When I was younger, my mother used to bring my brother and I to the park almost everyday. There were not a lot of parks in where I lived as it was a small island. I grew up playing in this park and numerous memories were created there; I still remember majority of them until this day.
There was not anything in particular that was special about this park: swings, slides, monkey bars, ponds, skate area, all the typical facilities that you would find in a park. Unfortunately, the park was renovated about three years ago and the atmosphere completely changed. Even so, the park was special to me, in fact, it still is. No matter how it has changed, the ambience of the old park still linger in my mind. I remember being the fastest at climbing monkey bars, swinging so high up that I could almost touch the tree leaves with my feet (that was what I thought), playing hide-and-seek with other kids and being so good at it that they forgot about me…
Digital Representation:
My initial idea of this abstract illustration was ‘memories coming out from a memory box’. The colour palette was chosen mostly according to the colours that represented my childhood. I also incorporated other bright colours throughout the illustration to suggest the ideas of fantasy and happiness in relationship to my childhood. Furthermore, I have decided to combine the concepts of a ‘childhood space’ with the ‘three-dimensional space’ by attempting to create a deceptive dimension. The memory box being in a distant represents the past and the inclining movement of colours represents the recalling of memories.
Material Representation:
Alongside the abstract theme from the digital representation of a space, I wanted to develop the relationship between space and memory. I took a scenery of the park which I am the most familiarised with and created a puzzle of colour blocks according to objects in that particular scene. Even though I am able to vision the imagery of the park after compiling the colour blocks, it was hard for the audience to understand the piece without an explanation. Therefore, I did a partially blind drawing of the park according to my memory on a separate piece of acetate paper above the original piece to create some sort of ‘guide’. My reason behind the idea of doing a blind drawing is to further explore with my memories alongside the concept of space.
Reflection
In my opinion, this was a really challenging project. I am not well-experienced with using illustrator and there were a lot of technical difficulties while I was creating my digital representation. Fortunately, I was able to achieve my desired outcome and I am very proud of it. Furthermore, I was also able to improve my skills in regards to digital work and I found it really fun though I may not be the best at it. The making of material representation was also a challenge to me. I did not experiment a lot with abstract art in the past, therefore incorporating abstracts in both of my work was definitely a fresh and interesting approach and I really enjoyed it.
