翁靖雅 Chingya Weng | MICA Idea Book

Maryland Institute College of Art Illustration Practice Chingya Weng

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| FALL 2017 Image Harverst........................... 07 The Sketchbook Projec............. 11 Risograph................................... 15 Paper Engineering..................... 19 Ceramic....................................... 23 Sewing........................................ 27 Laser Cutting.............................. 31 Art Market.................................. 35 3D Animation............................. 39

| SPRING 2018 Hand Lettering........................... 43 Pattern......................................... 45 Illustration Opinion................... 51 Animation................................... 57 Self Directed.............................. 61 Mural........................................... 67

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Image Harvest is the very first project we were assigned right after we started our first semester at MICA ILP. The project required us to develop a new idea based on the work that we had done before.

At the time, I had just left my family a few weeks before and was feeling a little bit homesick, so I decided to dedicate this project to my dad to show my gratitude for him.

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| My Dad | My Dad is a composition of 10 narrative illustrations depicting the relationship between my dad and me from the past to the present.

The images on each panel convey my emotional and personal feelings through different methods, textures, and techniques according to the memories shown in the images. Each piece offer the viewers an opportunity to interact with the illustration and allows views to recall their own memories.

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| Paradise | This project had two parts. The first was to design the cover of a sketchbook, and then each week, we would exchange books with students in the class and draw a picture inside each one.

This project provided an opportunity for me to draw spontaneously and freely without worrying too much about ruining my own precious sketchbook. I also really enjoyed seeing others' work according to their own personal styles.

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| Pimples | 'Pimples' is a zine that I created using the RISO graph. Since I know that RISO can produce a special texture and is known for its vivid color, I really want to seize the chance to make something interesting with it.

Therefore, I decided to go with the topic of pimples which is something that people are usually not willing to talk about, and tried to come up with several pages that talk about pimple situations. I also set a goal for myself to make this project as disgusting as possible.

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In order to print on the RISO, we have to set up multiple layers for the different colors. It took me so long to finally figure out the perfect combination of colors that c o u l d re a l l y m a ke t h o s e pimples look gross and disturbing.

To emphasize the texture of the pimples further, I applied puffy paint on top of the printed pimple images to make them look ever grosser. After that, I was given the epithet "Pimple Princess" in critique, which I am very proud of and happy about.

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| Memory of Lanyu | I was very inspired by the works of Colette during the paper engineering workshop, so I wanted to use some of my old drawings to try out new pop up techniques.

The images that I chose are from the series of my trip to Lanyu. Those images include scenes of ocean, mountain, and sky.

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The process of making the actual pop-up pages was very difficult for me because I had to try out all kinds of different methods to find the right way to produce the result that I wanted. After making a pile of unsuccessful tests, I finally got the hang of it and was able to turn my flat illustrations into threedimensional work.

For the final presentation, I decided to combine three pop-ups into a book. The book allows the viewer to go through the images in a sequence as if they were taking a journey with me in Lanyu.

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In terms of the cover of the pop-up book, I really wanted it to match the natural and organic atmosphere in Lanyu, so I used a laser cutter to engrave an etching of each pop-up onto the wooden cover.

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| Mini Plants | For the ceramic workshop, we tried out two ways to work with clay-- glazing on tile and handbuilding.

It was very interesting to see how different my drawings could be when they were turned into three-dimensional sculptures. I also really loved the process of building something from scratch and making tiny adjustments step by step in order to find the right proportion for each piece.

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I started by painting an imabe of a cactus on my tile and then applied some puffy paint to add more texture to it.

I continued working with the concept of cactus but this time created a sculpture by handbuilding.

When finished, I found it too dull and boring; in order to fix that, I gave my little cactus a weird face and I really love how it turned out.

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In this workshop, I also experimented with how tiny I could make things out of clay, so I made a series of miniature plant pots. The process of making these plants was surprisingly delightful, and I was really happy with the final products.

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| Hair You Go | I always wanted to try out embroidery as a way to produce my illustrations, so I came up with an idea to explore different hairstyles by playing with the different sewing techniques.

I managed to embroider faces onto a tote bag, which was not such a good idea in the end because the threads could be torn off easily. Instead of the functional bag that could actually be used as I planned, it is now a cute art piece to be displayed.

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After finishing this piece, I can say that embroidery is definitely not my thing. It took a long time just to fill a tiny little section. It was a very painful process for me, but it was also funny because there was a period of time when everyone in the studio just looked like a grandma who was struggling a lot and trying to finish their pieces with sore eyes and very painful necks.

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| Ugly Beauty | At first, I was planning on making a set of Mahjong in our laser cutting workshop, but due to the amount of the pieces that I would have to make and the limitation of the time, I ended up abandoning this idea.

To come up with a new concept, I was browsing through my sketchbook and was inspired by a quote I had written down in the lecture from the Red Nose Studio. The quote is "Don't see a hole as a hole, see it as a portal." From this, I developed an idea of making a kaleidoscope, and to turn someting ugly into a pretty image through it.

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As my main visual content, I chose the images of cockroach and earthworm, which are usually considered ugly and disgusting creatures by the public. I laser cut two identical images on wood and applied a layer of cellophane between them to make the images pop.

Th ro u g h t h e s e p i e c e s , I want to convey an idea that sometimes what things look like is not necessarily how they are; maybe from a different perspective, you can find the beauty of them.

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| Plants You Can't Kill | After having the experience of making the tiny plant pots in the ceramic workshop, I gained some confidence in making miniatures with my hands and was eager to create more, so I decided to make twenty-five hand-made mini plants to sell at the MICA Art Market.

Being small and light, they don't take up much space and they will be “forever green� without any extra care. What makes them even more special is that they are all hand-built mini-sculptures-- each piece is original, which adds value to the products.

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The material that I used was Sculpey and acrylic paint. I also designed the packaging for each of them to make the products look more attractive and also to protect the plants from breaking.

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As the making process was very time consuming, I priced the products high, but I was very worried that I might have overpriced them.

However, I had nothing to worry about because I ended up selling 22 of them out of 25. I was very surprised that people were willing to spend that amount of money on such a tiny object, but I was very happy about the outcome.

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| X'mas 2017 | To explore different techniques of composing art, I took an intro class of 3D animation that taught us how to use the 3D Maya program. Through the course, I learned how to build models and some basic skills of making animations.

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| Face | For our hand lettering workshop, we had to choose a word that starts with 'F' and design each letter and print it on a fan as a final presentation.

The word I chose was 'face' because I thought it would be very interesting to create different faces according to the shapes of the letters. For the final work, I tried to print the letters crowded together, but it was kind of difficult due to the uneven surface of the fan.

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| Pattern | We had a very fun time spending a day drawing real food on a table as a practice in pattern design. We then used these drawings to create a digital motif.

I found the technique of making motifs that was shared by our professor very useful because I never thought that there might be a quicker way to design a repeating pattern, so I just manually dragged every single object into place one by one.

For the final, I came up with two patterns, which were food and plants. I think the most difficult part for me was to find a right composition to diguise the way in which the pattern repeats itself.

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| Illustrating Opinion | Illustrating Opinion is the elective that I took in the second semester. The course helped me to push myself in finding a way to convey an opinion through my illustrations. This was a challenge for me because I feel like I don't really always have an evaluation to express through my work, but this class inspired me to develop different aspects of my own creative practice.

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Pretty Violence 53

Shock doctrine 54

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| Dear Tom | The animation workshop was super fun for me. It was very compelling to watch the images move frame by frame. We chose paper cutting as our main material to work with, and came up with a sad love story to animate.

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| A Long Long Caterpillar | The self-directed project was the most difficult one for me in the whole year. I struggled a lot and literally had no clue about what I was going to do. In the end, this project also made me think differently about how I find inspiration for my art.

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In the beginning, l only knew that I wanted to talk about time and changeu through this project, but I had no clue about how I was going to make the final piece.

Being clueless and frustrated, I started to paint with my favorite material, watercolor. I also tried to draw in a very loose way, letting my unconscious mind take over.

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Even though I really enjoyed drawing spontaneously, I still didn't know what to do for the next step. After doodling for three days, Momjoo saw my work and suggested that I should take one of the characters that I created and make a story about it. Taking that advice, I think I finally got something from which I could create a final project.

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In the end, I came up with nine segments of illustration in a accordian book, which the viewer could see as a single scene and also as a long long caterpillar to show my beliefs about how to approach each moment. At first, I was trying so hard to tell people what time and change are, but I ended up teaching myself a very precious lesson about how I experience time and change.

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