Snail Mail 2023 round up

Hi friends, happy belated new year! 🎉

To begin 2024 I’m wrapping up a project I’ve been working on over the course of 2023; Snail Mail! („• ᴗ •„)

It’s a long one so get ready for artist Q&As, thoughts from a first-time micro-grant writer, and a review of my explorations in AR (augmented reality) including a stop motion animation plus the Artivive and Mental Canvas apps!

If you’re wondering what is Snail Mail all about Here’s a quick summary:

Snail Mail is a community-engaged public art project that facilitated a pen pal exchange between creatives and community. I invited 3 artists to join me in this project, and together we created art packages that were mail out to interested community members.

Recipients were then encouraged to respond to the project via a postcard provided in the package, and which we then share(d) in our community gallery here

Artist Q&As

This project wouldn’t have been possible without the contributions of Anjalee, Ray and Amanda who collaborated with me. A few considerations I had when deciding who to invite on this pilot project:

• Has connections to Mississauga although the project isn’t limited to Mississauga only

• Our collective practices/styles are diverse (music, illustration, public art, writing, photography) to make for a well-rounded and interesting viewing experience for community members receiving our artworks

• This wasn’t a requirement but it worked out well that everyone had an interest in working with community in the past

• And of course, all these people have wonderfully rich creative practices that I admire, and were willing to participate in a big experiment with me!

Get to know the team a little more through this Q&A! 😗

Q. What do you enjoy most about your creative practice?

AMANDA: For me, there's a lot to enjoy in a creative practice! Being curious about the world and playing with new materials are two things I always return to. I also love being in a supportive community of practice, where I can share and create with other artists!

RAY: Experimenting and trying new things out. Pushing my creative mediums and ideas in new ways. Constantly growing as an artist. By meeting and working with other creatives and communities I would have not known before collaborating. 

ANJALEE: What I most enjoy about the practice of writing is how it can take me into unexpected places. No matter how much I plan the overall journey, I can always count on encountering surprising and beautiful vistas as I embark upon any journey of writing.

LINH: I’m all for experimentation and play! It’s the best when every project is different and present new creative challenges.

Q. Who/what influences your work?

AMANDA: Currently, I draw inspiration from personal narratives, my family history, and art history. Some artists who have deeply supported my thinking through these topics are Zinnia Naqvi, Julius Manapul, and Ursula Handleigh. I also love collaborating with other artists in the community! Being able to create alongside my peers, like Linh, Anjalee and Ray, brings new ideas, motivation, and belonging.

RAY: Other creatives and communities I work with. Learning about different art forms and cultures from different creatives around the world with each new project I do.

ANJALEE: A plethora of people, writers typically, but really anyone, and the books that I read influence my work. I’m a promiscuous reader, so I don’t constrain myself to a genre or any particular viewpoint. By reading as diversely as I can, I ensure that my brain is as malleable as it can be, which in turn allows me to be as creative as possible.

LINH: I draw inspiration from stories/storytelling, food and culture, and of course nature! Some of my favourite artists include Ed Pien, Wenting Li, Sha’an D’Anthes and Winnie Truong.

Q. What currently motivates you to create?

AMANDA: This is a tricky one because sometimes I feel like I need to create way more and way more often than I do! I have to remind myself that being a creative/an artist can look like lots of different things! Even when your practice is moving slowly (like mine) that counts too! I'm most excited to create when I can be playful with materials or try something new! I'm also motivated to create when I'm around other artists!

RAY: My community and fellow artists friends and collectives I am part of. Seeing my friends push their art work to other levels is what inspires me to go harder and push my art practice.

ANJALEE: What currently motivates me to create is the awareness that I am still learning and that I have a long way to go in the pursuit of excellence in my craft. So, the more that I create, the more opportunities I provide for myself to try new things and work on old things.

LINH: My capacity to create is currently low, but I stay motivated by following through on previous commitments I’ve made to myself and others.

Q. What are you looking forward to from the community pen pal responses? 

AMANDA: Seeing the diversity in the responses is my favourite part! There are so many beautiful moments in the images and words we received back! I love that folks have taken the time to share a bit of themselves with the team! Thank you!! <3

RAY: Hearing the impact the artwork has on people in the community and how it brings positivity into their day to day life. I like hearing their stories, what inspires them and seeing their artwork and creative input to the project. 

ANJALEE: What I look forward to and enjoy the most from the pen pal responses is seeing iteration in practice. We create artwork through our postcards, and a pen pal’s own creative juices are stirred up and they’re moved enough to create their own postcard-based artwork. And theoretically, we, the original artists, could respond back, and they could respond back, and we could continue, and eventually this iterative process of responding can yield art that moves beyond the postcard format. The possibilities are endless!

LINH: Surprises! I wasn’t sure what we would receive in response but receiving a handwritten note in the mail is just a lovely feeling. I had hoped that by facilitating these connections, some lasting impressions would be made and it’s definitely done that for me. I’m grateful for the engagement Snail Mail has received.

Q. I hope to have future editions of Snail Mail, what would you like to see happen? 

AMANDA: YES! Snail Mail 2.0, please! :) It was a wonderful project to be part of! I wonder if it could grow to include more artists and reach all across Mississauga! If it's an edition, saving the artwork from artists and the community, like you've started to do on your website, would create a lovely archive which could live on or be turned into a publication! This was so much fun. Thank you for including me and for all your patience with me! I can't wait to see Snail Mail return soon! ;)

RAY: I would like to see more local initiatives like this happen and inspire other creatives to do their own engaging public art project's. Having more creative inputs from different disciplines around the globe and across Canada.  Engaging more creatives and awakening a creative revolution from within. Where artists support each other and work together to make their communities and environments a better place.

ANJALEE: I think that Snail Mail is perfect as is that I cannot think of any way to make it better!

LINH: I agree with Amanda about the ongoing archive and publication, and Snail Mail 2.0! I’d love to include more artists, reconnect with year 1 pen pals, feature youth artists or maybe collaborate with an animal rescue center to have the animals be postcard models? Plenty to think about!

A huge thank you to the inaugural Snail Mail team. You’ve been a joy to work with and I look forward to seeing what you all get up to this year!

microgrant writing???

Thinking back, the part I found most difficult about writing this grant was streamlining my ideas for this project into something concise and impactful. There were so many ideas I wanted to try out! However given the timeline, considering other ongoing projects and my own capacity for creating and so on, I had to be sure I was pitching something achievable.

It was tricky to plan something I’ve never done before so thoroughly, or maybe I just needed to plan it out thoroughly to be able to write it out simply. The word count restrictions were fairly small (25-300 words per question) so we had to get to the point quick. It was a lot of time spent pouring over a small amount of text.

As visual learner, pictures are always helpful so the diagrams I made for the proposal were for the jurors but also for myself! I couldn’t write anything until my ideas drawn out. These were referred to constantly while writing, and throughout the duration of the project to keep myself on track. Here are my two favourite pages from the supporting documents. (Side note, all my proposal documents/invoices/etc look like this. Why have boring documents when they can be fun?! I make templates for myself and refresh them occasionally to match my current artwork)

I don’t know why this diagram took so long to figure out, but when I thought “oh it’s a spiral!!” the whole project plan finally made sense in my head. My brain had a lightbulb moment and I’m still quite satisfied with myself for coming up with this 😅

A couple things changed as the project progressed but I stuck to this game plan as much as possible. I was handling all the image files (multiple artworks per person, logos, different icons and formats of various things). This pile grew and grew over the project so having a visual plan helped me keep the most important bits organized, especially since it had to be handled by the printer(s) and not just myself.

One thing that was a little scary to do for the grant was outreach. If you know me, I’m a very nervous speaker and not exactly a people person. Reaching out to artists, organizations and city councilors to ask for participation/support for a project I may not even get was nerve-wrecking (even friends or people I’ve worked with before). It was important that community be involved in Snail Mail though so it only made sense to tell people about the project and ask for help in sharing Snail Mail with a larger community than I could reach. Surprise surprise, it turns out there wasn’t much to fear! Everyone that I spoke to was very kind even if they weren’t interested/able to support the project. I also know that many of our participants found Snail Mail through this outreach so it was well worth the effort 😊👍🏼

This project was funded by Mississauga Arts Council’s Matchmaker MicroGrant Program through the support of RAMA Gaming House - Charitable Gaming at City of Mississauga, and thanks again to MAC, STEPS Public Art, Arts Etobicoke, Art Gallery of Mississauga, Visual Arts Mississauga, City Councillor John Kovac, Clarkson BIA, City of Mississauga and Mississauga Libraries for your support.

💌 Community engagement! 🥳🎆✨💖

The best thing that came out of Snail Mail is hands down all the community responses we received!!!! From the comments left on the Snail Mail sign up form to words of encouragement and handwritten mail… I can’t tell you how much it warms my heart to see the responses, and I know Anjalee, Ray, Amanda and MAC staff were all very excited every time more postcards came in. A huge thank you to everyone that participated or connected with us in some way 💖

Feast your eyes on this small selection of community cards! From left to right the cards are from Ivy, Shannon, Lyne, Lindsay, a mystery person (is this you???) and Berrin

If you haven’t already… CHECK OUT THE COMMUNITY GALLERY HERE
I added clickable links to all the Instagram profiles I could, and tried to put a name to every card that came in. There were a few unsigned cards, so if you spot a mistake or a mystery card is you let me know!! There were many people excited to further connect with the Snail Mail community so I hope you browse and find a new friend ٩(^ᗜ^ )و ´-

Community cards are also shared in some reels you can view in batch one, two, three and four. I also did an unboxing of a Snail Mail package here

I can’t say enough thanks to our community for being a part of this project! ヾ( ˃ᴗ˂ )◞ • *✰

Stop motion animation 🤹🏻‍♀️

From the beginning I knew that I wanted my card to include a stop motion animation with paper puppets. Shadow puppetry is something I’ve been exploring since my undergrad days but each time I revisit this idea there’s something new to learn and something different I want to try.

This time, I went fast and loose on the storyboarding and puppet building. I knew I wasn’t going to use projection or a tiered glass table to get depth/coloured acetate puppets.

I wanted to use all the excess latex paint from mural projects to paint right onto dura-lar (this I tried for Mother Tongue, should be similar enough to painting on glass right? and it worked out great). One thing to keep in mind is the paper can’t be handled too much or the paint will be scratched off.

I didn’t have a lot of time to craft jointed puppets, plus all that friction concentrated at the joints would guarantee the paint falling off. Soo since I had been painting often enough that it was faster for me to paint than draw and cut delicate puppets... my solution was to paint most of the animation frame by frame, and separate all the elements that need to move independently. The dura-lar was clear, this also helped because excess paper around the edges of the paint didn’t have to be cut super accurately. This resulted in sheets of frogs and flowers like this:

Once I had all my pieces cut and numbered and ready to go along with the board I was planning to use to pin everything to and the camera, I decided this set up didn’t feel right. I didn’t want to photograph and edit hundreds of photos like I’ve done before before animating, and I had gotten a little precious with the paper and didn’t want to poke holes.

I cut the backdrops so they would be the right size to fit in my scanner. Used some painters tape on the back of all my pieces or out of frame to get everything sitting the way I wanted before scanning every frame. I fiddled with the scanner settings for a bit to get all the colours looking the way I liked and this saved me from having to colour correct anything later on.

There are 196 unique scans, and parts were reused to make backgrounds for the the opening and ending credits on top of which I digitally illustrated the text. After this it was a lot of repetitive cropping, scaling and small adjustments, rescanning a couple mistakes here and there to complete the animation. You can see a full scan here, with the painters tape holding things out of frame and the edges of the dura-lar cut outs.

This approach actually worked out pretty well. In all my papercut experiments this has had the best colour payoff, and the texture of the paint (some of it has some grit too) really shows through. There’s a bit of depth achieved in the layering although that can be pushed further in the future.

With the animation done, and one frame picked out as the image for the postcard it was time to attempt the augmented reality part of things.

Augmented reality 🤖👾

One of my goals with this project was to learn about augmented reality. I wanted to try out new techniques and programs on a small scale, with the intention of potentially applying what I learn to large-scale public art projects in the future!

After some research, the two programs I chose to use were Artivive and Mental Canvas. I’ll touch on Artivive first since that’s the one I used to embedd the stop motion.

ARTIVIVE

I’ve seen Artivive used before by Arts Etobicoke and The Junction BIA on different window art projects, it’s also one that had a simple interface. I definitely wanted something easily approachable for my first try. The mobile app is what you use to view the artwork, and that’s free. Asking people to download and use an app is already an obstacle, I definitely didn’t want price to be a concern too. On my end I used a portion of the grant money for a limited subscription, and through my Artivive account I was able to upload my stop motion animation (video) and the corresponding image I wanted the video linked to (the postcard artwork/animation frame).

I remember Erin McCluskey mentioning something about your image needing enough contrast/recognition points for it to work with Artivive so I definitely kept that in mind during the process. Didn’t bump into issues there so thanks Erin!

Once everything was set up I tested it and my phone was able to recognize the postcard image on my screen and superimpose the video on top… but the real test was would it work on the printed artwork???? The answer is yes it did, phew! ₍^ >ヮ<^₎ .ᐟ.ᐟ Here’s a youtube short of demonstrating how you’d experience Ribbit in a Thicket in augmented reality using Artivive

Mental canvas

As for Mental Canvas, this was something that popped up in my instagram feed and bookmarked to try out one day. This was way before I thought of Snail Mail. It also requires a subscription (thank you MAC grant) and you need to draw a bunch of 2D layers to build a 3D landscape in the app. Working/thinking in 3D is not my forte, it’s difficult to consider perspective or imagine something sculptural in my mind’s eye. But the idea of being able to work flat and have the tool assist in placing my drawings in a 3D space was appealing.

For Summer Walkabout I actually did go on a walk in Mississauga. I brought a camera and took snapshots of little plants and every I found interesting, mostly plants and a few small landmarks. From a folder full of images I picked my favourites to illustrate. I could have drawn everything directly in Mental Canvas but I didn’t want to relearn how to draw using a new tool just yet — so I did all my drawing in Procreate and imported PNGs into Mental Canvas. I also went fast and loose with the artwork here (“loose” is something I’ve actively pursued in my artwork for ages). It was meant to be an impression of the things I saw rather than a perfect recreation, I could have easily just used the photos for that.

Anyway, a bunch of illustrations later I had another folder of images to work with that looked like this:

From here it was a lot of playing around in Mental Canvas to get everything imported and scaled properly before adding dimension by rotating or pushing/pulling a layer in space. It took some getting used to but there’s plenty of tutorials built in and many more online.

When all the elements are in position, you can manually move through the space by scrolling/zooming with your fingers and take snapshots using the camera button at the bottom of the screen. These snapshots can be arranged in whatever order you like and when you press play Mental Canvas can zoom through the scene to show you each snapshot in sequence, essentially animating the scene for you. My only issue was the png files were too large, and there was so many of them that it crashed the programs a few times. I should check the limits but go a little smaller and not print-ready file sizes and you should be fine 😅

What I like about this app was the fact that when the scene is published, viewers can access it via a link/QR code and view the sequence you saved, but they can interact with the images and experience the landscape by scrolling/tapping/clicking too! I thought it was a nice way to capture an ephemeral walk and share it with others.

Through both AR artworks I share a little moment in nature, and a different way to experience it. All wrapped up in the mail and delivered to you through Snail Mail. Both of these artworks are ephemeral in that they will only be around for a short period of time. It won’t be the same experience that original Snail Mail recipients got but you can still view the documentation for Ribbit in a Thicket, Summer Walkabout (flythrough and documentation) and Summer Walkabout (interactive web-scene) online.

future goals (just putting this out into the world) ✨✨✨

• Snail Mail season 2!

• Full scale murals combined with stop motion animation augmented reality?!?!?!?

• Public art projects/exhibitions incorporating an immersive experience like Summer Walkabout but on a larger scale?? Viewers could navigate the artwork and be in the artwork, right?

• A year long pen pal project where two people or a small team trade artworks back and forth and keep responding/reiterating them that results in a publication with the entire series. Nudge nudge Katika, I will write a grant for us eventually I promise

That’s all I’ve got for now, that was a long long blog that took a long time to write. Honestly months of stewing over this, but I feel a bit more refreshed now that it’s all out there. If you’ve made it to the end, thanks for sticking with me! Sending you (reader/new Snail Mail friends) creative juices and positive energy for the year ahead.

As always, if you’ve got any comments or questions about Snail Mail or this post I would love to hear it! Send me a DM here or an email here

Cheers,
Linh

Travel Log: LA '23 | Where Water Meets Sky

Try Again Next Time

Post originally from: December 23, 2022 

Hello hello!

Welcome back to another blog ｀;:゛;｀;･(°ε° ) As the cold settles in and the year comes to a close, instead of more highlights I thought I would share some proposals/sketches that didn’t make the cut instead?? 😅

Starting us off with a traffic signal box design. If I sent you a card late 2020/early 2021 it would look familiar :> I wanted to use my card illustration for the box to continue a trend (that’s what I did for Picnic Pals) and also because I am really fond of this drawing and thought it’d be sweet to connect everyone who has that card this way.

I’ve seen other artists talk about their unsuccessful applications, but it’s still a rare thing. There’s so much work being done that doesn’t get seen (not that it always needs to be seen!). Reading, research, editing, hours of writing and formatting a proposal deck, all that fun stuff and more happens before a project is visible. This fall/winter, I planned to “take a break” and went through the awkwardness of telling people that when asked what I was up to, hoping that saying it out loud would actually make me do it. Results? I have been relaxing, watching shows and playing games… but there’s also been a lot of:

• continuing to take on projects because I have a hard time saying no (」°ロ°)」

• turning sketching for fun into a commitment to self-improvement and completing this sketchbook by the end of the month

• applying to more projects because of the fear of what if I am no longer able to get another job???

• playing catch up on commissions/personal projects I previously committed to

• restlessness because my brain can’t working productively or rest properly so I do a bit of both poorly

All that to say here’s a contribution as a reminder to myself and anyone that reads this that what’s shared online is not everything that happens in real life!!

I do look back on these “flops” and the accompanying write ups for inspiration. There’s lots of ideas that I would like to develop further and incorporate into future projects. Please note these are from several years, and there’s plenty more applications that don’t have a visual I can share.

📚 Here was a proposed mural for the children’s section of a library

Some key ideas here:

• I wanted the books to be portals to other worlds

• Where’s Waldo/I spy element

• Use chalkboard paint for some sections for interactive element. Children can add to the mural / I spy elements can be changed out for variety and to include other things in the library apart from the mural

The midground and background is weak and visually confusing, but I do like the portals in the foreground. See that dog popping out in the lower left corner? I think this would be a fun illusion. Will definitely try this idea again in the future. I still like the chalkboard idea, but it would only work if the rest of the mural is well protected from scratches and scribbles. Murals get banged up enough without an open invitation to draw on it.

🌷 Banner proposal! I self imposed the idea that the 6 banners had to be one continuous image, for other print material related to the project and for the viewers to piece together the images. The veins turning into flower stems on the left most banner is an idea I executed during school sometime and the image stuck with me. I would like to revisit this again

Next we have a design for a bell box mural for the Agincourt area of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. These bell boxes are smaller surfaces to paint so it’s a good chance to try out new things. I wanted something a little different than my usual and simplified and flattened my style even more to make these goofy looking animals. That monkey butt still gets me 😂 I’m sure this colour palette will pop up again sometime.

Then comes another banner proposal, this image is cropped but it’s a vertical design. For these banners I proposed photo-drawing collages rather than straight illustration. This is a technique that I have revisited many times in the past (see Roasted Oyster & Soft Peaks, Sunshine Streets and most recently Fish Friends’ Fishy Feast). I really enjoy how these collages combine reality with the imagined into something that exists in between.

Last one was for a huge side-of-the-building mural that had a segmented area for windows on the right, which is why you see a lot of vertical strips. Here I think my focus was more in the community-engagement aspect of the proposal, and this mockup is a sample of what I could do with the results. Essentially I wanted to hold workshops with the relevant groups and incorporate community-made imagery and ideas into the piece. I think I proposed a printmaking activity so we’d get bold shapes that could turn into patterns.

Another attempt at the photo-collage thing. I like the idea of the Monroe buildings as part of a skate park. There’s nods to other Mississauga-related imagery in here but I won’t list them all. The hot almost neon palette is something I was trying to emulate based on the previous artwork that lived here (the Sculpture Court Skate Park Murals: Finding Home - my first mural was in here!) but I don’t think I quite captured the tropical vibe. This project ended up going to @rayvidalart who knocked it out of the park so I’m glad it turned out the way it did

Another bell box proposal and I like this one still! Look at that adorable red fox. It’s probably a bit too much black for a box though, not enough visibility and a potential safety hazard. Apart from the dark background I went with my usual - a combination of flora and fauna local to the area

Of course I feel disappointed when something I got really excited about doesn’t make it through but it’s a normal part of the process and nothing to be devastated or discouraged about. The proposal and designing part of the process is valuable on its own as a creative exercise even if my work isn’t selected. Although obviously getting selected would be better! (And not all call for art/artists are equal in that some don’t provide any/sufficient compensation and a career isn’t sustainable if you spend all your time creating artwork with no income - but that’s a different conversation for another time.)

On the left is poster submission for a farmer’s market (without the text). I was trying to turn market goers into cute fruits and veggies. My favourite is definitely the watermelon lady and corn baby comes in a close second. I would love to make poster illustrations though so perhaps another time.

On the right is a proposed storyboard for a digital public art piece. I haven’t looked at this one in a while but it seems like a clear plan. This will sooner or later be executed (*¯︶¯*) I think the most difficult part of stop motion projects for me is figuring out what materials to use. Paper cuts of course but between A Long Long Time Ago and Oh Deer there’s still a lot experimentation that I want to do.

This is another case where the mockup is just an example to accompany my written proposal more than an actual look at what the visuals will be. Again, community-engagement was a huge part of this proposed plan. I was really invested in this project for many reasons, one being the location is so so close to home and played a significant part of my childhood. We didn’t make it this time (╥_╥) but will definitely pull from this proposal in the future.

Sharing these “failures” has also been on my mind after recent discussions about art careers. As a (very) nervous public speaker and worry wart, I try to put my best face forward in public situations and sound put together when I don’t feel like I know what I’m doing. I think I exude enough awkward energy without pointing it out on purpose, but my partner has pointed out that sharing these feelings of uncertainty or fear can be reassuring to those who feel the same.

If you’re debating about sending in an application to an opportunity that interests you, DO IT!!! Worst that happens is you get a no, and then you end up with a bunch of artwork and a bank of ideas for future use like this. If you don’t feel like you’re ready for an opportunity (like I often feel) putting together all the necessary materials for applying is good practice and while you’re at it…might as well send the application off anyway (b ᵔ▽ᵔ)b

This last one is something I came up with for a mural that I did get but ended up going in a completely different direction design wise. If anyone has a wall for this design I would love to execute it!! I imagine it’d be perfect for an elementary school or day care for the littles. Also, obviously I had Toy Story on my mind here too (you’ve got a friend in me) even though this and To Infinity and Beyond were done more than a year apart

That’s all I have for today, I hope that this was an interesting peek behind the curtains. Big high fives to other fellow artists writing, drawing and sending out their ideas, getting rejections and doing it all again! Better luck next time to all of us (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧ Don’t forget to celebrate what you’ve already accomplished, REST, RELAX, TAKE IT EASY. Our brains and bodies will function better if we treat them well :)

As always, would love to hear any thoughts/responses you have 🤗
Shoot me an email through this form here or find me on instagram here

Thanks for reading! Happy holidays and see you in 2023! (っ˘з(˘⌣˘ ) ♡

🐣🐤 Linh

Make it with me: To Infinity and Beyond

Original post from: August 25, 2022

Hello again! ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ

This summer, instead of painting outdoor murals I spent a good chunk of it indoors because… I got the opportunity to paint a mural at the Art Gallery of Ontario!! ╰(*´︶`*)╯* ♡ * ╰(*´︶`*)╯

For context, the concourse level at the AGO was finally being opened up to the public again after 2 years, and a lot of it was getting a refreshed look. Last year, the AGO Youth Council co-created a web series called Inner Space, where they invited Canadian artists to do a virtual tour of their studio spaces and talk about their work. Fellow Mississauga creative Visaree Bradshaw-Coore nominated me and you can watch my video and see the rest of the series here.

Long story short, the AGO team was connected with my practice through the Inner Space project and then offered me a giant wall (and more) on the concourse level to paint. A few spaces/items were up for discussion but we landed on a big curved wall that opens up into the Weston Family Learning Centre, where workshops, families, and school groups hang out. I was also going to paint three art carts that travel around the AGO with art supplies and activities.

I’ll be sharing part of process here so get ready for quite a bit of text, some super rough sketches, design mockups, some things I heard while painting, and time lapses of the process. Let’s go from inner space to outer space! 🌌🌛

CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT

Through discussions with the AGO team and the brief I was given, I proposed a set of designs and we went through a few rounds of changes. I got stuck on the design for a while, partly because I felt (self-imposed) pressure to do it well. Creating a design for this project was a little trickier than usual, but in good way? I was given a lot of creative freedom and encouraged to make it wilder and more “me,” and to not feel restrained by the initial idea which was to draw inspiration from and reference artworks from the AGO collection.

My ideas always start on paper first, and they look extremely rough ლ(¯ロ¯"ლ) so initially it looked like this:

You can see I also considered including some local plant and animal life, but these get left out as I narrowed in on the design

After I refined the sketch digitally in procreate, packaged nicely in a presentation deck I sent this:

The idea was to have an imaginary landscape. A whimsical and magical scene that turns from day to night as visitors walked along the wall. Characters were to be life-sized, floating and frolicking among lots of natural elements. Also, a lot of space and water themes that you’ll see make it through all the design iterations. There’s a bunch of references to artworks from the AGO collection too but we’ll cut down on those as we go

Here’s the first set of proposed artwork. The large one is for a curved wall that’s 30’x 9’ and the little ones are for 3 sides of 3 carts that are about 3’ x 2’ x 4.75’

A few things that weren’t working out:

• The colour palette was a bit too dark

• The day to night transition looks confusing

• Not enough texture in the art carts

• Characters on the art carts not fitting in

I was also given more things to consider for the carts. They each had a specific purpose and a targeted age group. In summary:

1. Sensory cart - engage the little kiddies

2. Drawing and making cart - crafty, all ages

3. Imaginative learning cart - abstract ideas for slightly older kids

So with these things in mind, I kept the base and themes from the carts but heavily revamped them. I was also thinking about stories and a song** while I designed these. I’ll tell you at the end of this post (look for ** if you want to skip to it) but see if you can guess before we get there!

1. The sensory cart I filled with flora and fauna, fruits and some critters you’d find in the garden. Things that would bring familiar sights and smells to little kids.

2. The drawing and making cart I chose the water themed cart from the previous set and added origami boats and airplanes, and also more lines and textures to mimic hand-made and decorated crafts. Even though the colours mostly stayed the same for this cart, the new iteration feels a lot more active and lively.

3. As for the third cart, I went full weird. I added more planets and made them all characters. I tried to make them interact more, so we have the pink one watering the irises on the moon with an elephant watering can, we have that little yellow one encircling another planet with its arms

Not too much changed on the wall though. I lightened and brightened the colour palette, made the background a bit more cohesive and incorporated elements from the new cart designs

These art cart designs got approved, yay! The wall however, is now feeling lackluster in comparison so now it’s time to tackle the big wall (hopefully only) one more time!

Some things for me to keep in mind:

• More interactions between the characters, even though there’s so many of them they feel a bit distant

• Pull the viewer into the scene more

• Cohesion cohesion cohesion

• Use the turquoise colour as the background colour

I had gotten attached to the design, even though I was having trouble with it and so… it was time to be ruthless and throw it all away! ψ( ` ∇ ´ )ψ

I went back to the drawing board with pencil and paper:

Elements from the art carts were integrated back into the wall so all parts of this project are cohesive. I decided to continue the space party happening on one of the carts onto this wall, and include the other two cart themes as the largest planets in the scene. The pencil sketch was even looser this time. The rest was drawn digitally with bits collaged in from the previous mockup.

The AGO team suggested we use the blue as the background so I ran with that and kept the sunrays monochromatic so that foreground elements would pop. I tried to include more points of entry for the viewer and more character interactions. For example, the purple carrot planet feeding the surfing rabbit, two children splitting a strawberry, one planet giving another one a tight hug etc. The number of references and characters was reduced but overall it felt more cohesive

Success! It feels a lot more fun and organic. The AGO team loved it and gave me the green light, so off to painting we gooooo!

I forgot to mention, the artwork that was getting painted over lived on that wall for a really long time! Over ten years if I remember correctly, so I was quite nervous to be taking over. Here are the before pictures of the space:

TRANSFERRING THE DESIGN

For the wall, I thought about it for some time and couldn’t decide how to sketch it out!

• I felt like it was too intricate for me to freehand it efficiently, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time fiddling with it to get the positioning of so many elements just right

• Another option is a grid, but I always felt like grids were too tedious. Especially since I like the organic, slightly wobbly look. Not to mention I haven’t mastered the art of gridding things without messing up the numbers or having my grids be warped. (Intentionally warped grids would be something I would like to experiment with though). Also, because the wall was curved it made things more difficult to measure and mark accurately

• Doodle grid? But how would I be able to take photos of the wall and superimpose by design over it when it’s curved and warped?

• Stencils? I could make stencils of the elements before hand, but then scaling those properly would still require crunching some numbers

• Projection is the quick and easy way, but because the wall is so large, curved, and goes around a corner, it would be difficult to do. Getting enough distance from the wall, working around obstacles, accounting for the warp were all problems.

In the end, I decided a combination of a (very loose) grid and projection would be my best bet for time and ease. I brought string, rolled it along the length of the wall on the floor and cut it to size. Then I folded the string in half and laid it back along the wall, marking the middle of the wall. I folded the string in half again and laid it back down to mark the 1/4 and 3/4 points on the wall. At this point it looked like manageable widths so I stopped.

Next was the vertical. I taped a string to the ceiling, let it hang and cut it where it touched the floor. I folded this string in half and cut it. Then I just let the cut string hang from the ceiling along different parts of the wall to mark the halfway point. Now, the wall was divided into 8 equal sections (with no measuring tape and numbers involved!)

I divided my digital sketch into 8 equal sections on the computer to match. Now, one section is projected at a time, using my marks to make sure both grids were lined up. I traced the design and if the projection was getting warped, usually around the edges of the section, Optimus would be readjusted using my traced lines as a guide. At that point, I had a smaller section of the wall to look at, and a good portion of it traced already so manual adjustments could be made without worrying that the rest of the wall would be affected too.

INSTALLATION

Now, all I had to do is fill it in bit by bit. The design ended up a bit more complicated than I anticipated and it look a surprising amount of layers to get the paint opaque on this wall but we got there in the end!

Painting the art carts went very smoothly, they were an easy enough size to handle and I got faster as I went so the first the one took probably 6-7 days and the last one took about 3 days. I used Optimus (my projector) to speed things up and transfer the designs onto the sensory and boat carts but the space one I just freehanded since it was mostly a few wavy lines and lumpy circles

Anyway, if you want to watch a relaxing video of the illustration and painting process in superspeed, here you go :)

A few in-progress shots:

OVERHEARD AT THE AGO

The corner I was painting in is where everyone passes through to get to their workshops and classes, school groups and families hang around here too so I had a lot of people and curious kiddies watching and asking questions. Here are some of the funny and endearing conversations I heard/had:

[Wisdom from a kid that spent a day at the AGO and walked past the wall a few times]
Kid: You’re still painting that
Me: Yeah
Kid: I mean, art does take a long time

[Imagine a tiny squeaky voice saying this very seriously]
Kid: Looks like you’re doing a real good job

[This little one attended workshops for a week or so at the AGO]
Kid: She paints a new one every day!
Parent: I think she continues the same one 😅

[A group of kiddies were asking about the mural and I showed them my designs]
Kid: It’s pretty like you!
Kid B: Yeah! You’re pretty!
Note: I had a face mask on, so they couldn’t even see me much but it was very sweet 😭

Some spot on observations by little artists! These observations were made when the mural was still in it’s early stages or looking quite rough. I was impressed that they made the connections and pointed out things that I thought about during the design. It made me feel like I did something successfully if they understood

[I got asked by several adults what some characters were meant to be but I also heard a kid excitedly ask their parent]
Kid: Is that the solar system?!?

[From a conversation with two kids]
Kid A: This (pointing at the wall) looks like you’re copying that (pointing at an already painted art cart sitting nearby)
Me: That’s right! I painted that too. It goes together :)
Kid A: Ohhh!!
Kid B: This (points at planet with the waves) looks like that Japanese artist
Me: Mmmm, Hokusai?
Kid B: Yeah!
Me: You’re right! I was inspired by his waves
Kid B: :)))))

Of course I had good conversations with adults too but the warm fuzzies aren’t quite the same (＾• ω •＾)

FINISHED PROJECT

And here are a few of the finished mural shots!! My personal favourite bit of the mural is definitely the cricket 🦗

**Oh yes, I nearly forgot to tell you the story/song references for the art carts. I tried to put the references in the titles! I debated on different names for the art carts, but settled on one word names like the ones given to rovers sent out on space missions (like Spirit and Curiosity who went to Mars)

🌌 To Infinity and Beyond (A quote from Toy Story’s Buzz Lightyear because of the space themes of course!)

🚀 Rocket (The irises on the moon are a reference to AGO’s Iris bleus, jardin du Petit Gennevilliers but also Le Petit Prince and his rose on asteroid B612)

🌊 Marina (Because of the water and the boats, but also I was thinking of the song “Down by the Bay,” that we used to sing a lot in elementary school)

🐸 Bean (As in Jack and the Beanstalk. But also because I love that frog in the middle, and there’s frogs out there that really look like soft jelly beans)

See if you can spot the following references to artworks from the AGO collection in my murals:

1. The Wisdom of the Universe by Christi Belcourt | 2. Spirit Bear Possessing a Man’s Soul by David Ruben Piqtouken | 3. French or British warship, prisoner of War model c.1795-1815 | 4. Iris bleus, jardin du Petit Gennevilliers by Gustave Caillebotte | 5. Lake Superior by Lawren S. Harris | 6. Chinese Snuff Bottle, with enameled cricket

There’s proper signage that will go up with my name and bio (and birthdate! that makes it feel so official 😳), as well as the artwork details and a find-it activity. Signage for the wall, on and accompanying the art carts too. Here’s a behind the scenes peek at some adorable signs that have vectorized versions of the characters from the wall.

YOU’VE MADE IT TO THE END OF THE BLOG

I’m still a bit flabbergasted that this project is real! I created something for the AGO and it’ll be there for potentially 2-5 years! If you’re visiting the AGO, please swing by the wall. If you ever send me photos of you or your pet with my murals, know that it makes my day and I definitely save it to smile at later.

It was very neat to see a bit of the behind-the-scenes of what it takes to make something like this happen at the AGO. Everyone I met was very kind and helpful and I’ll miss being there everyday. I don’t want to call anyone out or write a massive list but a HUGE thank you to everyone involved for trusting me with this and for all the support 🥰❤️

I hope that To Infinity and Beyond (and it’s art cart rover friends) bring joy and adventure to visitors for years to come (♡˙︶˙♡)

View the project page with the official blurb here, more updates will be coming in the next little while as I document the wall with it’s finished sealant/signage. For semi-regular updates of works in progress see my instagram here. Please feel free to share any thoughts or questions you have with me!

Thanks so much for reading ♡ (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡
🐣🐤 Linh

Make it with me: The Playroom Mural

Original post from: February 9, 2022 

Hi friends! ヽ(〃∀〃)ﾉ

I try to document a lot of stuff during my projects; sketchbook scribbles, multiple versions of the digital design, and plenty of pictures/videos of the process. A bunch of it I share over on my instagram, but there’s lots more. For many reasons, I’ve been thinking of trying something new so long story short… here’s my first blog post! I want to keep this casual so we’ll see how this goes.

Today, I thought I would share some behind the scenes of my most recent mural: The Playroom. You can read my official blurb on the project page but for a bit of context this was created as part of Murals with MAC (Mississauga Arts Council) for the playroom/waiting room at the Peel Children’s Aid Society.

This was for a safe space for the children that come through so I wanted to push whimsy and cute and fun as far as I possibly could.

The brief was open ended, which is great, but also leaves me with too many options! I ended up with these sketches during a late-night brainstorm. Just working through what sort of shapes I wanted for the bodies and how I could stack floating elements since we were keeping the original walls visible.

Top right you can see me fitting things together like a loose puzzle. Bottom right I have a more literal stack of bird-human-raccoon-turtle. 🐤-👧-🦝-🐢

You’ll see in the end product that I did use most of these sketches minus the terrifying black holes for eyes. It was the trio of bear, sleeping child and sausage dog that sealed the deal for me. I ended up building the largest composition around this grouping. With a direction decided, I moved onto drawing digitally and putting together a proposal package for the client.

MAC, CAS and their DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) team gave the green light after a few rounds of edits. Click through to see all the designs we settled on.

Can you spot where I incorporated my sketches into the design? There’s more but here’s a few items:

• The trio with the bear is centered in the long composition

• The stack is the last image in the carousel

• Child with giant flower is on the right hand side of the long composition

I forgot to mention, I had three walls in this room. (1) A very long white wall, (2) a smaller white wall with an even smaller wall to its left and (3) a purple wall split into two sections on either side of a tv.

Some things I thought about while designing:

• Molding the design on wall 1 to fit around four sofas, but not so much that it would look weird if they were moved around the room

• Using the existing purple on other walls to unify the design with the existing space

• Play with stacking or repeating elements

• Diverse and inclusive representation. This is something I already consider in my works especially since I create art for the public, but it was especially emphasized by the client so it took a few tries to reach something we both agreed on

• Using the negative space

• Choosing a colour palette. While I wanted it to be super colourful, I also have to think about the budget and not buy an absurd amount. I picked my staple colours, and a few others to complement. I thought about what colours I could mix and what I had to buy.

I picked up the paints, packed all my supplies and off we go ~

Here are the before pics of the room:

This is a rare indoor mural for me so hooray! I can use Optimus, my new projector buddy to help me out. I usually freehand the sketch, it feels and looks more natural to me. My lines are all very organic and I use a lot of floral imagery so it works out. A grid won’t be necessary until I have to scale things up even more (fingers crossed for even bigger walls in the future!)

With Optimus, transferring the design was a breeze. The image got warped a little bit here and there but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t adjust manually. I used chalk to draw the outlines. Smaller details like facial features and fingers were left out for now.

Here’s a closer look at what I see when tracing the projection. I cleaned up the lines as I went along since the sketch is pretty rough in some places. Somehow I didn’t think about my own shadow blocking the image, haha.

Once the chalk lines were done, Optimus went home and now I just had to paint like it’s a giant paint-by-number page. For the most part I went one colour at a time, and filled in things from back to front. Background shapes and bodies before eyes and small stars. I also mixed new colours as I went, mixing larger batches before colours I needed for smaller areas. I also paint back to front and big to small so that I can get used to materials. Wall surface and paint can change with each project so it takes a little getting used to. As I get familiar and warm up, I can execute more detailed things with more certainty.

In the photos the chalk is not visible on the white wall but it’s visible in person. I chose a pale green so I wouldn’t have to switch chalk for the white/purple walls.

As the walls slowly filled up my speed picked up. There was less paint mixing I had to do, I had to refer to the draft less, found my favourite tools for the job and my painting got faster and cleaner.

You can see in the painted shapes that I’ve left some negative space in the swirly lines. This I had to be very careful about because I didn’t have access to the original wall paint to fix it or even paint the negative space back in. If I messed up the lines I wouldn’t be able to re-do them.

There wasn’t a lot of texture/patterns to do but I went ahead and did that once most of the base was done. My least favourite part of murals is applying multiple coats of paint. I find it very boring, especially when painting white so I did that closer to the end of the project. Little detail items like stars and spots, they also get considered near the end. I try to pull existing colours from the mural for the small items to balance out the composition and use up any mixed paints I accumulated.

Once I filled in aaaall the colours and white, I reach a scary stage where the characters have empty white eyes ●︿● . I go back in with the chalk to draw in any details I need to do like patterns and all the outlines.

Black paint is left for the very last step. At this point I usually only have hair and the outlines left to do. I leave this for last because:

• It’s very difficult to paint over black so I don’t want to paint a bunch of it only to realize later on that it needs fixing

• I can adjust the shape of things slightly when I do the lines so I want to do this all at once with everything I need to consider filled in

• Once all the paint has dried down, I can decide if the colours are contrasting enough as is. Do I need a black outline on everything? Maybe not. Too many lines can look cluttered and too uniform

• Procrastination. The most nerve-wrecking part of the mural is the lines! :>

I’ve been trying to improve the linework in my murals because I think it’s too stiff sometimes. It is more successful when lines look more organic and the line width varies more, similar to the energy a sketch has. This is a work in progress!

My view from on top of the ladder :) You can see my labelled pots of paint on the right hand side, and another mural in the CAS building just outside the window

A look at my paint station. You can see a bit of my small clean-up station and my digital sketches with notes on the corresponding paint colours to refer to.

A little more here and there aaaaand we’re done!! 🥳😍 This is my celebratory pic on the last day of painting. Documentation pics coming up and I’ll highlight some features in the mural for you

As I mentioned before, diverse and inclusive representation was very important for this space. However, it is undeniable that I cannot represent everyone in this mural, and different races, cultures and identities manifest very differently in obvious, subtle or imperceptible ways. I wanted to be thoughtful in the way I approached this, and I didn’t want it to come across forced. It was important to me personally that it felt natural. I won’t write a whole essay about everything I included in the mural (both relating to representation and otherwise) but here are a few highlights.

In the section pictured below, I intentionally have the owl and the child on the left mimicking each other. This was also done in my mural for High Park Zoo.

The child with the basketball wears clothes with the 90s Raptors colours. It brings in more of the purple colour from one of the walls and fashion from the 90s which is back in style with today’s youth. Note that they have a badge that says “L O.”

Here, the character in red wears a badge that says “V E,” to complete “L O V E.” This I also did in a mural for the Guardian Pharmacy. Along with the 6 colour rainbow wristband on the character on the right, this is a nod to the 2SLGBTQ+ community and a way to create connections between different characters and different walls.

This character with an orange shirt that reads “Every Child Matters.” National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (previously Orange Shirt Day) recognizes and raises awareness of the history of residential schools in Canada and honours the experiences of Indigenous peoples.

The trio of animal friends on the bottom right has a big bunny, a medium bunny, and a chipmunk pretending to be a bunny in a purple hat. This is another playful moment of mimicry.

These two friends here are paired. The one on the left wears a hearing aid, and the one on the right wears a lanyard with a stick. It is meant to be an FM system which is a special wireless device that transmits audio to the hearing aid. I chose to include this because it is something I learned about while teaching workshops to kids.

I could write a whole lot more about all the references, but this post is getting very very long 😅 I’ll say that there are some fun references to internet/game culture for the kiddies too. If you can spot anything else and would like to share with me, I would be very happy to hear about it!!

I am very happy with how this project turned out. It was nice to paint indoors, I had the chance to take things slow and add more detail than usual. I really hope that it brings some joy into the space for the families that visit CAS!

You’ve made it to the end of this post!! I hope that this was interesting 😛 I'm still feeling out this blog thing, so if you have any thoughts for me about how this felt please let me know (ノ´∀｀)ノ* *

The project page for the Playroom with more pictures and the official blurb can be seen here
I’ll share video clips/reels and some more pictures on my instagram

Thanks so much for reading! (ღ✪ｖ✪)
🐣🐤 Linh