Trick or Treat?

 

Happy Halloween everyone!

 

i did not feel the halloween spirit much till i moved this year! there are more expatriates living in my area now and i see these little kids all dressed up in their little costumes of witches, birds and all sorts of cute creatures holding on to their little plastic pumpkin containers. For the treats of course. 🙂

 

for the rest of us the scare comes really from the alevels (in two days!), the melamine found in food and the recent volatile stock market…haha!

These ‘scares’ are not tricks and most definitely not treats. 😛

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meet mister study buddy.

this little guy is my study buddy who with his huge mouth is proficient in helping me

digest notes, bite my nails and scream for me. 🙂 haha.

 

i have also developed a fondness for using the black fineliner in this drawing… 😛

 

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Facebook taking over the world?

once again, the pressure to set up a facebook account is mounting.

i hear *gasps*. yes, i do not have a facebook account.

amazing? When almost the rest of the world has an account…. not that i am that sort of clueless person who does not know what is in facebook. i do. and i have seen it. but no, i am not going to get an account anytime soon.

Despite all the ‘go get an account!’ and the email invitations… i am quite irritated but its ok. i still will not be lured into it. not now at least.

i don’t believe i NEED an account. a blog would suit me fine. (and soon maybe an esty account. heh.) and i already spend enough time on the computer blogging…

one thing though, i m glad there are others like me who do not believe in having an account. ._.

maybe I just find the concept of the whole world being drawn into the facebook website a bit scary.

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Banksy pet shop

oh my. this is so interesting.
Graffiti artist Banksy just set up a pet shop-The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill, which is really an installation work with electronic ‘animals’.
exploring the relationship between humans and animals, he comes up with these ingenious ideas like chicken nuggets to represent chicks (which self-dip themselves in sauce as though they are eating chicken feed), a really sad tweety bird, fish-fingers to represent fishes (which actually ‘swims’ in a goldfish bowl.), a rabbit which grooms itself (like filing her own nails. wish my rabbit could do that… haha.), and my favourite, the leopard which is really a fur coat placed so precisely that it appears as a sleeping cat (with a swishing tail.)

this artist also plays with his food.
he is able to put such a humorous touch to his work (kinda reminds me of my olevel coursework except his tongue-in-cheek work is in a whole different league! i’m impressed.)

the pictures can only show a frozen moment in time. to really see his work… look at the videos at this site: http://thevillagepetstoreandcharcoalgrill.com/

YouTube – Banksy’s "Village Pet Store And Charcoal Grill"
 

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Giving myself the creative license.

I feel very inspired by illustrator Danny Gregory.

I chanced upon one of his books at the last MAAD i went to. the book "Everyday Matters" and i really forgot all about until i was reading one of my biology notes that day and i saw the name scribbled amongst all my labelled diagrams. yeah, i must have just visited MAAD when i wrote that name down.

 

 

 

so anyway, i searched up the book name in amazon and… i am now inspired. The book is basically a visual journal with A LOT of the author’s drawings with his handwriteing as he narrates his life then. And the best thing about it is the fact the skectches as not quite so polished that it seems to be done for publishing. no, it looked raw, nice and most importantly, it looks like something i can do!

i know everyone must be thinking how i am an art student and drawing shouldn’t be a problem. yes, it isn’t a problem but the thing is i have always felt it difficult to draw something from imagination. it is unlike copying a photograph or having an object study exercise for 3hours. The book (or rather his other book called "Creative License") actually showed that it is ok to not-so-perfect sketches and that anyone (and everyone) can draw and therefore keep a visual journal. I think like most of us, i am quite shy about my drawings (especially during games like pictionary when there is no time to make a good sketch.) because i am worried about how others see my ‘bad’ drawings. But as the book rightly pointed out, drawing can be done for yourself (not others), like in a visual journal.

 

and so i have decided to draw more in my journal in addition to te words.

(this is probably the one disadvantage of an online blog.)

 

Afterall a drawing says a thousand words.

 

oh the link to the community blog for ‘everyday matters’: http://www.edmsuperblog.co.uk/

(i also chanced upon the ‘everyday matters’ flickr site where they have weekly challenges like "Draw a shoe" ot "Draw a doorknob, plain or fancy" looks like a good way to start. )

 

 

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chinese history in english.

i just listened to a h3 art lecture on ‘East Asian art’ aka Chinese art.

and i was in English! i mean if it was contemporary chinese art it probably wouldn’t have seemed so strange. but we are talking about the shang, han, ming and qing danasties!! it reminds me of chinese culture lessons in Nanyang. Yes… we had chinese culture lessons or in our own words then, our slack period of the week because we hardly paid full attention to the lessons. But i never thought i would say this… i wished i had listened to my chinese culture teachers then. having a minor chinese art lesson about traditional chinese danasty period in English is just not the same. it is weird..

 

then huijun showed me the collar pin she got from NJ for grad gift. The same one i got with the tiny words "2007/2008". Except. Hers was different! instead of the words i had on mine, hers wrote "2005/2008". the reason? she is an IP student and has been in the school for four years! I was quite shocked that the school actually bothered to make that distinction! And even i know how the collar pins are still mass-produced and all, BUT- with that realisation, it seems to have became a more sincere gift with more feelings. They did think through the collar pins afterall. i will keep mine well. 🙂

 

 

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mix and match

I started browsing this site (Quisquilia & Pinzillacchera) which i got from plush you quite some time back…

and i am impressed! Especially the works of this lady, Elena. She makes very interesting characters and the draw of her characters? she put together different items which are quite unusual in soft toys like locks and keys, electric plug. the amazing thing is how she seamlessly blends the soft toy element of cloth with these objects. the result is very unique and quirky characters!

I can’t believe i never saw this site before.especially before my coursework ended! i think it would have provided me with a lot of inspiration and ideas of combining different materials. oh well~ it is over. and as glad as i am that it is over, there is a tinge of sadness.Especially after ‘Route’. it showed me how much i miss it as it really closed a chapter of art. now to focus on SOVA and H3 for art. and of the rest of my subjects…

images of soft toys by Elena to share:

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‘Route’

oh my, oh my!

i can’t believe it is over. 

Besides ending our official 12-year structured education with farewell assembly (but bear in mind the A’s are still not over yet.), the 15 aepians of batch 2007-2008 ended our aep coursework journey with ‘Route’ yesterday!

It was so successful (by my standards of course) and i just don’t know where to begin!

It was a lot of explaining, smiling and bonding all over again. It really made me realise (once again..) how close i was to these people who i have been spending so much time with these two years. It has been an amazing journey, thank you for being with me on these well-paved ROUTE.

 

 

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the paths we take

"Route"

Exhibition featuring 15 NJC Art Elective Programme Graduating courseworks of 2008

Friday October 17, 2008
6:30pm – 9:00pm
National Junior College Art Block
37 Hillcrest Road

All are welcomed! 🙂

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Asian contemporary art

i finally got a new sketchbook!
and i realised that it was exactly one year ago when i bought my last sketchbook! strangely coincidental… and so i spent my ‘breaks’ from studying doing up the cover.

anyway, i went to see ARTSingapore with some of the aepians(sze, jianhao, ahu, ks, longhao, jun) on Saturday. and you know what? it was quite interesting! and it is mostly Asian contemporary art, rows and rows of it! i was intrigued. (plus how this ‘gallery hopping’ reminded me of our ldn/paris trip last year made it all the more fun!)

some of the artists featured which caught my attention:

Wu Qiong’s "Hear Us Out",   

 

Kim Chang Young’s "Sand Play",

 

Ayako Kawano’s "Let’s Meet Again in the Strawberry Field",

 

Phan Thu Trang’s "Summer"

 

Nguyen Bao Ha’s "Blue Space"

 

According to Channel News Asia, Asian art is becoming hot commodity now..

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