Zines
In this project, I created zines, which depicts a story and its narrative is taken from an inspirational quote or poem. The two narratives I chose were “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get,” a famous quotes from the movie, Forrest Gump, and Psalms 23, a passage from the Old Testament in the Bible.
Ideation
Psalms 23
Psalms 23 is a beautiful poem of the safety and security one find’s in God. This is a special psalm as it helped ground me during the darkest moments of my life, one being the passing of my mother at 16.
I imagined landscape paintings like Claude Monet’s artwork. Sidenote: During this time, I had visited the Chicago Institute of Art Musemeum four separate occasions for four difference classes within a one month period. I was very drawn to Monet’s painting, especially Irises, 1914. I loved the texture of the paint against the canvas, along with the colors depicting the elements.
This influenced the direction in how I wanted to tell the story of Psalms 23. I found three watercolor paintings that had a similar vibe: great texture with vibrant colors.
I used Adobe Photoshop to blend the three images to form one landscape painting.
BEFORE
Watercolor Paintings by AlexGreenArt
AFTER
Illustration by Rosie Brooks
“Life is like a box of Chocolates…”
I found a cartoon of a girl, happily enjoying a box of chocolates. This cartoon inspired me to use the pieces of chocolates to hold a memory of the character’s life. The box holds yummy chocolate (aka good memories), bittersweet chocolates (aka memories of difficult times), and even disgusting flavors (aka bad memories.)
The box represents the characters life and she will eat all the good and bad chocolates as they are hers. It shows self-satisfaction and content of one’s life.
Final Drafts
Mockups
