well, just to share with you all my views on life..
well, since young, i had this feeling that i was the best artist in world and i had always wanted to be an artist...
apparently what i said was always wrong, in a small enclosed social circle, such as a class or a church group, yes, I do think that i dominate other people in art...but that is totally wrong when applied to the world...

i guess when i was young, i used to be self centered, to feel that the world deserves me and me alone, that everyone was inferior...but as i mature and get a better insight to the world (and brush up on my vocabulary) i have begun to realise some pointers in life that i should keep in mind.

in singapore alone, there are 40,000 over people who are just as or even better than me, and im merely just ONE of them... it just makes me feel ordinary, but then, think again, 40,000 aspiring people that the world can enjoy, a colorful and dramatic world is impossible to achieve without the 40,000 of us, and this is just singapore.
Imagine all the people throughout the world...
i must learn not to be over confident or over selfish myself, its only through self realization and exploration that i can make good use of it...
well, im sure the 40,000 of them have the same thinking as me...
but come to think of it, everyone in the world is capable of producing facinating artworks, its just a matter of perception from other people that evaluates a "good" artist.
A poorly educated kid from the slums of erm..tamil nadu who draws a simple and primitive heart, might be insulted by his peers all around him and yet people in America, with all these contemporary art forms around might otherwise think of the heart as a form of self expression, without a care for detail.

well, that time mrs tay told us to do a powerpoint on self constituition, and unfortunately, i did not upload my sketches, well, here they are =)


here is a picture of my sketchbook, started on march, i initially wanted to bring this to school for something to doodle with and something to show off. But the thing is, that's not me, im not a boastful, show off so, i have since stopped bringing it already, its just selfish and not nice... but oh well, it has some sketches.


on the first few days of school i started sketching my teachers, well, i realised that my realistic representation of people was a little off track and they don't resemble them, so i am resorting to curiculture, unfortunately, annoying people from my classes see the caricutures and gave them to the teachers themselves. well, funny enough most of the teachers said that they will keep it as a soveneir.

more pictures, well, as stated before, iw as inspired with this manga stuff, but i am revolted by over-magafication, as in uber tall people, skinny legs, skinny body, big big eyes, im leaning towards the more realistic kind, something more western... here i am exploring facial features n expressions =)

more cartooning sketches, as i mentioned before, im pretty fond with cartoons, they can convey messages more effectively then boring documentaries...but cartooning is NOT my primary interest...

ever since the lesson on cubism, i have tried to do some exploration with cubic forms, NOT simplification of subject matter but building cubic forms from scratch, its easy to represent them and pleasing to the eye, i can make shadings in such a way that the cubic forms are made of jelly, plastic and sometimes metal, but the metal effect is hard to show on a scanner... its nice to draw them during boring lectures..

*commercial break! here's a pic of my dog, XD*
before i got her, i never never knew dogs had eyelashes, well god is such a wonderful being, there are human-like gender differences in animals as well... my dog's a girl btw...

more cubism-inspired work...

remember post-impressionsim? well, the artists tend to attack the canvas at a fast rate, what ever color they see, they paint it, so i went to see if it can be applied on color pencils as well, well, here's a coloring work of the stuff on my table, i realised that the more changing of colors (change of color pencils and the number of layers of colors) the image will be more realistic... so should i be doing this forever, i will come out with an extremely realistic photo-like picture.

there was also this phase when i was excessively interested in chinese calligraphy, well my chinese is horrendous, but i find their text nice and flowy, well the "expert" calligraphers are all rubbish, so i have explored making words abstract, but still recognisable at first glance, really fun, because i incorporate the motion of the strokes. i write the word down using normal hand writing and i take the "whiskers" of pencil markers due to cursive writing into account.

more pictures...

hmm, we had this painting lesson before, never new there was so many variation of colors in classy-cheem categorization, well, its a waste of time, money and washing work if i use acrylic paint itself at home, so i resorted to color pencils, i noticed that the color pencils had eerily similar colored color pencils in comparision to the acrylic paint terms..
i tried blending, which was fun, it was much much much easier to control and it is waaaaaaaaaaay neater...

more pictures...


*commercial break! haha my dog makes funny faces when i attach stuff on her collar*


more anime-manga inspired sketches, notice that i really love role playing games, those with wizards, warriors and something... on certain occasions, i even sketch my game avatars to bring them to life, its like playing a computer game during boring lectures!!!

Here is my primary obsession!!!!
every sicne primary school, my friends introduced me to Runescape, my first role playing game, till then, i enjoed every bit of it, really fun, till my results went bad and my parents barred me from playing for 2 years... =(. but i realised something! i can re live my pleasure in playing them game by creating maps of my own! instead of following other people's imagination, i can create my own, to live in my own imaginary world, i draft out stories, lore, history and magical science into my maps, being a geography student, there are vast number of names to describe a landform, for example, an edge of land pointing out of the sea can be named "peninsula, serpent's dagger, dragonheart's landing, the scimitar edge..."
its really fun! people have lame imaginary friends to play with, as for me, i have a whole new world full of imaginary subject matter to think, we are living in a world that abides the laws of physics and its dull, we are NOT forced to treat life like this, in your dreams, your life, you definitely can imagine a world unique to you, where you ARE GOD and that it might even exist somewhere else in the universe.

Who knows? maybe god gave us the power to create worlds and be the GOD of that world, just that the world exists in another plane and people worship you? and maybe we ourselves are living in GOD's thoughts? an object existing is due to the perception of a person or party, a blind person born to the world thinks that the color red doesn't exist, but it is his imagination from other people's perception that red is red.
A yellow egg does not neccessarily be yellow, its our visual perception of the light's wavelength that gave the color yellow. Should our eyes be capable of detecting only low wavelength of light, aka our perception, everything will look like vommit.






well, my first inspiration was from a runescape fansite, afterwhich, it was a picture on the Lord of the Rings dvd, well, i don't usually showcase this obsession to people as i feel that i am nerdy enough, people in sji however are all boys so its more fun to talk about it.
other main inspirations was from the mmorpg World of Warcraft, Diablo 2, guildwars, maplestory(they represent maps in 3d).

Rpg map obsession has been with me since primary school and it will never leave me, a new world can be drafted just like that, similar to art movements, they are maps which differ in style! realistic RPG maps are much like google earth, post-impressionistic are just like Lord of the Rings, with simplification of mountains, rivers, and a medieval touch to it,

dada and pop art maps are like Maplestory's they have maps that points of focus pop out of the map, which are colorful and looks like a collage, where awkward terrains are placed next to each other, pop art in which case is the pop culture of japan, the "cuteness" and "colorful" qualities are present.

Surrealistic maps such as this below,

well, its surrealistic as there is juxtaposition of landmarks and terrains, a rocky mountain range is positioned directly next to a swamp, which is right next to a barren wasteland. The land is seen to be floating amongst the cosmos, in a dreamlike state. In the game, chunks of earth are seen floating, defying gravity, water flows out from the sky and the entire mass is just a floating chunk of earth...really wonderful...

well, there was this cubist map, its actually the same as the above, but it involves layers, as in multiple chunks of earth are floating on top each other, and yet the map shows it in such a way that all the layers are shown clearly, even those hidden beneath the front chunks of earth, different perspective, the land pictured in the maps can also be seen tilting at a dangerous angle, land doesnt always appear flat and perpendicular to gravity, a plane-like world can be seen bent and slanting to a side, with water flowing down the slope as if it is a mountain...

well,, thats all...

i would like to share with you some of my early inspirations =)

unlike alot of people my age, they tend to focus ans idolize the famous artists throughout the world...in themes such as blood, gore...love and touchy subjects such as imagination and stuff. in the forms of paintings and installation art...

apparently, i see things in a different way, the world definitely as a funny and interesting side to it, everything does not have to be presented all abstract and deep in meaning...

i agree with dadaist and surrealist their tendency to create art as a product of chaos, art without meaning, the purpose of creation is for the sake of creating something impactful...that is open to opinions...

well, back in secondary school, i stumbled across this thru the internet
well, its a manga-version of the ever so famous rpg, world of warcraft...

what really caught me was the pose of the characters, how dynamic they are..yes...there are many comics outthere with a similar fashion...but i have just decided to pick this as a good inspirational source. It has that, degree of action, the colors are really fitting and pleasant to the eye, nothing bad... but thats not the thing that inspired me, it is the whole thing about cartoons, at that point i found out how representive cartoons can be...
during boring lectures, its a thrill to draw a cartoon character saying "wake up!" on my lecture notes, it puts a sense of accomplisment as well as self discipline in me...

ever since then i have tried to comeout with my style of cartoons, through my sketchbooks and stuff...

since that day i have tried drawing comic cartoons, be it manga or western, but my skills i just too bad of course...thats why i ended up with a super simple style of drawing cartoons, look, its all over my lecture notes...haha

haha, this blog is turning starting to become an art critic blog, but oh well...

I am going to blog about my brewing ideas for my art a level coursework..
just would like to share my ideas with you.
NO COPYING! hmm!

well, one day i was walking back as usual, well, the sun was hot , flaming, untolerable, but anywho, i stopped at this traffic light, hoping to get some shade from the shadow, and there it was, a simple thick nail thingy lying on the ground, motionless, it had this simplicity, it was glowing bright in some areas and burnt brown and black on some areas, due to the rust.
i grabbed it, it felt warm, my memories of that dayand the warmth in my hand, complimented each other... i smiled.

its not everyday you find something dull and boring on the floor with such a sensation in your fingertips, it was special. On hot days, it possesed a burning desire to come alive, its warmth was enigmatic, exciting. On the cool days, it slept quietly, it's ice cold touch makes me wait for a moment, to stop and think for a while, life is not in a rush...

but none of this literature nonesense, its an art blog!
one thing i have noticed about is the rust that formed around the bolt that i picked up. It is just a minor rusting, but it is this small rust that renders the entire bolt useless, to such an extent it has been casted away. It no longer served it's purpose, unable to fasten to objects together and stick as one.

rust has this earthly tone, it is both a man-made and natural substance, it occurs naturally, but not many iron objects are exposed to the air to rust. Thats when i refer to it as man-made, the iron metal structures that man produced.

im thinking of using this as my stimulus, the message? well, im keeping it in my mind, i will let the people infer themselves. The topic of rust seems to be discarded as it is viewed as a nuisance to mankind, it hinders machinery, ruins products and disfigure important architectural marvels which made constant maintaenance vital.

well, here is an old picture of the Sla painting, nd sorry, its inverted, just turn your head around and don't be lazy.

ok, like i said in my previous post, the clashing of raw colors were not effective at all, mixing of colors was definitely more effective as compared to this. yes, i have reworked the whole thing, i practically painted a fresh new layer over this to get what i want...

hmm

Yay!!! blogging about art is fun!!!!
this is a photo of a video installation , well, don't remember what was the name exactly, it looks to me a dancing potato. well, mrs Tay told me its an exploration of space. notice how lively and energetic the person is despite the obvious lack of space in the potato suit? it sets you thinking...

the music in the background was energetic, it really makes you want to dance and interact with the artwork, in which i failed to succumb to it...

My take on this, this person is serious on the outside, but is childish in the subconscious. from far, he seems to be a child dancing about in a potato suit, haha, really wonderful to watch. he is definitely a creative and imaginative artist at heart, childish ithe process, haha, just like me. his work seem to be emmit a childish glow to it, and im pretty sure he is tall and boring, well don't know, its just my stereotype.

Nice cartoons

here's an interesting image of you know....the simpsons! whats really catchy about this is that a level of realism is injected to the image, it is well....an anime version of the original artwork. rather interesting. none of the characters were over exxaggerated, in which case their eyeballs are huge or whatever, there are several videos on youtube that showcase the comparison, its a joy to watch these =)

Some flashbacks =p

well, i will start off with three of my previous works...just to blog about what i feel about them XD




well, with this art blogs in place, i finally have a platform to do some organised cataloging ....of art i mean....

well, here is my painting for the SLA competition, got a merit, oh well....
at least i won something =)

took me a while to think about the layout, because, its just buildings anyway, i cant manipulate it in anyway, because its the form and structure of a building that makes it unique in the first place, so i have decided to form a collage-like composition from photoshop, well, the colors were initially clashy, there were bright purply spots and cyan-green areas that don't mix together, i solved that problem by changing it to a deeper brown.

seeing all those magnificent texture of skies andd walls as depicted by the great post impressionists, i have decided to have a go at them, i have tried to do realist work, but i found it to be rather time consuming and non-profitable. so i started of with the skies, in first attempt, it looked flat and aw, as i used pure unmixed colors of green, it was later that i mixed the green with ochre and some black poopy-like substance i found to achieve the overall outcome. quite nice... the isolated segment on the left was just to make the painting more interesting , otherwise it will just look like a pigment-altered photograph.

started off painting the buildings in detail, but then i gave up, pretty frustrating, time consuming yah. So i resorted to adapting the post-impressionistic style of quick swabbing of colors, what ever i see, i paint, don't care about small notchy detail, just splatter them on , don't care about the precise lines, just do it. well, it looked like a blurred picture in the end, so i added touches of black and white to make it more 3d. turned out ok...but i really wish i did more planning first before attacking the canvas....

hmm seems to me my weakness is patience, i require more planning before doing so....

next off!

here's a photo of me and my copy painting...
its about a landscape portrait of some doctor's house whom was close to Cezanne... its in portrait layout though....haha
i chose this out of all the paintings from google is because, its just silent, it has that natural tone and i really love the sky, you don't see this kind of skies is humid and smelly singapore....
thank goodness the proportions of the image was similar to the canvas, hence no stretching or distortion was involved...phew....

the paint was relatively easy to mix, to get the right tone, but the stupid ultramarine blue kept drying up on me and the black dried too fast, hence i have to use the poopy-black like substance as mentioned before. the sky was really fun to blend with, blue, ochre and white are very harmonious colors, they fade right in to each other...how lovely.....

well, the only bad part was my lack of detail...can't really capture the foreground objects, the road lacked pigments of white and the trees were a little bare...hmm...
for my a level coursework next year, im planning to paint straight from close up photos of rusted objects in the process of rusting and dipping in water, with bubbles all around. hmmm i hope i can achieve the effect.


this is my O level work, was about the theme of contours, really fascinating...but as usual, this was a product of ill planning, i was too busy working on my uob painting that this was neglected... my preliminary sketches were quick and unjustified, my theme was about ink on water, the forms were stunning, gentle flowing, and yet it pulses vigor in its motion. i deeply regret on not applying much of my research on it, instead of the flowing forms of ink from my research, i adapted bold, thick lines, an over abstraction of my stimuli, it was sposed to be a variation of reds and purple, it ended up with crude thick black, red lines which seem to follow a pattern.

my template was not like this initially, the lines were suposed to be much much lesser and the base of the paintign was sposed to contain an additional canvas, which serve as an optical illusion, that the ink is flowing through the floor. Due to time constrains, i gave up on that portion, it was really too much, i found it hard to achieve the 3d impact of the painting.... but nonetheless, thanks to my art teacher in secondary school, we eventually pulled through, she was critical in everything i do, the white patch above oozed red spots which require maintaneance , and the was no main focality in my work. focal points are everywhere. but anywho, i got an a1 yay!!! but im sure it was a borderline one, will be giving extra attention. i will be using a much smaller area for painting, this time im painting 8 pices of paintings, a series, each one the size of a copy painting....should be ok....

well that is all.

hmm, since there is this wonderful idea about art blog, i have decided to share with you people my philiosophy towards art, especially at my time.
Its pretty simple really, i might offend some people, but thats the way i view it.
There are basically two categories of art, Good art and Bad art.

good art is...well, good art! it includes those large scale artworks that require ALOT of skill and it serves more mature message to bring across.

for example:




One of the works of the super duper famous photorealist of today!
Chuck Close!

well, the reason why i categorize him as good-art-artist is because every piece of work has a sentimental value to society, remembering things we treasure the most through photography , he embraced it... the world will be very depressing without the ability to capture the image of people ever so effectively...

his works require skill, LOTS AND LOTS of skill =)
thats why its named good art.

here's one example of bad art.




well, this is lavender mist by Jackson Pollock.
Upon first glance, its rather obvious to understand why this person does not appeal to the public. Well, you're right!
this is just my opinion towards his art, here it goes.
unlike Chuck, i believe that "abstract expressionist artist" is a term given by high ranking officials in art to people like Jackson just to stop bugging them about squiggly lines.
Does it require alot of skill? i think not. Being drunk or in a trance-like state doesn't make you skillful.
It's rather disheartening to see people like him ramble about on a big wooden board and yet bring in tons of cash into his life. Got a body to spare? no problem, just fill it up with alcohol and shamble about on the board, not a care in the world. This person definitely puts artists such as Chuck to a shame, Chuck is papralysed neck down, a father, and a seemingly innocent person, does he exploit his body? i think not.

there is almost no sentimental value of his works...well individually, it being a series, every artwork is repeated, his same arms, his ame mind, the form will be imprinted there. he just can't treasure.
well, one good thing about his works is that he can easily chop it into two and call it two different works, better yet, chop it into 60 pieces and say he just made 59 pices overnight.

there must be a reason why aspiring graphic designers follow his style in billabong gear, high-end designs for youths, yes, im talking about the random splattering. why redevelop these splatters? SIMPLE! IT NEEDS MORE IMPROVEMENT! if im not wrong, people can use his work as a source of primary research for their coursework. 1,000,000 orientations of a splatter can be found in one artpiece...


well, in general Good Art includes:
classical art, more conventional art, something to treasure, something you would want in your house.
old masters like Cezanne, Rene Magritte the surrealist and picasso for example. their works deserve to be treasured deeply. these works require skill, their visual aspect must be there, otherwise it won't be called VISUAL art.

Bad Art includes:
new medium movements, performance art does not communicate through me, i watch a certain movement for example (a fat woman belly dancing and rolling on the floor), and 50 minutes later, POOF! i have forgotten all about it! normal people won't be inspired just by looking at people rolling on the floor. take for instance, an advertisment of a woman with bad teeth smoking cigarettes.



and lets say the hawker centre "ah peh" plans to put up a video of a performance art play in another kopitiam. The performance art clip includes people walking around like ah peh, falling to the floor and doing the sprinkler, then blowing smoke from their noses and falling down again. which is more impactful? its rather obvious.

other arts include the exhibition of "body worlds", sure their plastination is a boom success in the medical industry, but why exploit their bodies???? i can deal with slicing a person in half, segmenting them, but why construct a couple having sex? a man holding his skin, a man who is practically blown up and and hung in mid air? its inmoral, there is no message though this. dada is one of it, exploiting other art forms to earn money and recognition, the reason why other art forms dont exploit them is because dada is ALREADY exploited works of art.

over simplification, a form of laziness? i guess i have to agree. Its just not fair to see a person like Piet Mondrain draw a square with a white triangle inside and recieve 50thousand dollars for it. If society was equal, why can't the african people sell their tribal totems or sand art to museums and make them rich and enjoy a better taste of life??? this artworks don't require skill.

ok so i guess you want to challenge me about neutral artworks? what are they? here's an example:



this is a nice sculpture along singapore river, can't really remember the artist's name though...
good poise, nice fengshui. but hmm, isnt this abstract??? does it include skill? well, its more of a medium. Its not as intricate as roman statues and it is not super abstract like brancusi's "the muse". Its more on the middle. well, my take is this, if its moral, aesthetically appreciative and serves a sentimental message to treasure, its Good Art, otherwise its just a wasteof space.
in my opninion this is good art, the statue gives higher recognition to the singapore river, its soooo much magnificent now that the statue is in place. Ask a tourist,"where do you want a picture taken, over there?","oh its lovely, honey, stand next to the big statue". and ask again, "where did you take this statue?","oh i took it at this wonderful river bank, the shops there are great". it makes the area, more wonderful, people describe art as a 3-way process, Artist, viewer and artwork communicate together, now theres an additional term, that is destination. the destination makes the statue deserve to be appreciated whilist, the statue makes the destination something worse spending $12.00 to travel from choa chu kang to City hall in one hot day.

hmm

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Hey! im here to blog about these nice pictures!

well, its along the lines of SPACE AND STRUCTURE

I have chosen the above picture to try something more oriental, something different from what we are learning these days...

Structure:

The branches point upwards, directing the viewer diagonally across the image.
The curve from the branches are harmonious.

Space:

The flowers take up every branch and yet it does not dominate the branches.
Petals are seen throughout the painting, to make it complete and occupy good space.














STRUCTURE:
•The structure of the rose is extremely detailed. Despite being large in scale.

SPACE:
•The space around is of the same color as the rose and yet it manages to make the rose stand out and not fade into the background.





















•Manipulating space and structure of an artwork gives a different perspective of the artwork, something unique.

•In an attempt to make the subject(apple for example) stand out from the background.

first post =)