THESIS PROJECT (2022 - 2023)
The Short Way Home” depicts a variety of coping mechanisms people use to feel at home in unfamiliar, even hostile places or situations. It aims to showcase why certain interests and seemingly mundane tasks mean so much to people.
This project focuses on diverse ways people cope with the feeling of unbelonging by doing things that incites comfort and security. I think at certain points in life, anyone will experience estrangement and discomfort from unfamiliar, hostile, or just mundane situations. Thus, as humans, we develop coping mechanisms to deal with that discomfort. It is interesting to me how vastly varied and intersectional these methods of coping can be between people, so I want to visualize just how diverse the search for comfort in everyday life is. This is to both validate people’s differences and encourage mutual understanding as to why certain things are so important and comforting to an individual.
I put in lots of hidden details as well as references to my other art, another piece in this series, as well as my personal life, you can zoom in and try to find them all by hovering over the images!
Here are the final 10 pieces of my thesis (see more details for each one below this carousel of images):
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1. DEPARTURE
This first piece depicts people doing hobbies on the subway, bringing their portable home realms with them on the go.
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2. IN THE HOLE OR ON THE GROUND?
This second piece depicts someone coping with the feeling of unbelonging in real life social circles by going online and finding a welcoming gaming community there.
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3. LOOK ALIVE, GOT A LONG WAY TO GO
This third piece portrays a person using makeup and fashion as a confidence booster to cope with hostility, boycott and gossip.
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4. A VITAL DETOUR
This fourth piece depicts someone coping with and healing from emotional and physical burn marks of abusive/neglectful relationship(s) by immersing themself into bodies of water. My original intention is for this to depict coping with domestic abuse, but the piece as you see it now has a variety of different undertones that I don't think it's necessary to associate it with a specific kind of mistreatment.
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5. CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF SUNNY SIDE UP
This fifth piece portrays a person finding comfort in cooking breakfast, amidst the drabbiness and gloom of living alone.
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6. MINOR DELAY
This sixth piece shows an overstimulated kid getting comforted by his mom via a game of I Spy in a hospital waiting room.
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7. DRAINING RESIDUE
This seventh piece depicts someone coping with a breakup/falling out by shaving away hair that's attached to memories shared with an ex/ex-friend.
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8. ANY QUESTIONS BEFORE WE CONTINUE?
This eighth piece showcases a person dealing with their fear of public speaking by having around trinkets and small items that remind them of their loved ones and things that they're passionate about.
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9. CHECK YOURSELF, MATE
This 9th piece shows someone dealing with noisy and chaotic roommates by playing chess and being transported back to his comforting childhood.
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10. SMELL THE ROSES
The final piece shows someone coping with permanent holes in their life by indulging in their hobby of gardening and growing flowers.
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About the process
I stuck with using digital tools throughout this whole project and I think it was immensely beneficial in conveying what I wanted. A big advantage for using Photoshop is that I could go back and change the placements of elements very easily, and with it I also get the margin of error and ability to experiment that I think are very important in my process. I’m the type who does a moderate amount of planning upfront, but the bulk of the organizing and determining elements happens while I’m actually working on the piece and thus, this choice of media is very effective for me. Especially with colors, I really appreciate being able to manage them in post-production as it gives me a chance to tie everything together and clean things up as finishing touches.
As the project progresses over time, the concept evolved into something deeper and more metaphorical rather than literal, but the foundation is still largely the same. It is now not just about singular one-off uncomfortable situations as I originally intended, but also about the continual discomfort that sometimes are inevitable. The comforting coping mechanisms depicted are also not just things people adopt in a specific moment, instead, these actions grew to encompass hobbies, routines, and repeated patterns. Here are some early sketches:
The result/effect of these mechanisms have also evolved - instead of bringing complete comfort that helps one escape from reality, in some pieces these mechanisms are depicted as more nuanced, with a lingering level of discomfort still there even if one tries to cope with it. These changes are welcomed as I think they brought more depth to the theme and allowed me to experiment and explore more within the complex spectrum of human emotions, while still staying true to the wholesome core of ‘comfort’ that I’ve wanted to focus on from the start. More sketches with variations:
My research for this project was mostly based on personal recounts of individuals rather than scientific and/or academic texts.
I drew a lot of inspiration from advice blog posts, Q&A threads, interactions between people on social media, etc. but most importantly, from tidbits of my own life stories or stories I’ve heard from people around me. Ever since my final pitch for thesis was solidified, I found myself (mostly subconsciously but sometimes intentionally) looking for inspiration in the daily conversations I have with friends, family, instructors, acquaintances, and sometimes even in conversations that I overhear while I’m out and about. I want to give credit where it's due but unfortunately I can’t pin point exactly where the idea of each thesis piece comes from, they’re all agglomerations of episodes I’ve been exposed to and none of them are based solely off of a specific experience or story, but always a combination of different elements from different stories. Here are some more refined sketches/linears/color studies.
Overall this was a very interesting, fun and challenging journey. There were so many ups and downs on the way, many sleepless nights and mid-day naps, many deep conversations about life as well as fleeting discussions about things that don’t really matter, many Twitch streams, many audiobooks and podcast episodes, zero caffeine, numerous mental breakdowns, probably at least 300 reference photos, many hours going down rabbit holes of how to make pixel art, or how do chess pieces move, or the right hand gesture for knitting, a handful of brainstorm documents that’s been revised more times than I can count, 10 pages worth of feedback and even more ideas on the Notes app, and sheer willpower, but I made it through to the other side. And for that I feel proud, happy and grateful. Finally, here are some rendered versions before revisions of the pieces:
