Looking Back to Move Forward
The Idea
The assignment was to create a mini-series based on our "why". I had thought that my "why" hadn't changed significantly from last year, so I figured that I would go with a similar theme.
Except, that's not quite how it worked out.
I ended up doing something completely different; not just different, but WEIRD. Weird for me, anyways, and weird for anyone that knew me and how I usually did art.
The idea was spurred on by something I think about often: "Would my eight-year-old self be proud of me right now?" The answer is always yes. I decided to take that idea on with my then-current idea, meshing the two together to freshen up the original concept.
But then I found my old journal.
The note on the "third" piece in the mini-series isn't actually from when I was in 3rd grade, but I wrote to myself that in the future, I would always be proud of me, no matter how well I could do things. And that's when I glanced up at the ceiling above my bed, saw my origami mobile my dad and I had made out of an old hanger when I was really little, and got the idea to use origami. It's something my dad used to do with me all the time when I was little, and I still will absentmindedly start folding squares of paper or napkins whenever I'm bored. It was perfect; it's something I did and something that I carried with me through life, inventing my own folds (like the dragons I figured out how to make) and finding new ways to use the skill just for fun.
And so I got started.
The three pieces of the mini-series, each being five by seven inches (5''x7'') in size. The placement of the "third" piece was undecided until my teacher suggested putting it above the two pieces, centered like a thought bubble connecting the two beneath it. That's how it's hanging on the wall.
My mini-series from last year (2017-2018) that was based on the idea of growing and improving; there is no "end" goal but to keep striving for improvement.
These pieces were the smallest that I was allowed to do for the mini-series (the minimum size required for the assignment), which is completely opposite of how I used the largest possible size for this year's mini-series. (The whole point of the mini-series is that it's mini.)
A picture of the mobile that's hanging in my room because it's fun seeing the things I spent time making when I was little. The lights hanging from it are from me wanting to have light somewhere I could reach it, since I have a loft bed that makes it difficult to turn on any lights in the middle of the night.
I tend to put everything I'm using on my desk while I'm working, even if I only use it to make one line or a few dots. This is how it looked while starting the "first" piece of the mini series. That bag in the top right corner, next to the roll of purple paper, is completely filled with Post-it notes and origami dragons, flowers, and butterflies. That blue bag is a three-section pouch that has nothing but Micron pens in it.
The first piece I started and finished is the one you'd look at last when looking at the three pieces in the series. It's meant to be that end that bounces you back to the beginning, since that's what the mini-series is about. You look back to move forward; you always return to where you started, seeing where you've come from and where you'll go and even where you currently are.
I naturally spent longer on the "second" piece in the series, taking my time to show how detailed my works can be with my pen/ink drawings. The piece isn't colored at all, practically, displaying the downfall to my growth. My pen/ink work has improved, but I hardly ever used color in most of my pen pieces. I trapped myself in a world of clean lines and patterns that lead from one to the next. I even tried a few new pen techniques on whim that I came up with while working on this. Spots of whiteout are there to point out that I am in fact trying to get past the "perfection" of it all.
The Process
I realized something as I started working on a mini-series based on my "why". Even though I was carrying on with the same, general theme from the mini-series from last year, it meant something different to me. Whereas in the past, my mini-series was meant to show how I've improved over time to have strengths and weaknesses both, this time my mini-series was made to reflect how I look back to move forward. I believe strongly in using past experiences to help with progressing and growing, and my art is no different than anything else I apply that mentality to. I do redraws so I can use the old to apply the new to, and I use "old" methods of creating art to improve even further. As I continued thinking about it, I realized that it goes deeper than just that. I'm not only looking back to go forward, but I'm pulling apart myself and learning just why I do the things I do. So I decided that was the direction I want to go.
My mini-series became an attack on my comfort zone, and the first willing attack on my normal methods of art to the point where the person sitting next to me in the art room glanced over at me as I scribbled very slapdash over the paper with metallic pens, and asked, "Zéta, are you okay?" (I honestly thought I was going to rip that paper, I was being so aggressive with those pens.) My response was something about how I was thinking so far out of the box that I was destroying it at this point. Then I started to smear white-out at random all over the paper. The teacher came over and noted how there was a halo-effect going on around the figure's arm in the drawing; I immediately said, "WELL, LET'S FIX THAT!" and proceeded to slap some white-out on the paper and streak it across the figure's arm—which is something I never would have done in the past—and just left it like that. It was completely new to be free of having "perfect lines" and "clean pen and ink work", as that's what I've been known for in my art for a while now. And then I forced myself to use those black-and-white pen and ink lines that I was so comfortable using, showing the stark difference between the two main pieces of my mini-series. It showed not only my growth, but the restraints I had unknowingly put on myself through my growth. What happened to that little artist that could care less about coloring outside the lines?
I worked on this mini-series in almost every spare moment I had, since I could easily fold origami wherever I happened to be. That being said, I still managed to fall into my normal habits and ended up gluing the Post-it notes to the "third" piece not an hour before we were presenting our pieces in a class critique. I got it done, but it made me wonder if that "third" piece was even necessary. Sure, it adds to the series (and we were required to have three pieces in the series) but it's more of an afterthought, even though I had the idea from the start to have the three pieces I created.
The lines go from sloppy and carefree to being tight and clean. Through this mini-series, I found ways to break out of that zone I had been desperately trying to escape from. I can still use my clean lines, but now I remember that it's okay to leave a mess behind on a paper sometimes. It's often when we don't care about the outcome of art that we are capable of our best work. Why do you think drawings/sketches always look better on lined paper? We're not worrying about perfection due to using some nice and fancy paper. All that's on our minds is drawing.
And that's exactly how art should be.