My Oil Painting done on Canvas is meant to depict Bipolar Disorder, more specifically the 'Highs' of BPD. From experience, when I have 'Highs' and 'Lows' my 'Highs' tend to make me extremely productive, I get extreme bursts of euphoria and positive emotions. Due to the highly impulsive nature from BPD, it is important to realize these emotional 'Highs' are also episodes of the disorder. I wanted to depict this with bright and happy colors, using bunnies flying through happily and carelessly. *This Painting is meant to be included with my other half of the painting on a different canvas; 'Doomed' *
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' I get during my BPD Episodes. I felt using her as a source of my inspiration in my art to depict BPD 'Highs' would be very accurate for myself and others with the same disorder.
Happi 115
Happi_115 is another Instagram Artist! 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 paintings because since this painting has another painting that belongs next to it, I really wanted to convey her bunnies entering another void.
Sketches and Planning
As for my sketches and planning I truly didn't really 'plan out' my painting at all. I sort of saw these two different artists plus my idea and what else I wanted to include in it and decided to just go for it without any planning. I had a small plan, not much of a sketch. Lately, I've beginning to realize with myself that sketches give me an idea of what I can do, but actually writing out what to paint and create helps me more and I feel like it helps me be free and not be too restricted as to what I have to EXACTLY make.
Process
For my process, I began with noticing and realizing the type of colorful and bright pallette that both ChikuWamiel and Happi both had! I wanted to make a very graident background with shades of pinks, and blues since I am making the painting be in the sky. During a BPD 'High' episode, I usually feel like I'm invincible and I'm on top of the world. I feel extremely social, energetic, happy, cheerful and as positive as ever. Using these bright palette colors would very accurately depict those feelings exactly.
After my background was done, I wanted to paint very soft white clouds with a wide bristled brush, after doing so I closely analyzed ChikuWamiel's art and noticed that in her paintings she always tends to incorporate cute little things such as stars with smiley faces, rainbows, balloons, flowers, things that tend to really depict extreme happiness and joy! I then began incorporating those same things into my painting to give off the extreme happiness vibe. I really want my viewers to feel that intense emotion from my painting.
After doing so, I then went ahead and started painting the bunnies from Happi_115's art! I began to paint them coming down from the top of the clouds, to the bottom following each other in a line, each bunny depicting off every color of the rainbow to make the painting emit even more happy vibes for the viewer to see !
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 and outline to them and I gave them trailing colors as well, in Happi's painting she didn't give them a trail like I did. 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 didn't really cover up all of my canvas as hers did.
Reflection:
In all honesty, doing this painting as a way to convey my BPD 'Highs' was actually very interesting. I made this painting during one of my BPD 'Highs' to really see if I could convey my real time emotions into a painting and how accurately I could do it as well. A couple of days afterwards, I looked back at my painting and noticed that I truly was able to convey my 'High' BPD episode all into one painting and it came out truly amazing, and I feel actually very proud of this painting. After this painting I then decided to create another half to it, "Doomed" and have the Bunnies sort of fly into a different void, My BPD 'Lows.' When you put these two paintings side to side by one another you can truly see the significant difference between the two and it almost makes the viewer very curious as to why it's this way. When presenting my paintings together to my friends and family that was the first thing they tend to notice, the extreme difference in vibe and motion, so much action in one painting and an extreme drop in that action in the next painting. I feel that the both of them together truly do convey my BPD 'Highs' and 'Lows' episodes.
ACT Connections:
1) Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork? The effect of my inspirations artwork greatly effected my artwork, it helped me succeed in conveying the message of 'Highs' along with joy, happiness, and lots of abstracts.
2) What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration? I feel as though my inspirations; Happi_115 and ChikuWamiel's apporach to my artwork would be a very positive approach considering how I was able to use both of their art pieces as a main inspiration for my art piece and as well as the message I was able to convey along with it.
3) What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration? A very hurtful thing I've noticed when researching more in depth about my disorder is that many people and articles tend to view BPD as a very harmful and inadequate disorder that a person can have and they idealize people with BPD to be very aggressive and abusive and it's not that way at all so it was very hurtful to see those opinions being made by many people.
4) What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research? The central theme is Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and 'Manic Highs'
5) What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research? I inferred before beginning my project that it would be extremely difficult to convey a BPD 'High' but in the end it all seemed to work out very well.