Three-OH-Eight!

Since we are allowed to upload previous years' works, here's the designs I've done for my class tee-shirt last year:)

The original design I proposed for the back was actually just a collection of simple small people holding on to an object, each representing one of our classmates with the thing she likes (e.g. Pam likes to play cello, so it's a little person with a cello). However, after much discussion, almost all my classmates wanted to make the tee-shirt personalised, so that everyone has only the person representing themselves on their back.

As the initial design had been quite simple, I thought that it would just take me around 2 to 3 days to complete it. However, now that the idea had changed, each design had to look more complete and complicate and must be able to fill the back of a tee-shirt without making it look too empty. Furthermore, since it was a personalised class-tee, all the designs must be similar in terms of the complexity, the way of drawing and the design of the person, so as to maintain a consistency throughout, so I had to put in a lot of thoughts in the designs

And since my monitress wanted the whole thing to be done by CSM which was somewhere in April, I had around 2 months to finish 35 individual A6(14.8 x 10.5cm)  sized drawings after collating the designs each of my classmates wanted (this took a super long time, some of them only told me a few days before the submission. I tried to give them as much time so as to make everyone happy:). That period was really quite stressful, but I didn't regret taking on the challenge, and I was happy doing so much drawing:)

Anyway. While drawing, I realised that I didn't want the design to look boring, so instead of simply holding on to the objects, I integrated almost all the objects into the person, though some was easier than the other, the end results were much more interesting, and I always liked my work to have little 'surprises' .For example, for Gab's iPod, the song was Sherlock by Shinee(her favourite<3, she loved it!), total:3.30 mins(our class population), played: 3.08 mins(our class lol), but sadly this couldn't be printed on the shirt since it was too small. In the end, my friends were quite pleasantly surprised and happy about how each of the little persons turned out.

Though I was not really that happy with how the designs turned out to be. Firstly was of course due to the fact that we cannot print personalised shirts as it will be too expensive, and we only found out about this when the designs were done, so many of the details I worked on simply could not be depicted on the shirt. Secondly was the choice of colour, I had wanted more contrast between the background and the words but this was the colours chosen by my class(it was the better one out of the two the vendor provided), I still feel it's kind of silly putting blue on blue though....Lastly was the lines, if I had more time, I would definitely worked more on the thickness of the lines, probably have more lines with varying thickness. However, these thin lines probably worked better for this shirt since inconsistent thickness might make it look a bit messy?

I also felt really different from how it was when I designed for my CCA tee-shirt last year, as that design was very much finalised when I submitted it and it was the same for everyone. This time, I get to communicate with my classmates, discuss with them as to how they want their class tee-shirt to look like, how I can improve some of the designs, this made me feel so much more motivated. Also, since it had each of us captured on the shirt, the response was so much better. Of course, this design was much more challenging compared to my CCA's, mainly due to it's details and quantity, but what am I saying? I loved the experience of doing these designs for my classmates as I had learnt so much from the process!

 

In order of appearance('the items'):

Princess

Music note

Panda

Gingerbread man

Running shoes

Gun

Cello

Gu'zheng

Dancing shoes

Dancer

Table tennis

Sitting in a field of flowers

Computer

Calligraphy brush with hoody and nerdy specs

Headphones

Netball

Teddy bear

Cupcake

iPhone

Squash racket

Polaroid

Theatre mask

iPod

Backpack (as in backpackers' backpack)

Hurdles (track)

Camera with Fairy Tail logo

Dream catcher

Euphonium

A collage(teddy bear, camera, puppy, guitar, balloon, clover)

Holding a star

Da'gu (a type of Chinese drum)

Headset

Desserts!

Beaker (I made Mr Mac's design first, so to maintain some similarity between the designs of our two lovely form teachers, I had Mdm Hia floating in a beaker since she is a Chem teacher...)

Coffee cup (this was inspired from the coffee cups Mr Mac brings to class almost everyday, he had a small black cup that had a checklist of things to add in coffee, such as sugar, milk, cream...so I did a cup with a tick in front of <3 308, which means he love 308 more than coffee><)

Pheww...this is a super loooong post, but I had so much to say about this experience!

love 308'12:D

Before the Journey Starts..

Hello there!

So this will be my art blog ('AEP e-portfolio' as Mrs Tan calls it) for this year and hopefully, many years to come.

If anyone's curious, the title of the blog means try or trying in French, because I'm always willing and looking forward to trying new things, experimenting with new ideas and new mediums.
I feel that in life, not only in art, trying is a huge element. You'll never know the results if you don't try...and even if you think that you are sure the results won't be good, it doesn't hurt to try...
The things I'll be posting will be well, art stuff. Which are mainly:
-My own works
-Reflections
-Inspirations

Oh by the way, actually I kind of used to have a blog where I puts up works that I've done...but I lost the password. I'll try to retrieve it though, and transfer the posts here.

(Edit: I found the password and managed to import all of them in here. They are the posts in 2012. I didn't really edit them, so I don't really know whether they are appropriate for this assignament, but I thought that I should combine all the art-sy stuff together. So yup, here you go.)

That should be all. So...

Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia. 12.2012

I say, Let the Journey Begin!

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...