Journal Entry #12 - Sauce Materials Presented On A Plate

As we were tasked to find source materials that reflected certain things about us, I was considering various options. There were two paths to take in my opinion, one was to look for things that had meaning, but had no relation with one another, and the other was to find the things that had meaning, but had a similar context or form. I chose the latter because I found that consistency was a thing I actually appreciate, be it in art, or in my work in real life. I liked order and so I went about finding materials that made sense to me as they existed in the same domain.

As an avid reader, I was always a fan of the novelist and award-winning author Neil Gaiman and his books. I mentioned before in my PechaKucha presentation to my friends that I adored his quotations, and that had me thinking that perhaps I could find meaning in that. I realized that as texts, the materials I wanted to collect were his quotes. Now I needed to think of ways to fulfil the requirement of having his quotes turn from content to form.

I reflected on my own artworks, and realized that I have always been using his quotes as inspirations to create my traditional artworks which I shall show a few here in a moment.

I decided to take on the path of finding more ways I could use this and incorporate some kind of digital element to it. So I made a mindmap to determine where I could take this.

Here are some of the quotes I have chosen as source materials since they meant quite a bit to me as it shaped me as an individual growing up. Some of the quotes I read when I was young as a teenager being 15, and others I read again as an adult.

And so I collected his quotes, in a way I always had. I sometimes live out each of them unconsciously as I realize that the quotes shaped me in a way that rocked me to my core. I liked that a lot. And each time I found a quote that made sense to me, that made me shiver with goosebumps, I knew I found something good, something that would change me essentially in the way I looked at things.

I mentioned that I sometimes drew things related to the things I read about him. Here is one such example:

The Ocean At The End Of The Lane Drawing by Vashon Tnee

I loved his books so much that sometimes I feel inspired to do my illustrations based on it. And well, I was thinking that perhaps this could be somewhat related to how I intend to do the next project. So I made the following mindmap to determine where to take this to.

Source Materials Ideation by Vashon Tnee

I was thinking three paths. Each path starts off with my inspiration coming from the source material that was the quotes. I would incorporate the quotes differently in each path.

The first path to the left, was to take illustrations like the one I have done, and make some kind of image collage full of the inspired quotes in art form.

The next path below was to also use illustrations but present it digitally perhaps increasing the size of the final image through a projector of sorts.

The final one was to re-create the process in the form of my artist workdesk, full of the quotes, and artworks I have done on a table like an installation. The digital aspect would come from a computer which perhaps would display the various quotes in slides and viewers can interact by looking at which quote matches the work on the table.

These were some of the inspirations I had upon collecting my source materials and I intend to continue exploring as I move along the course.

Hope you enjoyed this reflection!