Sketchbook Art
Meaningful Artwork
This is one of my first and favourite creations. I didn't have a meaning until the final details were being added. The first stage of me creating this was the background which I only thought I was experimenting with. After this I noticed a negative story within the newspaper I'd stuck down and decided to keep it as my theme. I searched the internet for inspiration and came up with the idea to add tearful eyes to it, although I thought it looked better when they were closed eyes with a tear drop falling down. I felt that adding eyelashes to make the eyes belong to a woman was more effective as they tend to be viewed as more vulnerable and so it would portray the idea that she is in danger if she is so upset/scared (the closed eyes make it seem like she's afraid to open them).
I added the details of the tally markings to convey the idea that she is counting down to something. These markings are commonly associated with prisons as they can be seen on the walls inside sometimes. This gave the impression that she was in prison, but as she is so upset/scared, it would seem as though she is innocent and may have been wrongly accused. This of course would make her upset as she is being deprived of a normal life because of a misunderstanding. However, that is not the case. When you take note of the big words on the newspaper, it appears that she is in an abusive relationship that she can't get out of with a man she 'barely knew'. This explains the newspapers, the markings, and why she is crying.
This artwork, unfortunately, was not finished. However I had the meaning planned out before I started. My idea was to create an eye with an image of the world as the iris and pupil as if it was looking directly at the world. The colour of the world though, however, was going to be red and brown which would give connotations of fire and the death of nature, therefore implying the destruction of the world. I had this idea as it would be a realistic type meaning. The eye sees the world for what it truly is: full of war and destruction of the environment. Although, the world still looks blue, green and white, it doesn't mean it isn't still happening.
I also wanted to use a very bright red specifically for the pupil to create a main focus. As a connotation of red is danger, I thought it would work well with the overall sense of destruction. If the person can sense danger, they would of course worry, which is why I considered adding a slight tear drop from the eye, but I decided it might be a bit too much. I thought that the colours, I would've used, would create enough of a feeling of panic by themselves.
This piece of art was done when I was feeling quite angry, the reason behind it isn't important but I thought a good way to get rid of the negative energy would be to pass it onto a page. Doing this piece was very relieving for me. At first I decided to rip into the page multiple times, and during this process I chose to keep the areas I ripped around so that I could re-include them in some way. I came up with the meaning in the middle of the creation process, although I usually think of meanings first.
The lowercase writing on one side of the page represents the gentleness and calm methods people try to use to fix things, like getting you to talk about things or just relaxing you. I used the thread to show that it healed a little but there were still very noticeable tears.
The overall message of this artwork is to get the point across that once a part of someone becomes broken, it cannot be completely mended back to normal. It's permanent and although some things may help, there is no cure for such a thing.
I very much enjoyed creating this piece as it included a lot of randomness. This was one of the pieces of art that I had a meaning for first. The point of this piece was to get a message, that is supposedly thought by a mental health victim, across. For the background I used the torn margins from pages in a notebook. This was because I saw it as a perfect representation of a mistake, as when you make a mistake in a notebook, you tend to tear the page out and try again. By layering a lot of these, it shows that a lot of mistakes were made and this is the reasoning behind the message.
The writing says "my mistakes define me", which of course isn't true. I feel that this is very effective as it shows the awful mindset of people who suffer with mental health problems. As the message seems like a final statement, it suggests that the person gives up, which is a sign of no determination or motivation.
This next piece has a very general meaning which is commonly thought around the world. I've heard it a lot and it inspired me to create this as a realistic piece of art. I gathered a lot of receipts that I had unintentionally kept over a period of time. I tore them up and stuck them onto the page whilst layering them also, but I first scrunched them up to look old and tatty. This was to create the effect that someone had spent a lot of money over time in hopes that it would bring them happiness, but instead it just decreased the amount of money they had.
Again this pieces message is like a concluding statement that someone thinks because of the action of spending a lot of money. They finally realise that "money can't buy happiness" and the only thing they have to show for their efforts is evidence that they have lost money for no reason. I wrote the end message as though it was in the same style as barcodes found at the bottom of receipts to create a sense of a constant haunting feeling. Whenever the person remembers that money doesn't do anything other than buy you things and not feelings, they are reminded how much they spent and how many barcodes were scanned.
Before I started this piece, I came up with a line to create an image from. It said "a hat may cover my head but may never lock away my mind". I thought of this and thought it'd be interesting to see what a corresponding image would look like. As I hadn't used chalk before, I chose to use it in order to see whether I enjoyed using it and then I would be able to choose whether I wanted to include the medium in my final piece (which I did). I felt that creating a realistic looking hat would match the quote perfectly and the fact that it is being tilted down by an almost animated hand creates mystery and intrigue.
For me, the meaning behind this is that the hand belongs to someone else, and they are trying to cover/prevent the person with the hats' thoughts. I thought this would be really effective as the hand could belong to mental health as if it were a person trying to limit someone's visions (by tilting the hat over the eyes) or thoughts.
I randomly came up with the idea for this art piece and after some considerations I was able to alter it until I was happy. My original idea only included a wordsearch, but after getting some inspiration from the internet, I decided to add little images around the outside too. The idea of a wordsearch is to have fun, and to find words within a certain theme which is generally positive. My idea was to twist this into a negative version as though someone had almost vandalised it to share the thoughts in their mind. I also added some somewhat troubling doodles at the side of the wordsearch to show that it is uncontrollable and messy.
Some negative words were already in the wordsearch but the person completing it added more over the top of positive ones to show that they cannot think positively. They, or rather the mental issues they have, are trying to eliminate any feelings of happiness or joy. It shows the complete power that the mental problem has over the person, and in this case, the mental health problem is depression (the word 'wordsearch' at the top was written over with the word 'depression').
I came up with the idea for this next piece just from deciding what I was going to use for the background first. As most of my other pieces had white backgrounds, I thought it'd be good to change things around and have a black background instead. Of course, with a dark background, you can't use dark colours on top too as they wouldn't stand out too well, which is why I chose to add white.
I thought of the idea of making small pieces of paper with lines on them to make them look like normal sized sheets of lined paper but from afar. I decided to do this as I thought it would be effective to make a lot of them, and like they'd just been discarded. Also with this artwork, I came up with the idea first and then created the image and the quote I based it off of was "talking about the pain doesn't make it any less painful". I thought of this as, for some, therapy that includes talking about your problems doesn't help. The pieces of scattered paper symbolise the times they've tried to say what's wrong but they keep getting it wrong, which is the reason for the few scrunched up pieces. They could also be seen as diary entries.
To include the quote, I used a font similar to a typewriter as it's to do with putting words on a page or getting them out of your mind. I think it definitely worked well.
This piece was one of the very first ideas I had, but I wasn't able to start it until I got the right materials. Also, it took a very long time to create. I found that including barbed wire created a link to mental health that I liked a lot and so I knew it'd be effective.
My idea was to have two sides (seemingly joyful, and quite depressing) that were seperated by a large barbed wire fence. From the perspective I painted the background in, it seemed as though the viewer was on the side that was depressing. Although the idea I had was to create a small opening in the barbed wire fence that seemed possible to get through but it would not be certain that you could get through without getting hurt. For this piece, too, I had a quote in mind before starting which was "going around the problem is not possible, it's going through it that fixes all, no matter the pain". In other words, sufferers of mental health cannot simply avoid the issue, they have to go through the pain of suffering to be able to mend things and reach a joyful part in their life again. Not all solutions are easy to find.
As well as the other piece, this artwork had a meaning from the beginning of them all too. As I was to use mental health as the theme for my journey, I had to trial some ideas for artwork before hand to see whether it was the type of art I wanted to do.
I liked the look of a typical, 'perfect' paint splatter and wanted to include it in one of my art pieces at some point. In the beginning I started out with a list of ideas, some with images in mind and some not (just meanings behind them). So I was able to pick a meaning that I thought paint splatters could best link to and I went with it. This too had a quote to base the rest of it off of, which was "will I see the light of day". This linked to mental health really well as victims commonly wonder whether they'll ever be able to free themselves from the feeling of depression, or anxiousness, etc.
I had the idea to include the quote using a ransom note type style to make it more sinister as it is quite a worrying topic. However I only used black and white to keep the colour palette the same throughout the entire piece. The paint I used, too, was either black, white, or grey.
Although this piece is incomplete, I still think it is effective. The entire idea was supposed to be a person stuck in a straight jacket looking down at the floor to show sorrow. But I had also planned to create the straight jacket using plasters. This would give connotations of healing and prevention of harm as plasters link to this. I also thought that the material that fabric plasters are made out of was a nice texture and would be interesting to include.
Unfortunately though of course, I was unable to finish, but instead I added some detail that created more meaning. The shading around the person shows that they're almost radiating darkness/depression. Under the jacket they are suffering and although they may be destructive to themselves or others, it wouldn't erase the problem, it just prevents it for a while. This is the ultimate explanation for the person being in the straight jacket in the first place.
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