Ribbon / part 1
First picture out of a series of three mixed media artworks (drawing + photo background)
Medium: printed on fine art paper
Year: 2025
Science background: Scientists found out that storytelling is a complex mental activity that engages many parts of the brain simultaneously. It's an interplay of language, memory, imagination, emotions, and social reasoning. And creatively crafting a story can make you happy because it activates the brain's reward system. Especially when you challenge yourself, create something of your own, or connect emotionally with your story, dopamine is released, which motivates you and makes you happy. I created the picture series Ribbon to motivate you to tell a story about this girl.
Content: The first image of the three-part series represents the beginning of a life.
Rendered in a comic style, it shows a girl with braided pigtails, a tangled bundle of gift ribbon, and a neatly tied bow.
One comic panel intentionally remains empty.
The gift ribbon functions as the central symbol: it represents the ribbon of life that unfolds from childhood and continues through all stages of life. Part of it still lies as an unordered tangle—full of possibilities, not yet defined. At the same time, a bow has already been tied: a first act of shaping and creating.
The girl playfully takes up the ribbon and decorates her hair with it. In this gesture, the childlike way of appropriating the world becomes visible—creative, spontaneous, and free from fixed meanings. The ribbon becomes not only an object but part of her identity.
The empty comic panel points to what is yet to come. It creates space for the future, for development, and for the next chapters of the story. As the opening of the series, this image marks the moment when the ribbon of life begins—light, playful, and open to everything that may follow.
Technique: I combine ink drawings on paper with digital background (photo) to highlight the contrast between the objectivity of science and the
emotional texture of everyday life. This fusion of analog and digital reflects the tension between rational understanding and human experience.
