Xianghong, this piece is visually quite stunning. The tight rendering gives the forms a wonderfully three-dimensional quality, and the cropping really gives the viewer the sense that we're seeing a tiny section of a much larger scene. This is a great way to draw viewers into your piece. I appreciate all the symbolism here, but one thing to keep in mind is overall mood. You really want your work to have an overall emotional quality that's appropriate to what you're trying to express. In this case, it seems the appropriate mood would have been dark, violent, agonizing, stressful...and then liberating. Here the overall mood feels light and spring-like (the floral elements evoke spring to me). One thing that might have helped would have been to make the gears look more mechanical -- like real machinery cranking away. Here they could almost be strange kinds of life forms floating in a fluid medium. And the crack pattern too looks warmly organic, although to me it does evoke flow, and I know that's relevant. As it is, it's a great-looking drawing; I just don't think it captures much in the way of the narrative!
Xianghong, this piece is visually quite stunning. The tight rendering gives the forms a wonderfully three-dimensional quality, and the cropping really gives the viewer the sense that we're seeing a tiny section of a much larger scene. This is a great way to draw viewers into your piece. I appreciate all the symbolism here, but one thing to keep in mind is overall mood. You really want your work to have an overall emotional quality that's appropriate to what you're trying to express. In this case, it seems the appropriate mood would have been dark, violent, agonizing, stressful...and then liberating. Here the overall mood feels light and spring-like (the floral elements evoke spring to me). One thing that might have helped would have been to make the gears look more mechanical -- like real machinery cranking away. Here they could almost be strange kinds of life forms floating in a fluid medium. And the crack pattern too looks warmly organic, although to me it does evoke flow, and I know that's relevant. As it is, it's a great-looking drawing; I just don't think it captures much in the way of the narrative!
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