If you had a chance to read my previous post about the advertising campaign, Start With Sharpie (it’s 7 posts down from here – or click the link), then you were introduced to this up-and-coming artist, Cheeming Boey. I find his work fascinating because everything inspires him to draw on Styrofoam cups. First of all, this is great considering the fact that they’re not easily biodegradable or friendly to our little wildlife friends. So, turning these cups into art canvases seems like a wonderful way of giving them another purpose other than as a cheap but destructive drinking tool.
Well, I had a chance to go this his site, and found that he has a pretty cute and humorous way of journaling his adventures here in the USA. Considering that I’m a huge fans of cartoons, this makes me like him even more. And the fact that he’s hilarious and quirky seals the deal for me. I LIKE HIM! I would like to include one of his journal entries, because it’s amazing to see the creation process from the aspect of someone who uses images as the main component of his story-telling.
From someone who uses words first, it’s interesting to note that he sees the scene in his head with the image as the driving force of his message. When I’m writing, I sense an image in my head but it doesn’t take form until the words start to build the scene. The visual artist is more in the moment than the writer, who seems to live everywhere outside of that moment.
How interesting that creativity allows us to see things in different ways, yet still get the message fairly consistent. Of course the message isn’t always the same, but the feeling behind it is. A light bulb moment for me of something obvious that I sometimes forget: Even we creatives with different mediums need one another to draw the entire scene. Words and pictures make up each moment. Without one or the other, we’re simply seeing only a small part of the whole story.
Case in point: We all have different reading styles – some like books with only words, while others prefer graphic novels. But if our world only had one or the other, then we would never know what we were missing in the world that surrounds us. I’m glad that we have both, and understand each one’s importance of being. Every moment deserves to be immortalized with both of them together!
p.s. Thank you, Cheeming, for putting your thoughts online like that. I now have another piece of the puzzle on how men think. While they still don’t make a whole lot of sense (believe me I’ve tried to understand men’s POV by watching and listening to my husband every day), boy are men funny!
