[twenty two] Paint

I finally made a trip to my nieces’ house and brought my pretty white canvas for them to paint on. =D What I also enjoy observing about children’s work is the way they start to paint on a pretty white canvas without hesitation. They did not take any time to decide on where to start or what to draw – it is so spontaneous that we as grown ups fail to understand their thoughts.

They all started with their favourite colour pink and drew many flowers and trees – guess that is what they like. They did not really care if the paint was even, but rather focused on using colours they preferred like pink, red and yellow. I prompted them to paint on by suggesting different colours or adding objects to the sky when they were a little stuck.

I also like to trace how they draw and use their space. They both started painting the flowers, houses and grasses and proceeded upwards to the sky and flying birds and butterflies, then the balloons and raindrops, completed with the yellow sun. They didn’t really like white spaces very much, so towards the end, they, especially Erin, filled more white spaces with red and green (on the right). Pointing to the green patch, I asked what was it and they did not reply. They were very engrossed and painted in blocks of colour randomly wherever they thought it would fit in, focusing on the aesthetic appeal rather than its relevance to reality.

Erin even added a dark blue patch she claimed was a scarecrow. What was most cute was that although they were both left-handers, Erin also tried to use her right hand to paint. They did not just hold a paintbrush like we do, but roll them from sided to side in many different imaginative ways as possible! How creative! =D

This is the final work. I contributed the little yellow flower at the left end. It is the most disfigured flower out of the three. hahas.

[twenty one] Orang utan collage

I spent a long period of time last year on making art for ‘A Green Dot’ exhibition held at SMU for Nanyang’s 90th Anniversary. The work below was supposedly for some kid’s illustration book, the story related to the environment. So I chose an animal closer and dearer to home- the orang utan =). I chose Rocky out of the 3 research drawings ad collaged it with textured/painted paper.’ Hmm… I think all of my orang utans have a blur and spastic disposition. The first two are coloured with colour pencils while the last is a pencil drawing. 

1. Arty 

2. Rocky

3. Bally

Here’s the final collage. I cut out the different portions from different textures I made using paint techniques, and then pasted the orang utan together. It is framed up in a wooden frame, thus there is reflection on the glass panel.

[twenty] FlowerByKenzo

One of my favourite parfums (in terms of packaging and concept). You can say I was inspired by Theresa’s many coursework sketches, and so I decided to draw something out of interest and relaxation.

This parfum is endorsed by Shu Qi and the advertisement was on tv for quite a while. I just love the arch-shaped bottle as it depicts the natural curve of the poppy. The transparent bottle provides a stunning backdrop for the sole red poppy, the centre of focus. Very asian, very strong, this perfume bottle is definitely very outstanding and something different on the market.

Medium: Colour pencil

[nineteen] White rabbit wallpaper

This was the a preview behind the concept for the 2nd panel. I collected the sweet wrappers from CNY (so long ago!) and washed them thoroughly before sticking them down into my sketchbook with double-sided tape. To ensure that it looks flowy, I took pains to match one wrapper to the next in a row. Of course, I could not fit an entire row of wrappers that look like they were originally from one whole roll.

As my coursework progressed, I didn’t find this concept very practical. It is really cute and relates to our childhood (the rabbit =D) pretty well, but 2 panels – one by the children and one by me – will serve as a stronger contrast on the idea of recapturing ‘childhood’. 

[eighteen] Givenchy Advertisement

I did this out of my spare time last year. The pictures of the lipstick, icon and model are from the internet, and my task was to create and advertisement collage by arranging and decorating it. I chose to keep it simple with monochromatic background, with a dash of red, to bring out the “interdit” feel. The red swirls are like streaks of red make-up, and I chose this portrait as the model looks shocked and overpowered by the red around her.

Interdit (french) = prohibited/banned

Credits:

www.luella.headlock.ws

[seventeen] coursework #6

I attempted to paint a sweet on primed canvas before starting my final work. The contrast between the white highlights and the blue areas of the wrapper will make it appear to be more 3-dimensional. Here is the result:

The photo below is of the gummy I painted too. I guess it needs more tone and contrast.

I painted a portion of the M&M wrapper (simplified) on scrap canvas. It will be part of my final artwork’s background, but only in a much larger scale. Thus many details were left out in order to keep the background simple and monochromatic.

Experimenting with a few different sweets – a raspberry gummy purple jelly bean and m&m peanut – using acrylic on canvas:

[sixteen] coursework #5

Time to update myself on my coursework progress. Click on the thumbnails below to view larger images of several sketches.

Purple wrapped sweet:

Green wrapped sweet:

These two are done in acrylic, but I did not achieve the glossy effect of sweet wrappers, and they are both not very well painted.

A yoghurt-flavoured berry done on canvas:

[fifteen] digital colourization 2

I thought this beauty editorial is quite interesting, and so the colours and everything matches the starfruit.

This one is kind of related to my coursework…gummies =). I coloured it in sugary and pastel shades for a whimsical effect.

[fourteen] coursework compositions II

Then I continued on to choose my favourite composition. I made a collage background of sweet wrappers and came up with a composition with background from photoshop.

However, I realised that this composition was not flowing, and the sweets seem to be cluttered at one end. The background was also too colourful, and I decided that I wanted a monochromatic background with larger sweet wrappers showing less details, so that the attention can be diverted to the sweets in the foreground. I also selected another composition (no. 4 in previous post) that Mrs Tan recommended, which in my opinion was also more flowing, and the gummy tape leads the viewer’s eye all the way to the end of the composition. I decided to take more photographs and experiment with this composition, arranging the sweets in such a manner that the size of the sweets become smaller, and the sweets diminish gradually.

[thirteen] digital art 2

Another blend, this time much brighter and cheery. The concept of this blend is SUMMER, which is  sun, sun and more sun. Thus the girl is shading herself from the sun’s rays =) and also sitting under a beach umbrella by the sea.

sorry to say that Image Credits: unknown