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[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.