Winter!

Sources: (敬称略) 

たえ ‏http://ttoc600.blog27.fc2.com/

しの http://members2.jcom.home.ne.jp/halorganon/

横 http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=55832

Coursework Prep ii

Found this by accident (yay!) and realised I forgot to include them in my prep boards for grading.*laugh with tears* They are my digital reference to the watercolor tryouts, you can find them in my previous post on coursework. (pretty fail though x.x)

 

 

And this is the original of the original (draft in pencil)! Basically I scanned it in and printed many copies in grey so that it appears as if I skilfully drew the exact same face many many times :P But I did drew the big big ones myself though, since the paper is too big to be printed :c

 

While revising

Strictly Japanese songs tonight!>:D Actually I'm quite worried for tmr's selection test since I missed the briefing the other time. Have no idea what the format will be like :/ hope it won't turn out to be essay or oral... (o_o

Finally have a tag called "diary"ヽ(^。^)丿!!!! And I need to change my url soon too before any ape teacher attempts to email it to juniors (¬_¬) Kinda have a bad impression of them blehh hope nobody saw this. (｀ε´)

Attaching an old song here heehee; タイナカサチ - 最高の片想い

 

いつもすごく自由なあなたは今
この雨の中どんな夢を追いかけているの
どこかで孤独と戦いながら
涙も我慢してるんだろう

一人でも大丈夫と あなたも私と同じ
遠回りばかりだけど なぜかこの道が好きで

幸せだとか嬉しい時は
あなたの事を思い出すから
色鮮やかな季節はきっと
この想い届けてくれる

Coursework Prep

As the school kept them for junior's reference, I may not get'em back at all. :( Might go steal it back one day :P Here's a compilation of some of the preparation works which I would like to show. They are in chronological order and you should be able to tell the development from one to the other. Enjoy~!

 

was half asleep when I painted the second one below (*-*;

thanks for viewing :)

Typo

found typography recently, should be quite useful for cover design

Towel Design

I actually wanted to post this only after the event is over, but since it won't be held anytime soon I shall just write about it now. :( So here are the designs:

Guess which design was chosen? :D

The second one! It was handwritten by me!! Haha I know my handwriting looks weird but I think it's quite legible lololol. The initial design was actually done in my school's PE shirt logo colour which is...somewhere between dark grey and dark blue. Referring to the colour chart below, I think it's dark dark Prussian Blue :p

Source: http://www.commonground191.com/journal/maldives.htm

But due to budgetary concerns, we conformed to black in the end haha. The design was printed on assorted colour towels, though I would still prefer a white one. According to the teacher, it would motivate the runners more if they get to choose from different colours. (-_- Other than that, I was also concerned about the receiver's response; it may sound ridiculous now but I did consider what if the receiver felt that the lousy towel wasn't worthy of their run after all. :\ I think I have a tendency to fear about disappointing others while bothering myself with meaningless stuff. Must to get rid of this habit!


 One of the sample towel; it's navy blue (because the supplier don't have the dark dark Prussian blue in the picture) against pink (= =;;):

Thanks for reading! :D

seniors' blogs

Found some very skillful and high-sense seniors' blogs!
(super excited about post-eoy nowww xD though I'm not done revising ;__; )

1.Smallhuiying’s Blog
http://smallandtiny.wordpress.com/category/artworks/
Admirable handicraft skills and I really like her coursework back then *_*

2.小风吹
http://smallwindblow.wordpress.com/
A rare discovery of senior who does design tooooo!!! Awesome booklet and T-shirt designs!! Quite a pity that she only uploaded a few posts about her design :(





3. :D
http://un-erasable.blogspot.sg/search/label/handmade

-

untitled

[The Path of the Artist]
From: http://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/artbook.html/x8724.htm

"… I should like to direct your attention for a moment to a side of phantasy-life of very general interest. There is, in fact, a path from phantasy back again to reality, and that is—art. [The artist] is one who is urged on by instinctual needs which are too clamorous; he longs to attain to honor, power, riches, fame, and the love of women; but he lacks the means of achieving these gratifications. So, like any other with an unsatisfied longing, he turns away from reality and transfers all his interest, and all his Libido too, on to the creation of his wishes in the life of phantasy, from which the way might readily lead to neurosis. There must be many factors in combination to prevent this becoming the whole outcome of his development; it is well known how often artists in particular suffer from partial inhibition of their capacities through neurosis. Probably their constitution is endowed with a powerful capacity for sublimation and with a certain flexibility in the repressions determining the conflict.

...A true artist has more at his disposal. First of all he understands how to elaborate his daydreams, so that they lose that personal note which grates upon strange ears and become enjoyable to others; he knows too how to modify them sufficiently so that their origin in prohibited sources is not easily detected. Further, he possesses the mysterious ability to mold his particular material until it expresses the ideas of his phantasy faithfully; and then he knows how to attach to this reflection of his phantasy-life so strong a stream of pleasure that, for a time at least, the repressions are outbalanced and dispelled by it. When he can do all this, he opens out to others the way back to the comfort and consolation of their own unconscious sources of pleasure, and so reaps their gratitude and admiration; then he has won—through his phantasy—what before he could only win in phantasy: honor, power, and the love of women."

for reference~

List of 20 Artworks

The 20 works below can all be found under the tag "Artworks" while some overlap with the tag "portrait", "Non-portrait", "Designs" or "Coursework" depending on the nature of the artwork.

Portraits:
1. 27 Jun 2012 - Watercolor Practice 2
2. 27 Jun 2012 - Watercolor Practice 3
3. 13 Apr 2012 - Blue
4. 04 Apr 2012 - Colour Plan
5. 03 Mar 2012 - Doodle
6. 02 Mar 2012 - Pen Practice
7. 23 Dec 2011 - Vermeer Palette Practice
8. 15 Dec 2011- Pink and Yellow
9. 09 Dec 2011 - Black
10. 2011 - Charcoal Portrait

Non Portraits:
11. 24 Aug 2012 - My Personal Values
12. 27 Jun 2012 - Watercolor Practice 1
13. 18 Mar 2012 - Quadrangle

Designs:
14. 30 May 2012 - CSM Programme Booklet
15. 02 Feb 2012 - Cai Qing Greeting Card
16. 04 Jan 2012 - DALT CCA Booklet
17. 16 Aug 2011 - Red and White Day Poster
18. 09 Aug 2011 - Sports Carnival Poster
19. 10 May 2011 - CSM Programme Booklet

Coursework:
20. 10 Sep 2012 - Coursework Preparation

Comment

1. Winter by Lim Xin Ying
2. Class T-shirt Design by Jubilee Tai
3. Inhumane Human by Svena Yu
4.
5.

tbu

Coursework Preparation

Coursework Prep

10 Sep 2012

Watercolor on Paper 

A3

I wanted to document this piece in my blog because this is my most favoured piece out of the whole coursework project. The transparency in this piece could hardly be imitated (even in my final final work :( and that's what makes this piece really precious to me. Even so, there is still a lot of room for improvement for it in areas like blending of washes between the face and the neck, shadowing the cheek bone, details on the lips and nose, color combination of the hair and modeling of the facial details and many other more which I could have worked on to produce a better piece.

While I believe in practice makes perfect, I continued to practice on the same composition. Overall, I've painted a rough total of 16 A5 papers, 3 A4 papers, 5 A3 papers, 4 A2 papers, 2 60cm by 94cm papers and 2 52cm by 84cm paper throughout the holiday :p (some are not mounted on the prep boards due to the size and quality of the papers). 

However, due to my incompetence and inefficiency, I still failed to meet my own expectations (and not even mentioning the teachers'). Nevertheless, I shouldn't lose faith in myself! I may come back to work on this piece after the eoys. :)

Charcoal Portrait

Charcoal on A3 paper

2011

This is a assignment piece I've done using charcoal last year. It depicts a side profile of my face. The excited facial expression (if you could tell) hints the presence of something beyond the paper. The rationale behind cropping the image into half and deleting about one quarter of it, is because I dislike the way I draw my lips. 

Introduction to Artist Kana Ohtsuki

大槻 香奈 (Kana Ohtsuki)

http://ohtsuki.rillfu.com/Gallery/gallery.html

Kana Ohtsuki is a Japanese artists who works with both oil and acrylic really well and have produced numerous works on the subject of teenage girls. I like her use of juxtaposition of different subject matters to bring across a message. The composition is the focus in most of her works as compared to たえ who is more interested wit the technical aspect.

Introduction to Artist たえ

たえ

http://ttoc600.blog27.fc2.com/

たえ is a Japanese freelance(?) digital artist whose style is both accurate and semi-realistic with a certain degree of abstraction through the manipulation of unfinished strokes and use of positive and negative spaces. I like the way she portray faces in limited colours and strokes while appearing realistic and beautiful at the same time. 

Colour Plan and Pen Prac

Colour plan

04 Apr 2012 

Colour pencil and pencil on paper

The first work is a color plan for my watercolor. I have chosen colour pencil as a medium for this because it is easier to control dry paper than wet ones and also because I would be able to identify the placement of each pigment more distinctively as compared to doing the color plan in watercolor.
The main colors used is turquoise, red and orange.

Pen Practice

02 Mar 2012

Pen on paper

The second portrait is done in pen. This is done to practice my shading skills in pen while maintaining a certain standard of aesthetic quality. I intended to portray something simple and yet defined. Overall, I should work on reducing the use of short, random lines and use longer, intuitive lines to strike a balance between the contours of the face and the facial details.

Quadrangle

Photo Manipulation

18 Mar 2012

The 2 pictures above depict the quadrangle in my school at night. The left is the original I took at around 5pm after school. I started off with the aim to create a night impression of my school in Photoshop. Besides adjusting the hue, I also added in layers of filter and textures (using pictures of night skies and stars) to increase the luminosity of the dark blue background. 

This is an essential step which serves to reflect the attractive and mystical image I have for my school. Two years ago, I had the fortune to sleep on the quadrangle floor with my classmates. It was during which I sensibly experienced the difference between the feelings I get from my school at day and at night. 

An area I should take note of when working with the sky next time, will be the amount of stars that really shines at night. I have to learn to throw away the idealistic and naive part of myself. :(

Vermeer's palette practice

I did the following portrait with 3 main pigments from the artist Johannes Vermeer's palette. As I happened to read through a watercolor book introducing color relationships and how the old masters apply them, I wanted to try out the palette used by Vermeer in most of his paintings and hopefully achieve similar outcomes. The three pigments I had limited myself to using is 1. Yellow Ochre 2.Burnt Umber and 3.Ultramarine. These three colours could be seen in abundance in the two paintings shown above.

Vermeer's palette practice

23 Dec 2011 

Watercolour on paper

I think the attempt was rather failed in terms of aesthetic qualities, but I do like the details of my neck to some extent. :P I have to work on the control of intensity and creating a colour plan to avoid putting too many layers (e.g. on the face), which is unfavorable in watercolors.

Week 10

Blog Task: Spying Lens

Spying Lens, by Lucia Hartini (1989)

Composition

We can observe a diagonal composition in this painting with a sense of depth and space. The linear perspective is created by drawing objects that decreases in size as the distance between them and the viewer increases. The horizon line (equivalent to the eye level of the viewer) seems to be at the top, or even beyond the edge of the canvas, suggesting the viewer’s superior position in relation to Lucia Hartini’s.

Week 9

Blog Task: Personal Values part ii

Rene Magritte's Personal Values

My Personal Values (work in progress)

Significance:

1. Bubbles -  Bubbles of various colours ans sizes represent emotions, thoughts and ideas of different intensity. 
2. Moon - Iconography for intuition. The trend for bubbles to float towards the direction of moon shows how the spirit of mind could be influenced by intuition, to simply go with what you know and feel.
3. Nudity - The suggestion of being exposed brings out the idea of vulnerability and revelation of the "naked truth". 
4. Deer - 
5. Diary - an essential item which serves as a reminder for important dates such as assignment deadlines.
6. Dark wall - It was initially planned to resemble the night sky but it turned out to be something else unfortunately. While night time allows for a short-term solitude, the dark sky is drawn to highlight how much I value this duration for meditational purposes and development of inspirations.
7. Door - The door depicts the scenery of what is outside of my room, symbolizing the path that leads to the uncovering of subconscious - to become more aware of my fear. This is also the source for my creativity.

negative version

Blog Task: Personal Values part i

Les valeurs personnelles, by Rene Maritte, 1952

In Personal Values, an ordinary room setting is shown with a closet and a wooden bed. Subject matters like a shaving brush, soap, a wine glass, a comb and a matchstick are displayed in monumental scale, dominating the room with their eerie presence.

While Magritte believes that no matter how accurate our drawings are, we can never capture an item itself but only its image on the canvas, his paintings are always more representational than expressional. This can be seen from the realistic and academic style in Personal Values and many of his paintings. In another words, he portrayed objects realistically in an unusual context to give them new meanings.

Magritte also manipulated the subject matter’s proportion, in order to stress on the mystery embodied in the ordinary household items shown in his work. In this way, he did not only challenge the viewers’ perception of the world, but also influence their beliefs on the relationship between us and these seemingly ordinary personal items.

Here are some of the meanings each object symbolizes:

Soap - suggesting the significance of cleanliness and tidiness to the artist.

Comb - resting on the bed in a upright position, to represent the importance of grooming and thus social acceptance regarded by the artist through adhering to the social norms of the society.

Shaving brush - another item which constitutes the collection of grooming items. The brush is placed atop the wardrobe, representing the necessity to maintain constantly a socially accepted image while surpressing his desire to explore the subconcious mind (represented by the mirror)

Sky - the painted sky is an extension of the idea of mental interior. With the alteration in visual perception and atmospheric space, the room unbounded by the sky reflects the artist's unlimited room for imagination. 

Wine glass -the tinted blue glass is positioned at the centre of the painting, it maybe suggestive of the fact that Magritte recognized socializing with the higher class of the society as a major part in his life.

to be continued.