“Here’s to the ones who dream, foolish as they may seem. Here’s to the hearts that ache; here’s to the mess we make.”
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“I’m letting life hit me until it gets tired. Then I’ll hit back. It’s a class rope-a-dope.”
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“Somewhere, there’s a place where I find who I’m gonna be. Somewhere, that’s just waiting to be found.”
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“A little chance encounter could be the one you’ve waited for.”
Quotes from “La La Land” movie
“Runaway with me, take me to a place, a place where our souls become solitary.”
AT l.j_quotes
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“I hope one day you have the courage to run away from everything that makes you miserable.”
I had a last-minute idea to make an artwork for Tiffany that wasn’t originally in my pipeline of plans after watching her recently released music video of Runaway.
The mv is so visually appealing! Especially that colourful hot air balloon which she rode on all by herself, I was like, woah, she’s really running away with all her courage and passion to her dream land.
I was then reminded of an unused hot air balloon sticker I kept in my art material collection for a few years. I bought it in 2015 around the time after I did this Love Art: Fly High With You And Leave The World Behind for Taenggu. It was a paper artwork that had a similar idea to Runaway behind it. Not long after that, I chanced upon this pretty rainbow hot air balloon sticker and I’ve kept it with me ever since.
Doesn’t this sticker look like the rainbow hot air balloon that appeared in Tiffany’s mv?? That was when I decided this sticker should belong to her now.
But I couldn’t just give it to her on its own like that, right? I was at a loss how I could incorporate it onto something for her. Like, should I paste it on a card and write a simple message to her? But no, I wasn’t thinking anything along that line. I was actually thinking of doing something BIGGER, like a piece of artwork, but what and how?
As I put this intention to the back of my mind, there was one day I took a random stroll at the POPULAR bookstore and came across a carnival fantasy land kind of scrapbook paper design. I knew immediately that this is where my hot air balloon sticker would fit in perfectly!
But what’s next? Just a paper with a hot air balloon sticker on it wouldn’t be enough. I needed to fill the empty spaces. But with what?
One Sunday afternoon, I sat down on my desk and was like, “Okay let’s do this!” And I searched through my cabinet and drawers and pulled out all the suitable art materials I could find for this runaway fantasy themed artwork. And these were what I had gathered.
Material list:
- Rainbow hot air balloon sticker
- 3 stalks of pink feather-like grass (not sure what exactly this actually is, but I bought a bunch of this from a flower market in Bangkok during a recent trip last month)
- A bag of colourful pom pom balls
- A piece of picture with the words “Let’s Run Away” on it which I cut from another scrapbook design paper that I had
- Some scrapbooking stickers
The process of finding anything I could find was really helpful because it helped me generate new ideas in the process. For example, the colourful pom poms spurred my imagination and gave me the idea of drawing Tiffany clinging onto a bunch of balloons flying away with her dogs, Prince and Princess.
I had also come up with a simple quote/poem that I had been thinking for awhile for the past couple days which I thought I could write on the artwork too.
So after another hour or so of assembling and sticking of the various items on the scrapbook paper, doodling of cartoon figures of Tiffany and her two dogs and writing of my own quote, my artwork was done.
Detailed photos of my finished artwork 📸
But somehow I couldn’t help feeling there were still lots of empty spaces left unfilled, but I didn’t have enough materials or ideas of what to fill them up with. I should have done a little more, like adding an extra horn on the head of the carousel horse to turn it into a unicorn and some flying birds in the air, but I just left it the way it is. Not sure why I just stopped it here, but I feel like maybe Tiffany could fill in the rest and contribute ideas of her own. Hahaha.
At the end of the day, I had a final look at this impromptu, unplanned artwork of mine again (p.s. my subconscious mind likes to refer to this as an “ad-hoc deployment”, a term used in my company to refer to the act of pushing a promotion/project into production that happens outside of our regular scheduled ones). I felt an inner nudge asking, “So how do I interpret this?” “Why is Tiffany not taking the ride on the hot air balloon but is flying away using a bunch of helium balloons instead?” I asked myself. “Oh maybe it is even more adventurous this way. Her destination is unclear. That could probably lead her to a place of unexpected surprises!” I answered. I then looked at the two isolated balloons that have flown away from the main bunch and said, “Oh, there are 2 that have gone astray…” A voice of a cute boy in my head continued, “…like stray cats!” I was reminded of the stray cats that I had just seen resting near my house downstairs after I came back from a jog at the stadium. Lol whatever that means!
I hope this artwork can give Tiffany comfort and strength whenever she needs moral support while she chases her dreams in her La La Land, finding her place in the music scene in America right now. Fighting!! Let’s runaway~ 👧🏻🐶🐶🎈💕
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