey me getting along with both of my sides. The Yin-Yang sincerely inspired this piece a lot. When I was finished with my piece, I actually decided to glue in some little things to convey me, the things I love, what things make me, me. I included a cross since I am religious, I am catholic. I incorporated some bows, since I absolutely adore bows and they make me joyful, along with a handmade piece of candy from clay I had made a while back. I felt that including these would make my piece much more personal to me and really bring out joy in other people when viewing this piece as well. I secured my drawing in a plastic film to prevent any damage and keep it safe since it is done on sketchbook paper, I was fearing any possible damage happening to it.
Critique:
Similarities: Some similarities that we can immediately notice is the same type of theme in my work and from both of my inspirations works as well! The bunnies are a major similarity from Happi_115's art so we can immediately notice this similarity. Another similarity we can notice is the occuring theme in my inspirations paintings and my painting, we can immediately notice that the intense abstract theme that occurs in Happi's and ChikuWamiel's always can accurately occur in my painting as well! Differences: Some differences that we can notice is that I didn't really paint the SAME way as Happi and ChikuWamiel but I did it highly similar. I made the bunnies the same, but I added the bunnies in amuch different way, instead of including them following each other in a trail, I made two bunnies together, hugging happily in the center. Although my painting is similar to the paintings of ChikuWamiels I don't feel as though my painting incorporated much detail as hers did. Her paintings incorporated many more details and it tended to really cover up her whole canvas, mine only somewhat covered up the entire sketchbook page, I included little charms as well.
Reflection Overall, I sincerely enjoyed doing this drawing, I completely forgot that doing drawings in sketchbooks were also a medium and could be done as an art project as well. So, instead of doing a painting I decided to do a cute drawing in my sketchbook and submit it. It was really fun doing this project, I knew I wanted to stick to the concept of Bunnies, but doing a different twist on it was really interesting, doing the bunnies hugging was really nice and it was something new. I knew when drawing these two bunnies that I would want them to really represent me, and my personality and who I am. I see myself divided in half, one side of me loves everything and I'm endlessly happy, whereas the other side of me tends to be moody, more sad than usual, so I thought incorporating both sides of me but happily would be able to show how I feel when I truly accept both sides of me. I made it colorful, yet used dysphoric colors too to show that even balance between both of these sides of me. I included charms that I also felt conveyed who I am, what represents me and what I love.
ACT Connections:
1) Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork? In my drawing we can somewhat see that my inspirations type of art is highly evident in mine, in this case we could discuss the bunnies. That was the effect of my inspirations artwork on my own piece of artwork.
2) What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration? I feel as though my artist inspiration may sincerely appreciate my art piece since it incorporates some of her art style mashed up into my own.
3) What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration? While I looked for some art inspiration based around sort of that Yin-Yang symbolism, most were either too contrasting from one another, or not contrasting enough so I kept this mind with my drawing, and I made sure not to make it too contrasting yet too little contrasting. 4) What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research? The central idea around my painting was meant to convey (BPD) but in a more positive light, allowing yourself to accept yourself for how you are and not putting yourself down because of it.
5) What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research? I didn't make any inferences around any of my research.