Reflections

 It is so amazing, as if there is another world behind these flat surfaces, 

maybe if i just reach out my hand, I'd be able to travel into that world, 

 the world that is so similar, yet so different from ours.

Everything will be the same, yet opposite,

Left will be right, and right be be left. 

North will be South, and East will be West

Just like Alice through the Looking Glass

Clay

Okay, second post of the day.

Two weeks ago, Mrs Tan got us started on working with clay, one of my favorite mediums since I am more of a handy(Y) person. The last two Monday lessons were just to let us familiarize ourselves with this medium, since the last time we worked with it was the pinch-pots, slabs and coils for the YOG mascots in Secondary one.

During the first lesson,  Mrs Tan also showed us something new on how to cut a piece of clay into a circle without using the cap of a container to measure. She first took out a banding wheel (I've only used the electrical type before), and threw a piece of slab on it. Then she spun the wheel super fast, and just hold a scoring tool top of the clay, so as the clay spins, it passes through the sharp end of the scoring tool and is cut into a circular shape. I never knew that the tools can be used this way and it is especially useful when there's no circular objects lying around or the shapes are not of the size that we want.

For the rest of the lesson, we made coil pots which we can design it however we like. It was really fun but if not for playing with the clay Miss Michelle was working on while 'revising for AEP Blocks' the other day, I'd almost forgot how quickly this thing dries! It was really irritating when it kept breaking apart, but as I progress, I became more and more familiar with the nature of the medium and it was much easier to work with. I wanted to make something like the type of pots where traditional clay or marble women hold, with water pouring out, but I can't really remember how those pots look like and so it was up to my imagination. I should say that the pot turned out good enough, though it was much different from my original idea, since I manipulated it as I go along. Oh, and I don't think anyone really noticed, but it was sort of half way done, I had thought of making it much more sophisticated and there were so many details that I would like to add in, but the lesson had ended. So yup. (I'll try to upload a photo of it after it comes out of the kiln, I am dying of anticipation here, hope that Mrs Tan will let us see it next Monday^^)

The second lesson was cool too, we were to create something like a nameplate tile, something like the ones on the wall of Toa Payoh HDB Hub, but it has to be bigger, about the size of a hand, and it has to represent ourselves.

Dragons

I don't know what's with me this few weeks, I had suddenly fallen in love with a certain mythical creature, namely the dragon. Yes, the fire-breathing, gold-hogging creature that loves to gobble up every knight that passes by. But they are also magnificent creatures that shows grace and elegance, and they are also, well of course, mythical, which is also the quality I guessed that attracted me the most. They are always part of legends. From the ancient Greeks to the Romans, from the West to the far East. And they are almost always so different from each other, there are dragons which are portrayed as gods, there are dragons which hogs gold, capture princesses and kills knights, and there are those which are the kindest, sweetest and most intelligent creature around.

The Frisky
Pencil (Mechanical, 3B)
A4 printing paper
6.6.2012

 Here's something I did today, a pencil drawing of a dragon. It is... well I admit, not the best drawing I did, but I'm still quite proud of it, since it's like the first time I ever drew a dragon, not very bad I think, not trying to be humble at all><

This type of drawing...normally shows a lot of lines,using colours to fill up the picture, but still using the lines to sketch, showing the shadows and and shape of the whole thing. Usually it is done with ink, and then just add a thin layer of watercolour wash, not too thick, but just nice so that the lines and the colours correspond each other perfectly.

I had really admired people who does this type of drawings, since I myself was not confident enough for it, it requires confidence and instinct and skill.But this time, since it's the first and I'm not that comfortable working with ink yet, so I just did it with pencil, and it looked better than I had expected.
Anyway, back to dragons, this dragon, credit to DRAW DRAGON and Other Fantasy Beasts, is not the cover of the book. What? Of course I didn't create it myself>< I followed the basic structure of the creature and some of the details, not copying exactly though, and the picture on the cover is ink and colour. It took me about 40 minuets, and I can say that I need a lot of improvements and learning so that I can create my own personal dragon but well, I am happy.

Some More of Sand Art

The girl that appeared in our performance

 Below are some of the photos we took that day (during sabats)...some of the drawings are really kind of rubbish, but we were having fun and they just came out of randomness.><

Enjoy!

 

Repunzel

She was smaller than my hand, so excuse the horrible drawing..

Statue of Liberty

The (Sandy and) Leaning Tower of Pisa

Both were by Rachel and me. We used too much sand for the tower...and the Liberty looks so cartoonish!

The (Leaning) Effiel Tower

Again by Rachel and me. I was drawing upside down, thus the 'leaning'.

Snow White

I was so proud of this Snow White haha. This was actually the second one I did. (the first was much better, but it was accidentally wiped off during the break, so I redid it in like 5 mins:). I have to say, the nose was horrible, but other than the nose...I'm satisfied. I love the way the sleeve turned out, the shading was quite good. Considering this being my fifth day trying sand art.

Sand

What can you do with sand? Other than building the fréquemment observées sandcastles (sorry if this french is wrong), throwing in at your annoying little bother when you are young, or digging a hole in it on the beach to find the fascinating little miniature crabs and clams.

Well... this is not that commonly seen, but sand animation is one of the most amazing animations I have seen.

The first time I had seen this form of animation was on a Taiwanese show, where they invited this artist to perform. By only using his hands and sand, he created an amazing peice of art.

So, when Mrs Tan told us that some instructors are coming over to Nanyang to teach us sand animation for our sabbaticals, I was exploding with longing. And there you go, from the 20th to today, the 25th, I had been having sand animation courses in the art room.

The first day, Allen (if I remembered and spelled his name correctly) taught us some basic techniques on drawing on sand, and then we were left on our own to do storyboarding and music and of course, perfect our drawings for the rest of the sabbactical. Oh, the theme was 'celerberation', and it is suppose to be for our school's 95th anniversary (I know, it's sad, the theme is so cliche, but well, we had fun...)

Drawing the same thing over and over again was...of course very boring, especially after everyone in my group had already known what to do for every scene, so we had the time to ourselves to draw random stuff, and I was so happy, finding myself really addicted to the smooth textured particles and the feeling of them sliding out from my hand. I was definitely in love. With the sand. Though I did found myself not really liking the performing part, where we are to morf subject matters into something else, but I am quite fine (more than fine actually) with just drawing a picture, giving myself time to perfect it, find a nice lighting and take a picture, and then 'sweep', off to the drain it goes (this is the saddest part about sand animation, it can't be kept).

Indeed, the time was not wasted, I made some really nice drawings, and I am quite satisfied with them, of course, some improvements could have been made, but well...at my standard, forgive me. Here are some of them on my first day (all done by our group):

This is just a practice drawing, I did the eyes and the heart and a bit of hair^^

Learning how to morf one object to another, this was the second scene actually, the first was a seedling, morfed into the tree.

And this is the third scene, it quite obvious that the control tower was morfed from the tree><

 So that's for the first day, I'll upload the rest when my friend give me the photos. These are really not very good drawings, especially the last two, the first one has to much sand too, it's so messy, oh well...it is our first try.

OHOH, Mrs Tan suggested for me to do this for my coursework next year, considering on how I liked it so much and is, according to some instructors, not bad. I might consider it as a choice, I mean, obviously I won't be doing a painting, unless I want to fail. She also mentioned that she want want to buy some sand boxes for our art room!! I am totally supporting this idea, since Allen told us that custom-made sand boxes with expensive price tags of more than a thousand bucks. (you can make one yourself though)

However,  some more instrucors came in today, and I realised that I really suck, my drawings are not too bad, the end product is still presentable, but there's a lack of skills, I uses my fingers too much, when I should have used my palm. I want to learn!! I want to persuade my mum to let me go for the courses (if I can find one and persuade enouh people to go with me), but I doubt she'll let me go....

Anyway, according to Mrs Tan, nothing is easy and nothing is hard~ I shall end here today.

...I miss the sand...just saying...

Mother's Day!

Haha, I shall write two posts today, since due to my laziness and lack of time, yesterday's activities were not posted, sadly.

So...yup, yesterday was the official Mothers' Day in Singapore, and yes I did make something for my mum. It comprises of a card (again) and a Homemade Sugar Hand Scrub.

I looked through my stash of 'treasures' (defined as trash by my mum) to see what materials I had and came up with this:

This is made from last year's calendar stand, some colour papers, and pages from an old book. The process was super easy but slow, since I chose to toture myself by cutting out all the alphebets and stick them on one by one, serve me right, but it was quite worth it, considering that the result is presentable:)

Here's some more photos:

The other thing I made her was a lemon sugar hand scrub^^ she loved it!

Nanyang, Sing!

This is totally over my expectations, much better than what I thought I could do, I love life!

Today we had to decorate part of the 馨 word for Nanyang's musical this year. The word is divided into two sections, the top and the bottom. Outlines were already drawn and we just have to decorate the word, the teachers said that after we are done, two people's pieces will be pasted together back to back and hang around the canteen on strings, such that the top will be hanged with the bottom below it.

And this is what I did (with markers):

I had originally coloured the word (half of the word, I mean) with colour markers, but I soon realised that I don't have a lot of colours, and the colours look kind of wrong...so yeah.

Anyway, I am still quite proud of it:)

Not yet half way there

I am still at the beginning of my prep work for the school project, namely,

 'Our Nanyang, My Nanyang'.

It was said to be for the 95th anniversary this year so we had to do a painting portraying NYGH, on a A2 sized canvas which will be stretched by myself (I am really looking forward to this part of course, being a person who's really bad at painting).

So this is a sketch of the Castle Howard in New York, a castle that I was lucky to find that resembles the school building. Since I was going to transform, 'trying to', I should add, Nanyang into a castle. Well... good luck to me. I have no idea why I got such a hard-to-paint thing for myself, but I must say that I am quite proud of this idea, it is certainly much harder than my original idea, but also much better.

I am currently still worrying over which of the few girls/fairies' designs I should choose, all of them being so...cute, and not really good for painting...So as long as I don't have anymore designs coming out, I'll have to stick with one of them, urghh..Go Me!