Spit Out That Hairball! and Other Strange Rules is a series of illustrated stories inspired by my family and the magic and mayhem in our everyday. It is a journal of my passing observations about how, amidst the tantrums, the meltdowns and the chaos that come with living with two special needs family members, we learn to have fun and find adventure in unpredictability. As we let Sheila and Aisha become a huge inspiration for the bits of philosophy and strange rules we develop about life, we grow to understand that there are so many different, perhaps even more colourful, ways of making sense of the world.
This book contains 84 printed pages and measures 180mm by 225mm.
Click on the images to enlarge.
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Process
Most of the illustrations in this book are made using elements from my autistic sister's drawings. Aisha's imaginative mind puts me in awe everyday and I want to showcase her creative brilliance. Aisha spends hours at her desk everyday and produces some of the most brilliant artwork. As nonsensical as her colourful creatures and random scribbles appear to be, I find it extremely inspiring that they're driven by ideas that often go beyond our common understanding of logic. I think sometimes as artists we get so caught up in golden rules and academic dogma that we forget what it means to be truly creative and to express ourselves without restraint.
For example, the text in this book is set in a typeface that I created out of her handwriting.
The following letters used in the book's title features Aisha's quirky interpretation of each letter of the alphabet.
Our artistic collaboration and experimental interpretation of each other's styles is symbolic of our attempt to 'understand each other's worlds.' Ultimately, the stories in this book celebrate how being different just means having a different, more wonderful, way of looking at the world through the familiar themes of family and love.
