INTRO:
During the spring break, one of my best friends, who currently studies in China, chatted with me on Wechat and cried about how much time she had wasted with her ex-boyfriend. According to my friend, her ex-boyfriend lived in another city and cheated on her by having an illicit affair with the other girl. She was heartbroken and helplessly and powerlessly told me how much she wished she had never met that playboy. Ten weeks have passed since that, and my friend has started a new romantic relationship with a man who truly loves her.
It is indeed a tragedy to love the wrong one, but it does not mean we have to deny all the sweet memories or feel regret about the past experiences. It can be painful when bad things happen, but we can ultimately feel a sense of relief when we recall those experiences, and we even feel grateful for them since all the experiences make us who we are.
AUDIENCE/ PURPOSE:
The intended audience of my illustration project is every teenager who once suffered from painful experiences and is having a hard time recovering from the pain. They can be young lovers to fall into a romantic tragedy like my friend, or they can be students who are isolated from their classmates. No matter what social group or age they are categorized into or what tragedy happened to them, one characteristic shared among them is that they all try to deny the existence of the painful experiences that happened to them or have a hard time accepting recovering from them.
As a teenager who has encountered various horrible people and incidents, I always decide not to forget those experiences. Instead, I prefer to give myself some time to recover, allow them time to heal me, and then analyze those experiences and collect what I can learn from them. Thus, in terms of my illustration project, I want to help those who once suffered like me, and I wish they could value every experience in their lives because they are what make them become better and stronger people.
IMAGES:
The name of my illustration project is called The EMO Gallery. In the illustration, I depicted an artist who likes to collect his emotions and present them in the museum known as the EMO Gallery. There are five emojis in the middle of the frame: crying, embarrassment, anger, sadness, and hopelessness. Each emoji represents different emotions the artist felt when he was in various bad experiences. The artist is now recovered from the pain, and he is thankful for every of his experience. In this case, as the poster on the right side of the illustration indicated, he decides to open the gallery to the public and proudly share his stories with others.
From my perspective, emojis mean how we feel in every painful experience. The action of placing the emojis in the museum indicates a feeling of relief and a positive attitude regarding them. In addition, as the artist opens the gallery to the public, it also means we present a better version of ourselves, the grown-up selves, to the ones we care for and love after we recover from the pain.
PROCESS:
I used two tools to create my project: Adobe Illustrator and Procreate. To create the character and the setting, I used Procreate and started with random sketches that helped me to generate ideas. Then, I tried different color combinations and decided to use light green, orange, and blue as the main colors for my work to create a sense of warmth and relaxation. After this, I began to work on the details and added lighting effects to the images.
When I finished the background and character using Procreate, I shifted to Adobe Illustrator and applied the pen tool to create the emojis. Besides, I also used Adobe Illustrator to create the poster behind the character. When I finished my work on Adobe Illustrator, I uploaded the images to Procreate and changed their colors and lighting to make them fit the whole image better.
LEARNING:
The process of creating this project has been challenging but interesting to me.
During the preparation stage of the project, I brainstormed ideas for this project. My initial plan was to merely create a poster using Adobe Illustrator or Canvas, but I finally dared to develop a more innovative and creative idea and decided to jump out of my comfort zone by applying two software.
To be honest, the idea of the EMO Gallery seemed to be extremely challenging to me since it would take much longer time and effort to create. However, when I started working on the draft, I felt myself recalling the past experiences, and I gradually fell into a process of healing myself. I looked at my work and felt satisfied as I finished the project. I believe a kind of magic exists when you turn your thoughts and experiences into images, and in this process, you can feel empowered by what you are creating.
NEXT:
In this project, I turned an abstract idea which is the process of healing from past experiences, into images that can directly stimulate our senses. For the next project, I would also try to brainstorm ideas about human emotions or other abstract ideas and turn them into visible forms.