Myiah Nueman - Butterfly

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"Butterfly"
"Butterfly"

"Butterfly"



A Symbol for Transformation  



Butterflies symbolize many different things such as: change, life, and hope for the better. For me, butterflies represent endurance over obstacles and the transformation that takes place once you’ve overcome something. Butterflies are very important to me, because I have overcome a lot of obstacles throughout my college experience. There were many times where I could've given up but I chose to spread my wings and fly away from all hardships, negativity, doubt, and more. For this reason, butterflies have become a symbol that is very special to me personally. This is why I chose to include butterflies in both of my kite designs.  
When I began to come up with a concept for my kite designs I wanted to develop a kite that was personal to me to show to the UAE students. I wanted to share a side of me to showcase how the butterfly has become an important symbol in my life. Originally, I wanted to create two separate butterfly designs for my small and larger kites. The design I originally created for my small kite was an image of two hands opening and releasing a swarm of different butterflies. After consulting with my professor, he informed me that since the kite will be far in the sky it will be very hard to see all the designs because it was so detailed. He suggested I choose one butterfly to showcase on the kite. After thinking it over I decided to do the same butterfly design for each of my kites. I had originally wanted to paint my smaller kite with watercolor. However, that proved to be very challenging as the texture of the smaller kite was not strong enough to stop the water from permeating the surface. I then decided that I would create a butterfly outline and screen print my design onto each of my kites. To make each kite stand out I decided to paint the wings of the butterflies different on each kite.  
I started my design process by using Adobe Illustrator to create my butterfly outline. I decided to make my design size 19 x 30” in order to fit on a 21 x 32” screen. For my big kite, I decided I was just going to put the image of the butterfly in the middle of the kite. However, when I came to my small kite, the design was too big to completely fit on the kite. Therefore, I decided to print on two smaller kites and print half of the butterfly one kite and the rest on the other. This would cause each kite to have a butterfly wing. Once the design was created I scanned it onto a large piece of film. I then began with the screen burning process of coating the screen with emulsion, exposing it, letting it dry, washing off the emulsion, and creating the stencil imprint on the screen. After the screen was done I began to print my design on my kites by pressing the screen on the kites and inking it to allow the butterfly design to transfer onto the kite. After my kites dried I decided to paint the wings with acrylic paint. For the big kite, I painted it sky blue. However, for my smaller kites I wanted each one to look different, so I decided to paint a rainbow gradient for each. For the kite with the left wings I painted them a rose, red, orange, yellow gradient and for the kite with the right wings I painted them a yellow, green, blue, purple gradient. When the kites are placed side by side and the wings are aligned you can see the beautiful transition of colors. Yet another way to symbolize transformation. 

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