Sense of Place

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Project 2: Sense of Place

Importance of observation

- An active act of acquiring information, through the senses, of a subject matter in its natural setting.

-Examples: a referee observes players or fighters in the sport, advertising agencies observe trends in advertising, marketing agencies observe the trends in consumption, parents observe the growth and health of their children, lecturers or teachers observe the progress of their students, we observe our own emotions, photographers observe lighting, children observe the behavior of those around them, etc.

Designers and Observation

- Observation is important to designers as it enables them to see “problems”, as well as getting ideas for solutions to those problems.

- For designers, observation is much more than just collecting and analyzing data. With their own sensibility, designers have another way of approaching observation which also inspires their work.

For the project, I chose a lake garden that is located in my hometown. This place is only 15 minutes away from my home by car. The reason why I chose this place is that I had a lot of childhood memories there and I believe it is one of the most beautiful places in the country. I also used to go on a picnic there during the weekend with my sister even on my own. Unfortunately, due to MCO, I did not get to visit the place physically to do more in-depth observation of the place but I still managed to find some pictures that I think are good enough to capture the beauty of the place.

Basically, the place is known as Taiping Lake Garden or The Raintree Walk. This place is functioning just like any other parks you have ever been to. People come here because they want to spend time with their families by doing some physical activities together like playing at the park, jogging, boating, cycling or maybe just walking around the park while admiring nature during their leisure time or maybe they come here because they had nowhere else to go. Actually, it is such an interesting place to go to, especially, during the weekend rather than just wandering around the mall. Even though I am from here and this is like one of the ways I would normally take on my home and I see this place almost every day, I still have not gotten tired of it. In fact, I have also visited a few parks in Selangor but I still think this place is incomparable to any other parks I have ever been to in the country.

What makes this place is so unique is the trees. They are known as ancient rain trees. Every huge tree in the park was not planted by anyone but they have been sitting there for ages. In another word, they are originally from there and that is why people take good care of the place, especially, the trees because the trees are very old and really precious for everyone who lives in the town.

I do not have a picture of the gazebo at the park on my phone so that's why I sketched it out. Basically, this is like my go-to spot at the park whenever I am there.

Idea Exploration

For the artwork, for sure I am going to do something with the trees because that is like the only thing you see in the pictures above. So here are some examples I have found on the internet that I will use as the inspiration for my artwork.

This is the idea that I came out with.

Feedback

When I first showed Miss Maria the sketch, she said she likes the idea I have here but she just wanted me to be careful with the coloring technique so the face will still be able to pop up because it is connected to the tree. She also wanted me to add the sky to the background. Apart from that, I do not think there was anything else that had to be fixed so I just proceeded to paint it.

The materials I use for the artwork are watercolor paper and watercolors. However, this is what it looks like when I have done painted 40% of it.

Finally, this is how it looks after everything is painted.

Rationale

The painting utilizes earthy and saturated color pallettes to create such a happy mood and they also match perfectly with the subjects within the painting. I deliberately use these types of color pallete because I just wanted to portray the type of energy I would normally get whenever I am in the park. I also want to let the viewers experience the positive emotions when they look at the painting, for instance, content, relaxation, joyful and happiness through the use of light tone within the painting. Furthermore, the painting is described as fantasy or imaginary and the subject matter is the human. I created the human as a tree because I just wanted the viewers to see the way I perceive the lake garden as well as the connection between humans and nature. Basically, the main idea of ​​the painting is to create something that represents the human-nature relationship as well as its impact on humans. The tree as a human represents humanity and nature as one because we understand nature and people are part of one system. Therefore, when we hurt nature, we hurt ourselves as well. It is also a symbol of how nature benefits humans in life because even viewing scenes of nature, reduces anger, fear and stress and increases pleasant feelings. Apart from that, I ensured that all the elements used in the painting were connected to one another and not separated to showcase how everything ties in together in nature.

Reflection

I found the topic is quite interesting since we get to create an artwork based on a place around us or a place we have been to. This is my very first time creating an artwork that is inspired by one of my favorite places in my hometown. I had a good time looking through my old gallery trying to look for some pictures of the place from my previous visit because it really brings back the memories. Even though I did not get to visit the place in person for the project, I still found this project is quite fun to work on. Overall, this is probably the most fun project by far.