So, it's finally come to this, the first art assignment that actually specifies the need for you to draw something. The title pretty much gives the assignment away, but we're supposed to draw a landscape, but not of a factual location, but a landscape born from our mind.
Video link to the original Assignment, and now on to the rules:
- Get a piece of paper
- Get something that will leave visible marks on that paper
- Create a "Ground" for the picture
- Add "Figures" with human-like characteristics
- Put it online
If you wonder what the terms "Ground" and "Figures" refer to, it's very succinctly explained in the video itself, but they are pretty much what they sound like they are; the ground is the ground of the landscape, and the figures are the things which populate the landscape.
This one is a much more individualistic task than some of the previous ones, especially as the word "psychological" can also bring about feelings of privacy and intimacy. But as Lucy and I have decided from the start to do all of these as a team, we've added a few rules to incorporate each other in our respective landscapes.
The two of us will draw our own landscapes and populate it with our own figures, then swap our drawings over and add our figures to each others drawing.
In this way, we are inviting each other into the world that we created for ourselves, and by introducing elements from our personal landscape into the new one, it creates something not unlike a mix of cultures, and with it a sort of culture shock. This was something we wanted to explore for this task.
My landscape
I don't draw very often, but whenever I draw I tend to draw in lines, and this time I made no attempt to smooth these lines out. While drawing the ground, I had this image in my head of a great mass which was wedged into the earth, causing cracks and shadow over the world, I imagined it being a key part to the scene and that the figures would interact with it in mostly positive way. This mass turned into a tree the moment I began to add branches.
Lucy's landscape
She tells me that her picture has no meaning, that she created the picture randomly. Scenes of Japan definitely inspired parts of it, but she feels the end result looks like something made by a 6 year old child, but she still likes it. I think that what this image shows is a playful innocence, all of her figures are having fun in some way, whether they be flying in the sky or climbing ladders to the moon. It's a calm yet surreal landscape which doesn't pretend to be anything else.
Lucy's figures in my landscape
She added her figures with the intention to make the landscape more interesting; by turning the tree from a feature of the scenery into a character in its own right; by putting out a table which tries to catch a falling creature; and adding a snowman in peril. "No one would expect to see a snowman in this picture" -Lucy. Compared to my figures, hers a vibrant and noticeable showing a direct contrast and casting them as distinctly "other". They are the foreigners, the ones who don't quite fit, in the way that the natives may expect; but the foreigners still try to integrate, with various levels of success.
My figures in Lucy's landscape
Here, the reverse applies, my figures are dull and faded, seeming completely out of place in this thick-lined world. I tried to imagine what they would make of this world, very different from what they were used to. I imagined them gravitating towards the trees, the one thing that they could relate to. This is something I see quite often with people who start living in a foreign country for a long period of time, including myself. There is a search for the familiar, a tendency to look around for something, anything, which isn't foreign, be it a food, a place, a tv show, a building, anything which, while different, still gives a sense of security and a feeling of home from which to branch out and embrace the new.
Our two pieces work together to depict two sides of culture shock. While my landscape shows how the the foreigner appears to the native, her landscape depicts how the foreigner may cope when confronted with what is foreign to them.
Have you found yourself in a similar position? Far away from your familiar and needing to integrate with someone else's familiar? Have you seen people
