Assignment 5: Your Notion of Colourful Asia

When I first saw the theme of this assignment, many different things like food, clothing, dance, etc. raced through my head. To give myself a focus, I decided to concentrate on Chinese and Japanese specifically due to me being a Chinese and also because I am highly interested in Japanese culture. So I decided to to look at areas which are highly similar in these 2 cultures and merge them together.

As I was on my way home one day, I happened to pass by this Wayang performance and I noticed their highly colourful makeup. Hence the idea of masks, mainly Chinese Opera masks and Kabuki (Japanese Opera) masks. After deciding on what to use, I had to think about how to go about merging these different masks together. I ended up going with dividing the different masks into quarters and putting them together. I drew a quarter of a different kind of mask. The top right was a typical Kabuki mask, top left a Chinese Opera Mask, bottom left being Monkey King mask and the bottom right a Japanese demon mask. I chose the most outstanding feature of each mask to decide their placement.

After coming out with the outline of the masks, it was time to colour it. To explore the different combination of colours, I did 9 different colour schemes.

For the back of the postcard, I did a simple postcard design with a black and white version of the image.

However, after much thought, I thought that it might be better to put a few masks with different colour schemes into the postcard. Hence, i redid 9 colour schemes.

I varied the size of the masks so as to make it more vibrant and not so monotonous. I ended up choosing the one on the bottom left corner, the one with the red hue. This is because I though that the colour red can better represent the Asia which is closer to heart to me, which being the Chinese culture. From the colour scheme, I changed some shades of the colours so that they can better compliment each other.

Front:

Back:

From this assignment, I learnt the importance of colours and shades. The colours used in a single illustration must be able to compliment or even contrast each other, to better bring out the meaning behind the illustration. I also realise the usefulness of doing up a colour scheme where the different effects of different use of colours could be seen at any one time so as to do a better selection. I would apply this usage of colour schemes in future design process as it greatly aids in producing a good piece of work.