Tiffany Birthday 2018: Mermaid In A Fish Bowl

“Mermaid: A water woman who chooses imagination over fear.”
Seatail

#180801#

This is the first time I am attempting this sort of artwork that is completely different from my past artworks for SNSD. It now evolves beyond just a flat, 2-D piece of paper. This time, my artwork involves water, some seashells, a stone and even a glass fish bowl!

My source of inspiration for this special birthday artwork for Tiffany mainly comes from 2 things. First was her teaser photo for “Over My Skin”. I liked the concept of her lying underneath a large translucent piece of plastic sheet making her skin a little obscure and opaquely visible.

Second source of inspiration was her favourite Disney princess, Ariel the Little Mermaid. I realised the more I looked at the way Tiffany was posing in her teaser photo, the more I could envision her as a mermaid like Ariel. As if she was a mermaid lying on the shore among the seashells.

My concept is about a mermaid living in a fish bowl that can be displayed at home like a goldfish in a fish bowl. The mermaid itself was drawn on paper, coloured with watercolours and put inside a piece of plastic sheet to mimic the “Over My Skin” teaser photo.

The plastic sheet also has the purpose of protecting my paper mermaid from getting wet and damaged when put into the water. Adding in some decorative seashells and a stone to give some weight, the entire plastic “bag” was able to stay slightly submerged in the water within the fish bowl. I liked the effect of how it turned out at the end!

I also find it therapeutic to watch the mermaid floating about freely in the fish bowl. Watch the videos below to see how it looks like in motion. 😍🎥

The utmost difficulty that I faced when making this artwork was the sourcing of materials. At first, I wanted to get a green glitter washi tape for the mermaid tail like Ariel’s but I couldn’t find a green one when I was at the Papermarket that day. So I had to settle for a pink glitter one instead which wasn’t a bad idea too since Tiffany’s favourite colour is pink. It was also difficult to find a standard rounded kind of glass fish bowl in the physical shops outside too. I spent a day visiting Daiso, the Giant hypermart and even a pet shop at Sembawang Shopping Centre but couldn’t find an ideal one that I wanted. I even roped in the help of my friend to look for one at the shops in Orchard but she couldn’t find any either. That was when I finally resorted to Carousell to get this perfect round, classy fish bowl at the price of $18. 😆 I got the pretty coloured seashells from Daiso, and the stone, I stole it from my sister (oops, don’t tell her! 🤐). Hahaha.

I also spotted an unusual consistency between my artwork for Tiffany this year and the drawing I made for her last year just like the case for Seohyun (read my last year’s birthday drawing for Tiffany at FOR TIFFANY: TIFFANY THE BALLERINA). Her facial expressions in both drawings look strikingly similar in a way that her lips are a little half-open!

Anyway, this bag containing the mermaid and seashells would have to come together in a set with the fish bowl as one whole little art installation piece as I call it. Will send them together in a box to Taenggu next week and hopefully she could somehow help to pass it to Tiffany who is in LA right now. 😛

Happy Birthday Tiffany! Hope I had managed to make your disney princess dream come true through this art piece! And may you continue to achieve many more dreams of your own 😄👸🏼💗