sik, m sik

Thesis project of Hazel Ng (Parsons Illustration 2018). 'sik, m sik' (食, 唔食) in cantonese means 'eat, don't eat' but 'sik' can also denote 'know how to do something' (識). thus, 'eat, don't eat' but also 'know, don't know'.

[hazeljng]

Some of my favorite illustrations from my thesis project, a visual memoir called Eat, Don’t Eat! This stuff’s been a good 6 months coming and I’m so happy to finally show everyone the fruits of my labors…!

[sikmsik]

Made progress with endpapers and created a dummy for people to look through at open studios! I still have a lot to do but I’m also trying as much as possible to rest my hand. (Carpal tunnel is the real fear.)

Upon feedback from rotating crit, I thought to redraw the photos spreads as... well, drawings. They’re much better and feel tighter with the rest of the book as a whole. I’m also thinking about the spread “at some point it became too much” and wondering how I can... make that feel more consistent with everything else. Admittedly I spent the past week preparing a dummy, so I know at least how the final will go, but for now I need to buckle down and finish all the other spreads.

[sikmsik]

WEEK 7-8-9-? (check syllabus and edit as needed.)

I’ve been chugging along, with color comps. Many of the spreads have a somewhat rough color that I intend to go back later and tighten up. Rotating crit with Bob also went relatively well; he suggested that I introduce the main character figure earlier so that it’s easier to understand whose POV the book tells from. It’s a good idea, and I’d been unclear on what to do for an endpaper, so I think something where I’m moving in and out of food dishes may be a good idea and thematically relevant (A similar idea I have is this spread from a zine I did over the summer).

That said, I still have a lot of things to do:

Rewrite text in a number of spreads (Specifically: 0607, 1011,1617, 2627, 2829, 4041, 4445, 4647, 48, 5051, 5253, 5455, 5657)

Rework text treatment in 2425

COLOR spreads 3435, 41, 4243, 45, 4647, 4849, 5253, 5455, 5657

Set text on spread 5455 (think computer font)

Rework text treatment on the cover (handwrite)

Draw endpaper designs

Tighten colors on already existing colors (in the lines, and all of that).

All in all I think I’m generally in good shape for this point in the semester; I just have to keep going. (I’m definitely going to try and take it easy though; I’ve been noticing some tension/soreness/tingling in drawing hand/forearm area.)

[sikmsik]

WEEK 5-6

The past few weeks I finished the 2nd pass and it was rough. I felt like I had to take a serious break from the project, otherwise I feel like my eyeballs would burst into flames. What may end up happening is that I'll redo a good amount of pages and fix up the drawing quality. I also rearranged some of the pages so it made some more (loose) narrative sense. I think what I have is good, and everyone I've talked to has primarily responded positively to it, but I still need to do the legwork to really see it finish and be a great project I can be happy with.

[sikmsik]

WEEK 4 (TUES)

Finished work on initial dummy. Steven gave me some food for thought on a few pages where things weren’t totally clear—for example, the third image is much different in the second pass than in the first one, and the scene demonstrates better the classroom setting. I think what I really need to do is get the Chinese text in the speech bubbles and in the book to make it clearer that in this classroom environment, the protagonist (me) is genuinely unable to understand or conform to the surroundings. 

Also with this second pass I did a bunch of pages with my preferred ballpoint pen, which suits my line quality best. As a result the top two images look really nice. I like the pen for a line finish. For color I’m still unsure.

The second draft also has photographs that I processed using a posterize filter, but I may use more with color halftone.

[sikmsik]

WEEK 3

Continued work on dummy. At this point I was just trying to get the ideas on paper as quickly as possible, regardless of whether it was the best idea I had visually or not—I’d get to refining and editing later.

[sikmsik]

WEEK 2

Finished all the thumbnails. Started a dummy (used cheap copy paper and bound a 64-page book with a really awful coptic stitch). Things that were several spreads in the book got compressed to one spread (an example is shown above, with thumbnails and first pass). I noted that a lot of my thumbnails focused primarily on my experience with racism, I wanted instead to focus on... understanding my culture in context of others. I also used pencil even though I prefer to work in pen, just because I didn’t trust myself to get the compositions right on the first try. (Steven remarked I had a sure hand for composition, so I guess it paid off, haha.)

[sikmsik]

WEEK 1

Sketchbook thumbnails as well as inspiration/possible aims for a finish. Pictured: a spread from Henrik Drescher’s China Days as well as a spread from a zine I created over the summer called eat bitter. I cite China Days as an influence primarily because of its documentary nature, combining photographs and drawings to create a memoir-like work, as well as its depiction of a slice of culture that isn't well known or easily comprehended by a lot of people, especially in the US. eat bitter deals with similar topics and I want to attempt a finish that's similar, with spontaneous lines drawn in ballpoint pen and graphic photoshop color treatment, with some textural screentone/text as a visual element.

[sikmsik]

week 1: ideas

I collected a series of tweets (I think best in its brevity) made for each of the 3 possible thesis proposals. Through all the proposals the medium is primarily the same: a book. I’m most interested in the book as a format and its intimacy as a medium so in any case I wanted to use it to communicate something personal and intimate, and additionally bind and create the book myself.

01: A fantasy comic focusing on a protagonist’s journey back to his home country and dealing with the cultural repercussions of a political shift. (I’ll throw in the tweets as a paragraph because in retrospect they were pretty funny.)

10 years ago lukar and solace trained together side by side in the army of the (???) and uh they were pretty gay. but in the civil war that resulted among the noble houses of the (???), lukar got thrown into slavery rings and cursed by witch houses to the snake's slow waste, and after fighting out of it he's returned to his home domain (???) to reclaim his rightful inheritance and use the blood of usurpers to free him from his curse. too bad solace is there heading the troops that are the main portion of the army. 

usurpers adapting local culture, lukar feeling unworthy and gritting his teeth and fighting anyway, he totally tried to use his relationship with solace to get into it, solace struggling with duty and honor as concepts because he was exiled from his own homeland as a child and the relationship he has with his parents and birth nation...

02: A reflection of my high school mental landscape as a result of various things: Chinese heritage, desire to achieve more than I might be able, centering on the one time I got in a fight with my parents and ran away to hide behind a brick wall for an hour. This idea was also the idea I developed the most, with thumbnails and layouts drawn. (Again, more edgy tweets in paragraph form.)

gifted and talented. those words don't describe me. but they come weighted with some kind of expectation. and i felt like i had to live up to them and when i didn't i was met with ignorance. rejection. disappointment, violently so. the yolk is invisible. be the best. prove them wrong. prove who wrong? them. you owe them you owe them

i couldn't take tests then. i was so used to the glowing yellows of 90s percentiles behind the signs lit up to announce you are entering the housing subdivision, hoping the car lights wouldn't find me in my shame. staring at the sky and the trees and realizing maybe i was just a useless and spoiled teenager throwing tantrums. gifted and talented. it's dumb.

the world is too much. in places where there is motion at day i find comfort at night, empty classrooms and stairwells and empty studios. laundromats where my thoughts are loudest. 

two shadows. my thoughts spill out into the sidewalk.where there is emptiness i want to fill those with something me—words, gestures. i feel free. unpressured by anything. it feels good. i can hide among the chaos of city and drown out my own screaming

03: Lastly, a visual memoir of sorts documenting my experience growing up Chinese-American, my alienation from both my heritage, my environment, and even peers who are also perceived to be Chinese. Again. some tweets.

he is chinese. i am chinese. we are chinese. (the image indicates these to be lies.)

incense smells like the family i never knew. it makes me sick.

two identities, competing (hands in a body) for dominance.

chinese american. chinese-american.

i'm tired of people being kind of awful about Cantonese how about you shut the fuck up? imagine feeling like ur chinese experiences aren't validated when ur around chinese people. so: whats it like to not feel like ur heritage isnt as important? whats it like to not feel like the language and food and traditions which yOU FEEL SO PROUD OF and call chinese, not, be, The Majority? whats it like to not feel humiliated because u didn't know anything about chinese culture outside of THE ONE YOU GREW UP WITH OF COURSE YOU WOULDN'T KNOW WHAT CULTURE YADA YOU DIDN'T GROW UP WITH WHY SHOULD YOU BE EXPECTED TO KNOW? whats it like to have chinese people poke n prod and say wow your language is really weird idk the difference between any of the tones? whats it like to have chinese people just not know what damn food ur talking about, the one uve eaten all ur life. chinese people, american people—i dont even belong with a lot of chinese-american people because only small % share similar culture w meto not even fit in and feel strong shared experience with people LIKE you—growing up between china and america—that's Super Fucked

there was some white guy claiming that knowing about chinese culture, wearing chinese clothes, is being chinese—but like. it's not about what you do, it's about who you are. it's just. why do you get to say you're chinese and not have to go through the shittiness of being denied a name and place at every turn. fitting in nowhere bc other things & people fill up more space so you have to shrink yourself until there's no more room for you to breathe

i want to be my own person! not crushed under the weight of what i'm supposed to do (surpass my parents? imploding)

i want also to think abt the idea of owing things to your parents because like. i owe a lot to them obviously (uh my being here, life expenses, college) but the way they gave up on teaching me the chinese way was.... hurtful to both of us.

when i was 11 i was sent to chinese school. (i was humiliated. this person who was humiliated has not left me since.) i always thought my mom would teach me cantonese. and for a while she did. but i guess she gave up. mandarin is easier. but in fact it was the most difficult thing i had ever done, trying to bend my brain around something i had no interest in or connection to.