A TRIBE Jia Liu
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Introduction
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Throughout the first year in the MFA ILP, I created many works using different skills and materials. My themes and techniques might change, but what remains consistent is my subject matter, which ultimately forms“my tribe�. A spirit of playfulness and a sense of humor imbue each of my stories with childlike wonderment.
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Series of Illustrations
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Our first year had many workshops, which were about different aspects of making art, so the topic and technique of my work varies a lot. Before I came to grad school, I created children’s picture books, which required a long time to complete. So I didn’t have the opportunity to create images for singular themes. Experimenting with conceptually based illustrations is very different from making a book and requires a different mindset.
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1. Image Harvest In reference to my first project in MFA program, it is appropriate to summarize what I did before and think about what I can do in the future. Looking back at my work, I found that I was interested in many subjects. I like observing the environment around me; I like kids, animals, bugs; I am curious about how ants carry things; and I also care about social problems. Consequently, my work exhibits a wide range of subject matter, all of which come from my real life.
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- Ways to disgust yourself “ Ways to disgust your-self ” also is a real-life based series of illustrations. We always go through some disgusting moments in life that we can’t avoid. Some people hate these kinds of feelings, but some people actually enjoy talking about them, even though they disgust their listeners. This project is a series of postcards on ways to disgust yourself or others. If you enjoy them, keep them yourself and have a good laugh; if you don’t, send them to the people you hate!
For this project, I enjoyed drawing the images and I am glad people looked into it and recognized their own experiences in my illustrations. I used watercolor because it has the sense of cleanness and brightness, which can create the contrast with my disgusting topic.
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2. Book Binding When we take a book, open it and read it, we start to communicate with it. In my point of view, how to make a book interact with the audience is very important. We get use to reading in two-dimensional text and seeing images in a 2-D book format, but I always believe there are more aspects and possibilities we can bring into that format to make book reading a totally different experience and to generate more interest. And I am addicted to exploring infinite possibilities in a limited area.
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- Who is There Book binding workshop was our first workshop; we learnt different methods of binding book. I really like hand-made items and it was a lot of fun. For the reaction piece, I wanted to create a flag book with animals hiding in a tree, so when people opened and closed the book, they would discover the animals inside. But my first try was not very good and I did not have the sense of what a reaction piece should be, so I redid this piece at the end of first semester. The structure of the revised book and my idea worked better. My idea changed a little bit when I redid it, except for the hiding animals. I also brought movement into the book: opening a flag book can create a strong movement, so when people opened my book, they would see the animals hiding in the tree moving in an animated way. Through the movement, I brought a more innovative plot into one piece.
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3. Alphabet Book - Words have double meanings Alphabet project was a challenge for me but also a lot of fun. Instead of collaborating with an author to create a sexual related alphabet, I came up with my own idea for words, which have double meanings and are more child-friendly.
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I really like my idea and I enjoyed the process of making it. It was the first time I drew digitally and I was satisfied with the turnout. People may not get the idea just from the illustrations, but when they read the text and illustrations together, they can get the idea and the sense of humor. What I learnt from this project is that children’s picture-book text and image is equally important and they complete the whole book; otherwise, we would not need text in our stories. Moreover, I think the text should be considered as part of illustration that needs to be well-designed in order to express the idea better.
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4.Sketch Book For the sketch book project, I intended to be more free and try different methods every time; it was a good chance to play with small ideas. I was not satisfied with the drawings I did but I really liked the pop-ups I created for the last several pieces, which I will introduce more in the next chapter.
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5.Letter Press Letter Press was the midterm project. I was eager to find my own style for illustration at that time and I wanted to try some thing totally different from what I had created before. I had this idea of creating plants figures, because when I look at different plants, I feel each of them has its own personality and emotions. Actually I rarely draw people so I also wanted to have a try. I found I really liked the figures I created so I developed them into my business card. But somehow I feel this style is hard to merge into my other work, so maybe I will keep them in my backpack.
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6. Words on Wheels Words On Wheels (WOW) was a fun project because we needed to interpret the poems written by children, which was a perfect fit for me because I always want to create work for children. But instead of coming up with ideas that kids would like, I needed to depict their ideas with my illustrations; it’s similar but slightly different. I always try to understand kids through conversations with them, through their work and through their behavior, so it was very interesting to discover what kids think and how their thoughts vary with age through their poems. “My skirt” is a simple and cute poem written by a 2nd year girl. Some people might feel it is too simple and boring but I felt this poem is so bright and happy which just shows how a naive girl would express herself. It seems her life is very happy and she has a lovely family. I was caught by this sentence “I wish it could make me fly to my grandma’s house” which is exactly what a little girl would imagine and I felt this could be the right direction I want to go, and how I depicted her imagination became important and interesting. I felt my mood was led by this poem when I draw the illustration and I become happy and bright too. Such a cute poem!
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On the contrary, the other poem I got, “Who will cry for me”, was such a sad poem written by a grade 12 kid. It was very hard for me to illustrate because I like to draw happy and simple themes and I tend to avoid sad topics in all of my work, but I think this is what would happen as an illustrator; we can’t encounter only the topics we like all the time. So I started to think how to illustrate sympathy to a “ mistreated, heart-broken, harshly abused” girl properly. It was opposite with “My skirt”. For this sad poem, I used more abstract ways to draw because I think it easer to convey a sad mood. Similar to graphic design, I think illustration is also a way of solving problems but in a more narrative way. Some illustrators like to express themselves through their work, so their work is more personal, but I like to solve problems with my illustrations because I also want my work to be useful to others, not just myself. In terms of this aspect, I think these two illustrations work well.
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7. Pattern Pattern is fun! I will never get tired of drawing animals, for it just makes me happy. For my pattern project, I wanted to create an animal kingdom with different species of animals, mammals, birds, insects, reptiles and marine life. At first I wanted all of my patterns to overlap and I created a mammal pattern in that way and it was not very successful, but I still liked the animals I created. Then I turned to a more typical way and the other patterns became more cohesive. The amazing part about pattern is that even though I draw something very simple, it can be really playful when it is repeated. Furthermore, once I have my own pattern, I can develop many different aspects into new products.
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8. Hand Lettering After I came to US, I found hand lettering is such a big deal in design: some people make their living from hand lettering and they regard themselves as hand lettering designers. People will pay a high price for a print of letters, which didn’t make any sense to me at first. Then I realized this was my prejudice because hand lettering here just like calligraphy in China. If people respect their own culture, they will respect their character.
For this project, I chose to design a book cover: the books we designed came from the invisible library, which is an online library constituted by fake books referenced in real books. The subject itself aroused my interest, for I like nonsensical things a lot. The book I chose is “ Mysteries of the Worm” which referenced in Robert Bloch's "The Secret in the Tomb" and H.P. Lovecraft's "The Haunter of the Dark". I used dry leaf with a wormhole in it but didn’t show the really worm, and the book title is the vein of leaf which can bring the sense of “mysteries”. Instead of designing the letters first, I drew the leaf vein first and let the vein lead my lettering. I think it was more natural in this way.
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Again in this project I was solving problems that I think illustration should address. The problem was solved but I felt the cover I drew was not like my “style”, making me think again what is a “style” and how can I define “style”? The way I work is to have a concept first and then find a solution for it, so the idea always comes first instead of the technique. That’s why every time I have a new topic I will try many skills and find the one I feel fits the topic best. If the definition of “style” can be really broad, I would say the way I work is my style.
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Paper Cut-outs
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I started to use paper before I came to MICA but I developed it further here. I begin to use more paper since the paper-engineering workshop of last semester and I did some simple pop-ups just for fun. I like working with paper because it is such a flexible material and it always surprises me, and I can use it to make some normal ideas stand out and be more entertaining.
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1. Pop-ups Paper Engineering gave me a chance to explore paper more. I did this small pop up book called “ Watch Out! ” which has dangerous animals in it. I had to follow an instruction book to figure out how to do pop-ups; it was a hard process but I found I could transfer one method into many different things and make it my own, which is the most fun part for me. The following workshop was laser cut. I decided to make a cover for my pop-up book and solve some problems such as how to deal with the blank background. This time I added woods in the background to make the concept more complete. It still can’t be a complete book but it was a good point to start something fresh.
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For Art Market, I developed the characters in “ Watch Out � and turned them into greeting cards since the Christmas season was coming. The process was a combination of previous workshops and I got more use from the simple pop-up method, which helped me to create more pop-ups in the Sketch Book project.
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The working time for the sketchbook was always short. If I wanted to do pop-ups, I needed to use the simple method in a clever way, because not every topic speaks well when it is transformed into pop-ups. I love to play with paper for it is more like a relaxing process.
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2. Stop motion - A big sneeze For stop-motion workshop, I decided to keep on doing pop-ups and turn it into stop-motion before I had a topic. I had seen others do pop-up animation and it was really cool and I want to do the similar thing. But I found I couldn’t do anything because I didn’t have a story. After I came up with a story, I found I couldn’t turn the story into fully pop-up version because it couldn’t add too much to my story. Things turn out the best way for me when I get an idea and then find out a method. If I don’t have a good reason to use it, then I don’t need to use it. So I decided to follow my story and see what I could do with paper. My story was about a magic moment brought about by a big sneeze from a little chicken. Except for building the scene, sound also became an important part of the whole project. I had to find proper music for my story and in some parts I needed to add other sounds to it. Thinking about these things at the same time was very intense but reminded me to not just focus on one aspect in a project that is constituted by many parts. This project was finished in a super limited time so there were some problems, which I think were there from the beginning of my idea. I don’t have to use pop-up for the chicken and snake even though they look kind of cool; then I can match my story better with the pace of music. So just for myself, I always need to get an idea first!
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Children’ s Picture Book
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I have always drawn children’s picture books, and it was my major in my undergraduate studies. To learn more about storytelling literary and visually was my main goal of coming to grad school. For our first year in MICA, it was separated into many parts and more about exploring different things, so it was hard to start some long projects such as picture books. Self-direct was a perfect time to get started and to prepare for my thesis.
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I had several stories from the beginning of this semester and I did some rough sketches. I think all of them are potential ideas for my thesis. The story I chose to do first is about communication barriers for kids. There are more and more kids who have autism than ever before; some of them always play alone because they don't know how to communicate with other kids or how to make friends. So my first story was about making friends-"I don't have friends". This semester I am enrolled in digital illustration and screen-printing. The more I know about digital, the more I like hand drawing and hand making. As I mentioned before, I felt I lost something in the digital illustration even though sometimes digital illustration looks very traditionally. So I decided to go back to traditional ways but also use the new printing skills I am learning then combine it with hand drawing. After the third round of sketches, I almost worked out my story line. I started to try different techniques to find out what skills can work together, then I completed different parts in photoshop. I have now finished front cover and four spreads.
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Summarize
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The entire year was quite intense and fun, I faced many challenges I never faced before and had many new experience. My work changed a lot from my previous work and I explored many new things, which are prescious to me. Since the first year is more about exploring, I did many assignments where I didn’t enjoy the process or like the finished work, but I enjoyed making my children’s picture book at teh end of this semester. I was improtant for me to go through the progress and find what I truely love.
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