Reflecting on Worldbuilding

Worldbuilding is not limited to fiction or academia; it is an integral part of everyone’s daily lives that we never think about–music, dramas, paintings, photos, etc. Thinking creatively about worldbuilding is interesting to me since worldbuilding is like an open playground for imaginations to run wild. It allows people to create entirely new worlds, whether in terms of art, story, or problem-solving. Those worlds can have their own unique cultures, rules, and settings. It is thrilling because the choices we can make are endless, and it fills our brains with ideas. 

Perhaps one of my favorite artists is Monika Marchewka, who creates a dreamy world that seems unrealistic–girls with extraordinary outfits lying on the shells and two hands with pearls in the middle looking like a pair of eyes. As an artist, she creates each image as its own world and combines all her paintings to show the audience a broader version of her world. The same picture can be interpreted from different angles. While some people might see the drawing of a girl sleeping in the shell as a beautiful work, others might see it as a dragon’s eye staring back at the viewers. All of her art is about worldbuilding since although each piece is beautiful, the world she creates is more nuanced with every illustration. 

As someone passionate about drawing, I see this as a way to form my own creative world. Using various colors and tools to draw the structures, details, and characters, I can put the world I imagined on paper and board. Reflecting on my identity as a collector of material related to worldbuilding, I see my connection to this creative process lies in my ability to paint whatever I envision and visualize the world to be like. Creating artwork can help me to share my inner world with others, which reveals my true identity.