4:5 Meme Time

Steve led our fifth and final one day brief which involved retelling pop culture events from 2018 and expressing them through illustration.

We began the workshop by drawing memes and sorting them into a grid that ranged from offensive, mainstream, bland and obscure.

We then wrote out a list of all the pop culture events that took place last year that we could remember and stuck them up.

We then picked one from any list, whether it was our own or someone else’s and drew it out in three different ways in a square size format. I chose yodelling kid who I hadn’t wrote down in my list but I really liked. I drew the image as it is in it’s originality with yodelling kid in Walmart. I then drew out yodelling kid with a cowboy hat and a guitar and then I was going to draw his appearance on Ellen before Steve said that I needed to draw the original image in three different ways not the event in three different ways.

I stuck with my first drawing and then drew out four symbols to retell the event. So I drew out the Switzerland flag because that’s where yodelling originated, the Walmart logo, music notes, and a phone. Sadly, I couldn’t think of a third drawing.

We then discussed our illustrations with the class and picked two more from the list to draw. I chose, at first, black panther and the music app Tiktok and obviously yodelling kid.

I asked my friends if they could tell what my new images were of and they could guess black panther but not Tiktok, so I scrapped that one. I decided to look online for reminders of events from last year and so I drew out Beyonce headlining at Coachella, but sadly my friends couldn’t recognise my drawing again.

So I drew out Kanye West and Donald Trump meeting at the white house where Kanye West accidentally reveals on video that his iPhone passcode is 000000. I really believed my drawing skills for this piece were top tier but alas no one could recognise the image.

Steve then set us homework to finalise our three images by drawing, painting, digitally creating etc. them all in the same way but keeping a common element between the three. I experimented with what drawings I could do that had a common element and asked Steve for some advice. I told him I had yodelling kid, black panther and a new choice, the tide pod challenge, but couldn’t recognise a common element and he agreed so I suggested that I could do the royal wedding, infinity war and the tide pod challenge and have three objects: Meghan Markle’s veil with a crown, Thanos’ glove from Infinity War and a tide pod. Steve said this was a suitable idea.

I then brainstormed what art styles I could do and considered pixel art but after using an online pixel art creating website, I realised it was a lot more difficult than I thought. Then I had this idea of drawing the three objects as new emojis but I felt like drawing was too out of my range so I had the sudden idea of sculpting. So I did.

I got some clay and paints and was going to sculpt before I realised doing them as emojis would be way out of my creative capacity and doing Meghan Markle’s veil would be too difficult so I changed it to the surprised Pikachu meme instead.

These are my sculptures of Surprised Pikachu. Thanos’ glove and a tide pod.

Unfortunately, as I was having too much fun sculpting, it became too late before I realised my surprised Pikachu is a meme and not a pop culture event and also not an object. The only related Pikachu event I could associate my sculpture with was the new Detective Pikachu movie that comes out this year. But to be fair, there was a Detective Pikachu video game that was released in 2018.

My three sculptures in square format:

I spoke with Steve Spacey and he was pleasantly surprised I thought of sculpting and gave me feedback. We both agreed that it didn't actually fit the brief because I already realised when it was too late that instead of three objects I had made two objects and a meme. I didn't want to sculpt again because it took way longer than I wanted. So I revisited the idea of pixel art because it just stuck with me and I thought it could be quite fun.

I really like the simplicity of it and the slight childness vibe it comes with so I used https://www.pixilart.com/draw to create my own pixel art versions of my sculptures.

I decided to go back to doing Meghan Markle's veil as an object as well as Thanos' glove and a tide pod. These are my final outcomes. I actually really like how they look shit but not too shit, to me it comes across as fun and I feel it's easy to recognise what each drawing is.

From this brief, I learnt it’s more difficult than it seems to find a common element between three things but I’m happy with my outcomes because sculpting and pixel art isn’t something I've tried before but have wanted to.