Sand Sculpting!

Went to Sentosa today to do a school assignment - sand sculpting. It is a very tiring experience, but nevertheless, a fun one. My group consisted of other 3 members - Huiling, Kai Wing and Johanna, and the thing we sculpted was a fruits basket.... Kind of regret it halfway... when passer-bys come over to take a peek at our works, some told us 'good luck, it's tough'.... oh man... But anyways, dig sand, throw sand, mould sand, weeeee, it's a sunny day despite the rainy season.

our sculpture while we are building the foundation... (didn't take much pics there)

Johanna and Kai Wing trying to toughed the sand mound by pressing it down slowly with water. Really tiring part, but very important..

Huiling damping the sand. The weather was really getting real hot towards the afternoon (we started at around 9am), and the sand was starting to dry up fast.

The unfinished fruits basket. We had to wrap things up, cos the sun was going down.

Kai Wing's bananas! Lol, sounded very wrong when we called it that, but it was he who did the bananas and it came out the most attractive thing on the sculpture.

Grapes that I did. Had a tough time with this one (expected...) and was among the last stuff that we sculpted.

Felt really sad that we couldn't finish it, but on the other hand, we wanna rest too. Hungry and tired....

Took a peak at the other works around and was really stunned by the quality of some works:



Beryl, Siew Khim, Kenneth and Cong Chong's dragon. It looked like a lizard at first, and many passerbys kept saying it was a lizard, until the refinements were done. If only they have time to do the scales of the dragon, it would look pretty impressive.

Shawn, Xing Ni, Yin Hwee n Guang Hui's Mermaid sculpture. Interesting idea, but they were struggling to get the sculpture out... Kept seeing Xing Ni lying down on the sand just to get a view of the posture of the legs.

This was done by a group from Group 5. I really liked this one, cos th ecomposition was really cool, interesting. Didn't get it at first when I was approaching it, but when I'm near the sculpture, it was a Kraken devouring a ship. Really nice detailing on the sea waves and octopusy.



Another impressive work from Group 5, a giant tortise with baby tortises behind! The details on the shells really makes it stand out.

There are some more sculptures, but didn't wanna stay for too long. The toilet was gonna be bustling with people and I just wanna go home after a tiring day... Ah well, brought back some sand home as well as a pretty dark tan.... XD

Boxes and threads!

3D assignments.... we had to make some form out of threads sewn on 3 boxes, they gotta look different yet unified. Sat at my table and sew for hours... Prof wanted the end result to be of museum quality and asked us to make a cover to hold the 3 boxes. Couldn't get mounting board at the last minute, so get the same 300gsm paper used for the boxes and did a simple packaging cover using that. Haha, got the packaging out within the hour n half, and it came out perfect on first try. However, the three boxes were quite deformed after the sewing and the packagin had to be warped slightly to cover the boxes nicely... turned out average, hope the prof wouldn't deduct too much for that... didn't look very 'museum quality'...

Natsu Matsuri 2008!

Weeee~ haha, went for the summer festival at the Japanese Primary School at Changi yesterday. Like the previous year, there was lotsa food, same old games and the bon odori, where we had fun doing an inpromptu mass dance! This year, wush joined dor, shaman and I for the event. Dor even got her bros there! Wen Ping came too, but she disappeared very fast with her sis....-_- And how small the design world is man... Saw Val, and even my current ADM classmate! Didn't know they've met in SPH, lol.



This was one of the stuff I've bought, really nice stuff (since I didn't take any pictures...). XD I was really interested in the portrait drawing stall, and was very tempted to move forward when I passed by it. The stall was pretty empty, the artist was an old man, and on the tables were a few samples of the drawings he will produce for the client. Somehow, they dun look very appealing, many from local art schools might say it's not worth the money ($20 for mine). Even when I took a peek there, I was hesitating to have my portrait done, cos it looked very simple and cost-wise expensive but heck, couldn't stand it. It was either a portrait or a t-shirt. I went for the portrait XD (side note: I've started an 'ask the artist to draw something for you and collect it' project this year :p)

So just sat there, while he look and draw, and gosh, his confidence with the brush >_< It's just mesmerizing. The thought of the result 'poof' disappeared, and all you see is one man using the brush as if it was his hand. Other than the times he stopped to take a look at my features, his brush never jerked or stopped while making a line. Within a minute or less, he did the drawing and asked for my name so he could write it there. I quickly scribbled my chinese name (could hear the jap stall ladies behind there making a little 'ooooo' exclamation at seeing the modern chinese characters, maybe the previous clients wrote english?) Guess what? He wrote it down in traditional chinese! I was really glad I got this instead of the shirt. The entire experience really reminded me of what the late art historian Gombrich proposed to call Art as while I was doing research for an art history presentation:

"It is a secret of the artist that he does his work so superlatively well, that we all but forget what his work was supposed to be, for sheer admiration of the way he did it."

How true.....XD Oh ya, the artist was Iwami Seiji sensei (いわみせいじ), a mangaka from Japan. He will be holding some event at the national library on 30th August? Starting to interest me.... XDXDXDXDXD but arghh... forgot I have sand sculpting that day at sentosa..... >_<

開天窗!

Whew... done. This was inspired by a new song of Mayday's, called '開天窗' (open sky window?) Introduced by my ex-colleague, it's a really happy song. Didn't appreciate it so much until I've really read the lyrics. The line that really strike me most was 'Who said blue is the color of sadness? Look at the heavens and seas!' XD Heard it was a promo song for 7-11 in taiwan? Check out the song here!

Anyways, I had this picture in mind when listening it over and over one day and decided to draw it down. Wanted to use only bright colors and make it look like an illustration from a children's storybook... the watercoloring came out too muted... Guess I'm still too stingy with my paints... :/ Done with watercolors and colorpencils.

Juuhime ~ Sincerely Night

Oookie, this character is from a manga entitled Juuhime ~ Sincerely Night (juuhime meant 'Gun Princess'). Quite a dark story, reminds me of Fullmetal Alchemist sometimes (just maybe the male lead isn't so eccentric? XD) but quite a story of it's own kind (baah, I'm a bad reviewer.. grab a copy if you can ;) ) Dunno the english translated name of this fella (Luca Eslacien?), there isn't much resource around the internet for this series, neither are there any scanlations at the moment... so forgive me if I got the name wrong >_< Basically he's a 'sinner' who was supposed to be sentenced to death, but some woman saint interfered and he's punishment was 'lightened'. So now he's an executioner, under the control of those who wanted him dead, much like a dog.... All sorts of stories in there, mainly drepressing ones, with the woman saint (Gracis?) always making the story tone lighter.

Tried out this new watercolor paper I've got from Art Friend. I didn't know how to go about painting this one. While tinting a piece of paper with tea for my assignment, I decided to give this artwork some splashing too. Had some fun time experimenting with the tea leaves.... and I left my homework somewhere........ NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO >_<

(EOY count 1!)

. emptying my thoughts .

Was feeling pretty stressed these days... an invisible stress maybe. Just the start of uni life and there are many things to be done. Maybe not many, it's just about 5 assignments..? three of which required some reading and understanding, the other two are just drawing stuff... A lot of craft work, something that I like to do. Yet, the time limit and the info needed to be digested has made it a pretty depressing state. Maybe it's time to really settle down with a concrete plan...



Something I did after trying to find the most comfortable resting position. The normal 'lying on your back' position isn't as good as the 'suspending ur head at the edge' position. You get to relax your body a bit, and above all, ur head will feel too heavy physically to think about anything. (or maybe ur brain will be too busy trying to register your new perspective that you forget what you are trying to think?) Works for me :p

A little wish

http://artpad.art.com/gallery/?k5l5yc7q74g

Oooooo yea. Trying out that artPad link which I chanced upon while touring around deviantart. Feels nice doodling on the wacom... but still feel traditional ways are more fun......

Whew... uni life... drained yesterday after class. It's like another WSC session with a male version of Ms Amy... >_< Went to the cca fair and signed up for archery and the visual designs club (this one was by chance.. I didn't know that there is a group dedicated to comics art and design, so yeap! Went forward and checked it out). Hope I'll have time for them though...

While waiting for the bus, I was taken by surprise at the sight of an ex secondary sch classmate (or kindergarten classmate? XD). Haha, Lionel, still the same look and behaviour, just that he grew slightly taller than me now, lol.... Feels really nice to see a familiar face in a not so familiar place. Recently talked to Fiona over tha phone... Was really worried when she sent me an sms about her broken relationship and hecked care about my phone bill... She's currently still in Suzhou, but yea, good that she had some friends there...

3D assignment 1

Whew... Yeap, the title says it, my first assignment on 3d basics. The professor told us to play with lines and dots, one of which must include collage. It was rather vague to me what is really wanted, but going by the examples he showed us, I came up with these.



Haha, grabbed a copy of straits times and began cutting it up. It was more of a random thing, and slowly, I tried to organise the pieces in such a way the viewer's eyes can follow through the flow, with the help of dots. The gray line was sewed on as a path of the flow. Somehow, the font size seemed to be carrying the flow more... See how he say tml ba..


Yeap, the one without collage. Just playing with the space and dimension there... hope it looks right....

Reflection..?

Recently, some issues had been troubling me... life is still going on, yet, some things just doesn't seem to improve. Have I been just too closed minded on certain matters? Maybe I'm wrong? Am I really putting up with people? Or are people putting up with me? I'm constantly asking myself, what's wrong? Or maybe there isn't anything wrong, just a scenario that this person does this and makes everyone unhappy while thinking everyone has sinned against him...? When the people around u are giving up and u are still there, hoping things will turn out to be better... Hope.. a delusion, a denial of defeat?

Gossh, having to face so much words these days have gotten my negativity going..... hahaha... Just hate to see the people around me unhappy and I can't do anything about it. It's so easy to drop and join the extreme end, than hanging in the middle of nowhere. Or maybe I'll just have to do nothing and everything will be ok again? Giving up the remote control is probably hard for someone who hates to be insecure, but then, what is gauranteed in life other than death... Just hope one's life will never end blindfolded with pointed fingers everywhere.

Lol, me randomin again...

Istana trip

Went to Istana early in the morning with Huiying yesterday. She wanted to participate in the art competition held there, and the registration for the com was at 8am. When I got there, the queue to enter the Istana was so long... Kind of relieved that she came early (yea, I cut the queue :x). I thought that was all, but when we got inside, there was another queue for the registering for the competition, and we qued up again... so much time went by, and only about 2 hours left to complete the art competition entry (It was an on-the-spot drawing contest).

I backed out of the registration queue. Ying participated and went into her painting hastily. I sat there... look at the scenery and decided to do a small little sketchbook painting of the place. It was a really nice place to chill out and get away from the buzz of life (and to think that the Istana is splat in the middle of a busy urban district...), like some kind of countryside. Didn't draw anymore after that, cos I was too tired.