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