This activity is somehow related to our main brief. For the main brief we were asked to explore some potential places and work on a particular aspects of this area. So, for this activity we were asked to use a place that we've already explored and try to illustrate a character representing the environment.
I chose Brickfield as my location, because first of all it was the only place I visited yet and because it also captured my attention a lot too.
We were divided in groups of 2 and we had to think of the character, describe it as describing a person then give the description to the other group member, It was the other group member who had to illustrate the character
I described Brickfield as being busy, so it has to be a young businessman who is always in a rush, he had a smile, because I saw some youngsters who were happy there, other than adults.he had to be young because the place seems to be really clean like being new. It had to be an Indian man because of the many Indian shops in Brickfield and it had to be a modern man because Brickfield was a well developed area. And there has to be something related to food since at every corners of the roads there will be food, but I didn’t give anything precise because I was out of idea at this moment.
The description that I got from the other member, was a actually a shop. He described it as being neither too hectic nor to calm, and he said that there was a motherly feel to it, that there was a lot of art stuffs there but however it felt somehow strange and it was old. Lastly, he described that there was a lot of muslims in the shop.
I drew an old muslim woman, with her hijab, but however the hijab is turning into tentacles to represent the strange feel, her age is for the old appeal of the place. There are flowers blooming around her to represent the art side of it. She has a quite peaceful expression to represent that this place isn’t hectic.
Later on, we compared our drawings with the whole class. There were a few students who visited similar places, so we found that even though it’s the same place, there would be different feelings attached to it, for example, some would represent the same place in a much darker perspective other would represent it in a much brighter illustration.
Another interesting thing was that, because we weren’t the ones illustrating the character representing the place. The illustration would not be exactly the way it was supposed to be from the person who described it.
For example, when I was describing the character representing Brickfields, I was picturing a dark, up straight figure with just a simple smile, not too happy to represent the discomfort of being in a cumbersome busy place. But when my group member drew it, he gave him a happy, widely open and exciting mouth instead.
So, during this session there was a lot of emphasis on how different people picture the same thing differently, even words aren’t enough to give an accurate description of something from one’s mind. Especially, when there’s emotions and a lot of reflection behind it.
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