Paprika Stamp

It was the Final Test (UAS) day of our first semester after entering DKV studio. We had to design a stamp with our chosen vegetable from the previous assignment (in my case, capsicum annuum a.k.a. paprika). We had about six hours to finish it on the spot (must be done by hand because we weren’t allowed to use computer until the next semester). After some thumbnail sketching, I started transferring the idea to the canvas (or conqueror paper, to be exact). So far, I was doing okay. With great confidence, I started to color it with poster color. Then it was all downhill from there. I poured too much water and the colors became dull. The soggy brush wrinkled the paper and smudged the pen line. Then I dipped the brush for green paint into the red palette and didn’t realize it until I stroked it onto the paper. I watched in disbelief as my important final test became a bloody fiasco. There was still 2 hours left, and I decided to start all over again. Of course I wasn’t dumb enough to insist on using poster color. So I dashed to the nearest stationery shop (approx. 0,5 km from my campus), bought some color sticker papers, and ran back to my desk. Though I was working as fast as I could, there’s no way I could finish it on time. Thankfully, after seeing (and laughing at) the evidence of my miserable first attempt, the lecturer agreed to give me one more hour. And this was all I could manage.



The lecturer gave me a perfect mark, 100 points, for this. I’m pretty sure it was the accumulation of the actual score (70), the unforgivably embarrassing previous trial (-50), and the effort running like a mad bull in the middle of the day (80).