Visual+Analysis



"Better Tomorrow" by Yuumei

Yuumei’s “Better Tomorrow” is a digital artwork drawn and colored on the program PaintTool SAI and finalized using Photoshop filters and color adjustments. “Better Tomorrow” is a repaint of her 2009 drawing “Hope and Despair”. She posted this work on DeviantART on Jul 14, 2016 and uploaded a tutorial of this piece on her YouTube. The print for this work is approximately 8.5”x18”, which is sold on her website. At first glance, any regular person would believe it is another one of her fascinating works. However, as we start to interpret the drawing, a significant story can be found. This meaningful piece reflects the world we are widely exposed to and the world we have failed to watch over.

Wenqing Yan, better known by her pseudonym Yuumei, was born in China in 1990, where she spent almost ten years of her life before moving to the United States. Her parents divorced when she was nine years old, which had a great impact on her life. This caused the themes of her earlier artworks to have a focus on the divorce of her parents and the anguish that she had experienced. These painful childhood memories may have also shaped the way her works have matured along with herself. Her works primarily focus on environmentalism because of her exposure to the environment in her homeland. Another one of her focuses is cyber activism. An earlier work called “Tape It Back Together” made her realize how powerful and meaningful her artworks can be to other people when it was featured in DeviantART’s Daily Deviations. Her artworks have since then extended from personal pain to global awarenesses such as gang-shootings, pollution, global warming, oil spills, etc. Although she is a busy person, Yuumei will always spare time to illustrate charity works for non-profit organizations and educational institutions.

As seen in this artwork, there is a painting of nature by a girl inside the building. The paint buckets surrounding her are overflowing with “life”, and start to interact with the floor and the wall she is painting on. However, the reality seen through the windows is much less attractive due to the factories and the substances being released from them. The smoke that escapes the smokestacks and exhaust pipes are not only polluting the air, but also the ground. There is absolutely no green scenery or fluffy clouds that can be seen through the windows. The dirtied city shows the “death” of Mother Nature. Like Mother Nature, Death is a personified force with many different outputs. However, Death is the one who takes away the life of others. Here, it shows Mother Nature as Death’s victim. While nature still exists all around us, it is certain that we are slowly wounding the beauty and patching the injuries with layers of cement. The girl painting the wall does not look to her right to witness the sorrowful world. Instead, she keeps on painting for a better tomorrow. Her hope has caused grass, flowers, water, butterflies, birds, and fishes to escape from the buckets. Yuumei also used three colors to give a sensation of a certain temperature. Bright yellows, oranges and reds were used for the highlights to give off a warm effect to present the viewers with a sense of energy or heat. These colors, however, do not seem to be given off by what is beyond the windows. The red, black, and grey could not possibly stretch the shapes of the windows into a glossy gold sheen on the ground. Instead, it seems to have the colors given off from the rays of an afternoon sunlight.

The view through the windows is commonly seen in busy cities all around the globe. The combination of the colors red and black is similar to a fire during the night, especially a forest fire. Despite the factory filled scenery, the immense amount of smoke released can be spread and harm living things. The building she is painting in could be one of those many factories as well. The pipelines above her head and the layout of the window are abnormal if the building is considered to be a house. This realization conveys to the viewers that no one can reach out towards full beauty. We have taken away that aspect, but we can always soothe the problem. The contrast of colors on the walls is another thing to notice. From left to right, the colors start to darken to different shades of red. Focusing on just that portion of the drawing gives a sense of despair -the loss of life in exchange for machinery.

“Better Tomorrow” was created to spread awareness of what we have become from taking away nature. Most of what we need for our daily lives can be found within a few miles and has caused us to unintentionally overlook who and what provides our necessities. The land we have been given is slowly starting to become a property of our own greed. Because we are killing plants rather than a human being or animal, we think it would not impact us dearly.