One little part of the castle

“式微，式微，胡不归？”

“乖乖等妈妈回来开门吧……”

Start practising perspective and drawing skill. A castle for only a little girl is pretty much lonely. Now I know how Rapunzel felt.

Commission illustration: Shui Xian Street in Malacca

Sketch~

Commission illustration: Shui Xian Street in Malacca

After a few days and nights, finally done! Compared to Illustrator, I still prefer Photoshop. Well, at least it is a good point for me to try some programme that I seldom use.

Draw on Fabrics

This time, I am trying on something new(Well, at least to me). The medium is called Fabric Fun Pastel Dye Stick. It looks like crayon but it is for drawing on fabrics. 

So, this is one of the results. Feel quite okay with it. 

Spoonfish, Fabric Fun Pastel Dye Sticks on canvas.

归绿

Just draw something for a competition. A sudden of spark came into my mind that it drove me up to the drawing block.

This is for a competition in Taiwan, 归绿.

Ginger baker

My pretty ginger baker~~~(Did for a commission on packaging character in April 2013.) 

Portrait fo a birthday girl

Happy birthday, my girl.
May the God bless you with happiness and the courage to keep you moving forward in your life.  May you always like a sunflower, keep looking upward to the positive part of the world no matter what you are or going to face. Thank you for being in my life.

Kampung View

The Malacca kampung view. This is the first attempt for one of my commissions. Haha... like my aunt said, the emotion is so sad. However, I like its calmness.

Cats~~~

Trying on drawing cats with Chinese brush:

The life started from apple

Appreciate every hardship and every wonderful moment in your life. These are what makes you yourself so beautiful.

I actually drew it for AFCC inspired by the poison apple from Snow White, but I didn't hand in this one. I think that it worths a better meaning behind. 

Art Jam II: Odour

This is my first submission for the art jam which theme is Odour. It said in the brief that, "a short guy who kicks tremendous ass in the ocean."

Kind of tiring to figure out what it means. So, I actually gave up as I need more time to do my thesis essay and projects.

Tonight, I admit that I was weirder than normal days. A very weird idea popped up in my mind. It messed up my mind that I could neither sleep nor concentrate on my works.

You know what. A buttock-shaped durian!

Since the title mentioned a short guy, so I came up with a little (Myctophidae ?) carried that durian as the tricks to catch its prey.

Whether it smells good or not, I leave it to your imagination.

I am exhausted, but, at last, I did experiment and produce something. Let's leave my work for tomorrow morning. Good night.

The artwork that reflects myself

I have used snail to represent myself. Snail is carrying its home everywhere, and me too, I hope that wherever I go in the future, I will never forget where I am from and my family. 

"...The snail is also associated with new beginnings - specifically spring-time energies as it is the first to emerge from the earth in the spring...coaxed out by spring rains..." 

(Venifica, n.d.)

The new end is always a new start. So, this is my vision for my future, always find ways to refresh myself. Don't be afraid of the mistakes. Treat it as the new beginning.

So, from here, give my future the best wishes and I shall work hard for it. 

 The Snail Explorer

The dropping Snail

The Exquisite Corpse

For so long that I did not update my blog. As an apologise, I would like to show you some activities that I have done last week. I have participated an activity in my junior class and I felt inspiring and refreshing while my mind was messed up with bad ideas. It is just a moment of running away from work, huh. 

So, this workshop is called The Exquisite Corpse. What i have done is drawing 2 characters and cut them into 3 parts. Then, when you put them together, they will switch with one and another.

1) Let's seperate your piece of paper into three parts by drawing 2 horizontal lines. The first part is your head, the second part is your body and the third part is your legs.

2) Measure 9cm and 7cm from both sides for the first line and the second line respectively. (The measurement could be fixed according to the measurement you wanted, but you must fix it, so that it seems joining together when you flip any part of it.)

3) Design your own character.

4) Cut the first and the second line. Don't cut the whole piece. You have to left a bit joining so that you can flip over. We left 2cm anyway.

So, these are my work:

Inspired by my friend, Jack the Jacktus, who really love gardening.
I quite like it too, though I am bad in it. He reminds me of my little yellow-flowered cactus which died after a few times of blooming.

This is actually a Tuna Cheese bun. I should tell you that I am a bread lover and, that morning, I forgot about my breakfast. Therefore... yup! That's the result. In Chinese proverb, there is one called "画饼充饥", which literally means drawing biscuits to stand the hunger. So, I did the same thing here.


So, when you flip it :

This is the result. Hope that you all like it.

Malacca Artist II: Tham Siew Inn

I have been looking forward to go into his gallery. The first time I visited, the door was shut and the board was written that something like painting in progress. So I had to skip it. The second time was a coincident. I happened to spend my time nearby, waiting for my sister and it was opened. So, why not?

(source: http://www.garmin.com.sg/m/sg/g/waypoint_travelroute/travel_011/pic_005.jpg)

I like the casual feeling of his gallery. The wood and stones, and the green behind the house, I should say that it is a good place to relief your stress.

Tham Siew Inn started his artist life about 1970s. He has never given up drawing and sketching before in his life. He has a very determine spirit on what he believed and what he wanted in his life.

He was kind enough to chat with me and he bought me behind the gallery. It was his studio. I was surprised to see his sketchbooks. You will never believe, he has stacks of sketchbooks, near the door, on the shelves and in the cupboards. That's a lot that I can't even finish a small stacks. He would do sketches where ever he went. Each of every sketches was rich with its value, very inspiring.

I was amazed to see a quite complete transition of drawing styles of an artist. His earlier works was watercolour landscape and realistic paintings. However, he kept experimenting on the brush strokes and line and later, he gradually changed his styles into a very expressionist kind of approach.

Free and wild. Lively.

tham's sketches
(Source: http://fineartsynergy.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/2004_perform-ii_30x42.jpg)

His later drawing style (Source:http://fineartsynergy.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/2004_orchestra_21x30.jpg)

I remember that Yusof Gajah said before, you need to practice and experiment a lot to get your own style, just like what he did for his elephant. Same goes to Tham. He has spent nearly his whole life drawing, painting and sketching, from 1970s to 2000s. He finally got his own style.

Therefore, the art style really depends on your experience of drawing and life. Am I only got my own style after I grow up to be an old lady? Haha... kind of hard to think about that. Or rather, I won't want to think about that. Let everything go naturally and now I should just do my own part.

Sketches

Time to post some sketches.

These are the sketches I did in the journey to Singapore. Though not many, I was really having fun.

This is the first time I got into a train at night with my brother. We shared a room with double decker. 

So, yup. I stayed with my cousins. So, this sketch was done in a cafe in Botanical Garden. We were having nice pizzas there. Thank you, Fen Jie Jie and Cherlyn.

A black swan in Botanical Garden.

After came back to college, I attended a talk by Andrew Matthew, or precisely, just a sharing of thought about happiness and motivation in life.

"Life is not a spectator, but participator." (Matthew, 2013)

Some sketches on cats~~~

Imagination~Boy in the garden

Imagination~Tinker flower~~~like fairies

Imagination~The violinist

A fast doodle on Amy~

The Malacca Artist Titi.

Today, I "dived" into my juniors' class. Good to see some of them and yup, I should say they are quite potential.The bad thing is I don't know how to interact with them (generation gap? Find so hard to start a conversation with them.)

Today, Amy is going to talk about abstract artworks. Looking forwards to it.

So, I will like to introduce two artists that influence me and encourage me a lot today.
They are Malacca artists and I happened to meet them in their galleries. we have got a long chat.

I would like to start with Titi.

Titi started his artist life quite late as he found that he loves paintings. It is not easy for an artist to earn a living in Malaysia. Though he have a gallery, he is still working to support his living cost and all the expenses in the gallery.

I met him by chance. That is the time when I felt ashamed on myself as I didn't ever walk into a gallery in my hometown and yet I am going to step into art and design industry. So, I arranged a few days from my semester break and started my little journey. 

It is hard for me to start a conversation with him. Feel kind of weird as in you won't know how to start and you start mumbling and saying weird stuff. Though, it seems better as the chat went on.

He is kind and humble in the way that he never set himself better or higher than me. He treats me like friends.  

Titi's artworks are always calm and simple. I should say, his work is perfectly presented with acrylic on canvas.

From his art work, you will feel the touch of brushes, simple strokes and a bit rough, which give a sense of Chinese feel. The simplicity and the natural feeling give a zen feeling on them. Therefore, I should say that his paintings are the reflection of his background, belief and emotion. He happened to study Buddhism philosophy.

Though he has a website and you can found his replication of artworks are sold in some of the souvenirs' shop, not many people know about him. Maybe we should find out more ways for illustrators and artists to promote themselves.

I hope that I could do something like that too. Make people feel relief and happy while looking at my works. (Though sounds far away from me...XP)

Hope that you all will like his work. I will definitely get one if I got enough money.
http://www.titi-art.com/


<<To be continued with the next artist Tham Siew Inn on the next post. Going to Amy's class. Yeah~~~ The haze turns up to be slightly better than yesterday after the rain late evening.  

Maurice Sendak

So, this is respect given by Google Doodler to Maurice Sendak on his 85th birthday weeks ago.

Today, I am going to look at Maurice Sendak. He was an American illustrator. His famous illustration book was Where the Wild Things are.

His characters are mostly grotesque, weird and distorted. But I like the his imaginative world, pretty much impressive. His drawing is always ink and slightly colour. Kind of desaturated. His ink strokes are very confident and detailed. By using hatching and cross-hatching, it shows the aesthetic and the touch. You can feel how the characters looks like, fluffy, but with rough and tough hair touch, the bull with human's feet.

Maurice Sendak artwork

His sensitivity allowed him to play with strokes and limited colour to show the depth on his illustration. The four monsters walking in one direction shows the unity, but their eyes fall onto a smaller guy which create the attention and lead our eyes to focus on the little guy. Nice arrangement of composition too.

Last but not least, I will like to end this post with a quote from Maurice Sendak, which insisted that he is drawing for everyone, not only the children but the adults.

“I believe there is no part of our lives, our adult as well as child life, when we’re not fantasizing, but we prefer to relegate fantasy to children, as though it were some tomfoolery only fit for the immature minds of the young. Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do.”                                                                                                                  (Sendak, 1972 )

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/06/10/todays-google-doodle-a-tribute-to-maurice-sendak/#ixzz2XCZ3yGx4

Chun Eun Sil

I am going to move on, trying to do what I can do right now.

Flipping over the illustrator blogs and websites that I have collected, it reminds me Amy's advice. "Don't simply say that it look nice, it looks beautiful. Look at how people execute it. Analyse them."

So, today, I would like to start with Chun Eun Sil.

Well, Chun Eun Sil is a Korean artist. My impression, for so long, Korean illustrators are really good. I don't know why. Is it because they are better in the sense of beauty? I suppose that they have a good colour sense.

She is a pro in using soft colour. Her illustrations are always cosy, with simple line but rich. Not only the colour, but the whole composition, for instance, the colour space and the white space.

The balancing between both will sooth our eyes. When the colours are rich and bright, white space plays an important role to keep us relax. Everything is going smooth and natural.

You won't feel that her works are purposely done. It is as natural as breathing. I should say, Chun Eun Sil, the air with the balancing of liveliness and calmness, her way of being poetic grace.

A bit more on her illustration:
http://blog.krisatomic.com/?p=364


Today, I would like to introduce Yanni. This is my favourite song of him. I have started to admire him because of this song, Nightingale. I think it suits Chun Eun Sil's works. At the first glance, you will feel the softness, but it is just a beginning. The longer you look into it, you will notice how lively are her artworks, like this piece of music.

Still that phrase.

Poetic grace

幸运与不幸

今天早上，熬夜赶策划案，看离上课还有些时间，就稍微闭目养神。岂知竟睡了下去，起来时，上课迟了，心也急了。

一路奔到交通灯，好不容易等到了绿灯，过马路时，一股力量往左边来，把我给撞了。那是一辆德士。瞧我被撞，司机也急了，下车问我的伤势。我当时脑袋宛如浆糊，全身酸痛。抬头一看，他伸手把我的眼镜递了过来，白色的镜框在那只黑手中十分刺眼。再看看交通灯，行人的标记，闪着催促的亮绿，心里倒是有些怨念。

接过眼镜，在行人的搀扶下，站起来，看自己似乎没见红，倒是记挂着上课迟到，对他说：“抱歉，我赶着上课。”，拾起两三掉落的书本， 便一拐一拐地走了。

发觉有人叫着我，回头看，是个点头之交。竟没发觉他是刚才的行人，他担心我，看我走得吃力、拿得辛苦，想帮我。我也不好耽误人家的时间，看自己还行，婉拒了他的好意。

刚开始，我也许有些小愤怒，觉得自己好端端的，走啥霉运，但，更多的是，我不得不感谢自己的好运气。真的，我很庆幸，我没受伤流血，只是这阵子得受点皮肉痛。值得高兴的是，我的电脑毫无损伤，我还能做事写功课。我更感受到外来的温暖，多少人爱看热闹而吝于给予援助，而我却收到了他人的关心。我很高兴自己没有破口大骂，毕竟司机的歉意，我也收到了。或许我该感谢他没有踩油门，撞后逃。这次的一场虚惊，我却获得更多。

你说，我是不幸还是幸运呢？

One line drawing

Another new try. Combine one line drawing and roundness. 

Inside the game centre, someone is playing basketball.

Practice with Tom Ford photo.

These were all last semester sketches practice.

AFCC sketch participation

I have never been that nervous and excited before. I am participating Asian Festival of Children Content. Well, I found many nice artworks in the contest and I have a deeper understanding that there are more talented people in the world. Amy is right. We should put our scoop bigger.

After all, it is a good experience to me. The most important thing is I like it. I enjoy putting everything in my mind to work together. Though it may not look good to others. ^^

Sketches Sharing

I went to My Hair House to have my hairdo, precisely straighten my hair. 

Doodling while waiting my hair to be done. 

The first sketch in my new sketchbook. Wondering what kind of hair styles will I have.
I quite like this book. I got it in Thailand. It was a nice trip, worth a thumb, I should say. Maybe post it next time.

Feel like this when the hairdresser put the chemical onto my hair.

"Help, help~ Alien."

"Nah...your wig is ready Ma'am. Please don't kill me... baaa~" haha



The first day of class.
My classmates were going to have lunch in Sushi Zamai. Well, I would like to have nice meal with them, but Sushi Zamai lifted my guiltiness. My mother only have bread for lunch almost everyday, and yet, I, as her daughter, I will have a great meal with my friends? Well, this is not working on me.

At the end, Yvonne invited me to go with her, to meet Angel basically. Well, if only I know the meal does cost...
guilt~

Okay, maybe this time. After all, it is nice to have a date with my friends.

Another couple of days' doodle.
The cat next door:

The violinist Akiko Ono:

Art Jam @the park (pet session)

Oh well, these sketches were done during Art Jam few months ago. We had pets life-sketching session 

and it is awesome, though I could only stay for a very little time. 

"Siew Hong, where is your Rocky? I want to draw it." (laugh)XD p/s: Rocky is his pet... actually it is just a rock. Quite like this idea. I guess he must be joking though. Maybe I should get a stone pet too. Too lazy to feed and clean the pet.