Filed under: 2D works
research work for toilets.
This last Teacher’s Day in nanyang, qianwen and i decided to make cards for all our teachers as a sign of gratitude for teaching us and putting up with our nonsense these 2 years!
We decided to make orgami designs since qianwen had her much beloved origami book which was really cool 
haha reminds me of my coursework, all falls under the big category of paper engineering! making amazing sculptures, decorative designs, kinetic art with a piece of paper!
Here are the cards: in A5
4 joined hearts in different colours,
designed as flowers
for Ms Sebastian
4 joined red hearts
for Mrs Chew
Yellow t-shirt and tie
for Mr Lim! (hahaha somehow it really looks like it suits him)
Flowers
for Mrs T. Wong (because the card looks motherly and sweet )
Cats screaming her name
for Ms Van Dijk (because she loves cats 
)
Bamboo shoots
for Ms Lee (because she loves plants!)
Blue ribbon on yellow card
for Miss Yeo
???
for Mrs Wong
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Zhuo lao shi got a printed card.
The inside of the cards are messages and signatures of all 36 of us.
This was the painting i did in 3 hours for the Block test painting paper recently!
The topic i had chose for the paper was ‘Journey’.
Again, i had many random ideas, like painting:
-a road into the horizon (neverending journey of life)
-a happy toddler in a supermarket trolley being pushed across an aisle in a supermarket (first ‘adventure’)
-abstract of many office workers climbing ladders (climbing the corporate ladder)
-desert with a man and camel (tough journey literally)
In the end, i settled on ‘journey towards happiness’, something positive.
Then, i thought that migration fitted my theme very well and decided on geese flying away towards the sun, to symbolize the journey for a better future, towards warmth and happiness literally
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Title: Journey – Media: Acrylic colour – Size: A3 – Approx. date: August 2008
(Eek the scanner doesnt do justice to the colours)
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During the 3 hours, i spent 2 whole hours on the background alone as acrylic is really quite dry and its not quite easy to gradient colours with it over a big area. Acrylic is one of my more feared medium as it is very dry and thus difficult to blend colours but i am quite satisfied with the resulting background although there were many patches but i feel it brought a kind of patchy quality to the painting, special to acrylic paint, which wasnt a bad effect at all. I also love the bright orange colour of the background that captures attention. I also like the glow of the sun.
However, i feel that the geese could have been alot better with the luxury of time. Because i was ruching all the geese in the last hour, you can observe that the first 9 geese closest to the sun are near black/darkbrown , which wasnt what i intended. I wanted a gradual darkening in colour but didn’t have time to do it. I would have painted the geese more realistically with their pretty light brown wings and white patch near their face special only to Canadian geese.
If i were to go through it again, i would have experimented with the background beforehand as i lost alot of time painting the background layer over layer to get the colour and gradient i wanted. And also better managed my time to be able to paint my geese better.
I am still glad that i managed to complete the painting in 3 hours and did good in improvising (:
Filed under: 2D works
This was done by all of Sec 4 GAP in 2007! as our SIA.
It is a giant tree 3m tall and was displayed at Nanyang’s art exhibition 2007 for 90th anniversary. It was also used as coverpage for Nanyang’s ‘07 coffee table book!
))
The theme of the exhibition was ‘the green dot’. And the the concept behind our work was man being the responsible of this earth, holding up all other beings. Out actions have a big impact on all other life on earth. We should save this earth we support.
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Title: Tree of life – Media: Acrylic colour – Size: 4m by 3m – Approx. date: August 2007
The way we did this was by firstly drawing out the whole tree on a smaller piece of paper, 2m by 1.5m (actually not very small also haha). Then we divided and cut the tree up and everyone took a piece home to enlarge by 1.75 times and paint our animals individually. The enlarging was done by drawing grids for our pieces, and then grid-ing the bigger cardboard paper 1.75 times then drawing it in. Then we started painting.
But after we all completed our pieces of the puzzle, our pieces did not fit! at all! there were many overlapping parts, so we resorted to cutting each animal out and fitting them together on green paper. It was a very tedious process but we got it done in the end! and it is really worth it
Graduation magazine ‘08!
Somehow for gym the sec 4s do the grad mag every year dont ask me why.
So Amanda (trampoline captain) and i stayed back one day and did this together.
We did it using digital scrapbooking materials from various online websites. Some are free for download:)
Just google ‘digital scrapbooking’ and there should be a few good websites.
I feel that out grad mag turned out as well as we expected and we’re really happy with it!
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Title: NYGYM grad mag – Media: Multimedia – Size: A3 – Approx. date: July 2008
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Anyway, just extra ramblings-
I think scrapbooking is a great way of restoring memories the old way, in photo albums, with added design. Its gained popularity recently in singapore and there are a few new scrapbooking stores here. A few that i know of are, one at Plaza Singapura (level 2 i think), a few shops at Takashimaya level 4 forum, and theres also one small shop at beauty world plaza basement!
They sell many pretty patterned paper, and other stuff like ribbons, cut-outs, stamps, buttons, etc etc veyr interesting stuff. Scrapbooking allows a great deal of creativity in creating your own page of memories with all these materials and one thing great about it is the personality that comes out of it.
Otherwise, actually everyday things can look cool on a card. Just think out of the box, and be more observant around the house, and many things can be great decorations. eg Candy/chocolate wrappers!:)
Filed under: 2D works
This was another piece of work done in class during Sec3.
We were given an vector image of many random symbols and shapes, eg. stars, crown, bears, fire, arrows, etc.
The task was to create a 6 piece composition creatively narrating the story of Jack and Jill.
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Title: Jack and Jill – Media: Multimedia – Size: ~A4 – Approx. date: 2007
(enlarge to see clearer)
Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water,
Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after!
I like my work quite a bit considering it was such a random task and we had to work with given images.
These ‘rubbish paintings’ were done one day during class when we were asked to play! with colours, gradients, effects, different mediums, wet/dry, etc etc.
At first i was really apprehensive and all i could think was pretty colours and pattern, BUT after Mrs Teo scolded me i decided to really anyhow ‘whack’!
and heres are the pieces i ended up with!
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Title: Play! Size: A4 – Approx. date: 2007
Media: Poster colour
This was done by painting a satay stick and rolling it all around. Haha i think its kinda cute and can be a good effect with the right colours and amount of paint.
Media: Poster colour
Swirl with water colour!
Media: Poster colour/water colour
This was done with different dry brushes.
Media: Water colour
This was done by scruching up paper and randomly drawing over the paper. The effect of folds and valleys are subtle, not very distinctly accentuated by the paint, but i think that the effect of scruched paper in 2d(afterscanning) is very interesting.
Media: Water colour and crayon
the star was actually done with crayon first, to retain the colour of the paper, then going over the rest of the areas with water colour. The crayon also did a very good job in containing colours in the small areas, giving them a very sharp polished edge
Media: Poster colour
Haha this was random strokes, blending colours on canvas while the paint isnt dry yet, thus the very dirty mix of colours, which really dont like but it was a good exploration
Media: Water colour, Poster colour
Different shades of green as background, with poster colour left to flow freely.
Media: Crayon, water colour
Yep this was one of the first few i did. Blocks with crayon, with a water colour background.
Media: Water colour
This was the last piece i did. Hahahah! Has a very scary and gothic feel(which i didnt meant for it to be).
The circles are done by twirling a brush (its a brush destroyer so dont do that with expensive brushes), and outlining with crayon.
Media: Crayon, Water colour
And this was the first piece I did! Which i really like (it looks better in real) because it looks like some wallpaper for a baby’s room. And also because i love patterns:)
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Overall it was a good experience, letting loose and experimenting all sorts of techniques and colours. There isnt any wrong or right, good nor bad this time! just plain fun and doing anything you want to try. Its good because we really don’t get many chances to have fun and mess things up in life.
And it was a good session of personal breakthrough, because i think its very unlikely for me just go without an end in mind (except probably for floorball for P.E. where it is just anyhow hit and score by luck hahaha).
It was definitely quite uncomfortable in the start, splashing paint everywhere and ending up with pieces that may not look very pretty, some that i think are hideous actually; but thats just what we need sometimes, to not be afraid and let go, because there are many new discoveries to discover for yourself in the end.
I think learning by experimentation is by far the best.
Filed under: 2D works
This was my first and only experience with anything related to carving, and block printing!
It was done sometime during Sec 2 during art class. Then i remember everybody getting very excited all over it, carving our woodblocks everywhere we went, in the morning before school in class, during recess in the canteen, at training after school.
Haha it was fun! The real challenge for this was carving the block accurately. It was really not easy carving straight edges, much less carving perfect circles or shapes!
The inking process was a good learning experience too, how to roll on the correct amount of ink so that the print would turn out sharp instead of smudge or dry.
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Title: Key to success – Media: Ink – Size: 20cm by 20cm – Approx. date: 2006
Hahahaha i think it turned out quite ugly as i didn’t know what to expect before deciding on the design. But still it was a good experience and somehow it got chosen for display at the art gallery with other works.
These were the end products of my sec 3 coursework!
Title: Journey – Size: 8 x A5 – Approx. date: September 2007
Media: Colour pencil
Media: Colour pencil
Media: Acrylic paint
Media: Acrylic colour
Media: Pencil
i lost the other pencil drawing i did of cookies!
The other two postcards were of pictures, of the banana muffin and cinammon roll
Filed under: 2D works, Comments and criticisms
Sec 4 Coursework 2008!
All i can say is, OMG im so glad its over!!!:)
It was intense joy the night we walked out of the art room, leaving our prep boards and books behind in the art room for once, and we realise we are free! woww….. hahahaha!
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The theme for my coursework is toilet hygiene. It all started when one day we were asked to bring a piece of recent news that influences us alot. And being a prima deli fan, I naturally brought a report of the prima deli salmonella poisoning to class. Then the news hit. Do coursework based on this piece of news!
Basically, there were only 2 factors in this case. Do something related to responsible food handling, or toilet hygiene. So i chose the easier of the 2- of course the 2nd one.
My general idea was to do a children’s guidebook to toilet hygiene. For the first draft, I came up with an informative handbook on toilet hygiene. There were basically 2 mascots- toilet roll girl and tissue paper boy, who brought the readers along on a journey teaching them good toilet hygiene. I finished developing my characters and finished the whole story boarding for this concept, but in the end, i really couldn’t stand the idea of such a boring book, so i changed the whole idea. So my final idea was a story book instead, teaching kids to maintain good toilet hygiene through a story, which would probably appeal more to me if i was a child (think captain underpants and the talking toilets) than a book with assertive statements.
I was real excited about the idea but i forgot that i needed a good story, and i am not a childrens book writer, and i dont understand the mentality of children! My story ended up being very embarassing, to think i learn to write narratives in school, but oh well! I also decided to do an interactive book, to try to make learning alot more fun that what is happening to us currently.
))
So here goes!
[oops please follow this link for the running pictures of my book, because wordpress cant upload videos (&^#@*$*! ]
Here are just a few snapshots:
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If i were to choose again, i would definitely choose to go through this experience once more though it is really no easy feat. At least now i can say that im an author :O creator of an original book. haha
But then again, if i had to go through this experience again, i would have done alot of things alot differently.
I have really gained alot of takeaways from this experience and here are just a few:
1) When doing huge projects like this, organise my time well, stick to schedule, stop procrastinating so that i won’t have to do last minute work.
I think my book could have been alot better if not for the fact that i was in a serious rush of time. I had alot more ideas to be incorporated into my book but i just didn’t have the luxury of time to device the mechanisms for paper engineering. The mechanisms required really accurate measurements and proportions, and especially making them from scratch was not easy, expecially not for a beginner like me.
Also, if i had more time, i would have been able to better complete my paintings. I had pictured and wanted a vibrant and eyecatching first page but due to the fact that my medium was watercolour, and i didn’t have a green water colour to start with, mixing blue and yellow dulled the colour alot, resulting in more of a dirty green than bright happy green. Spot, the dog, wouldn’t have to look so grilled too, as i didn’t have a light brown to start off. My coverpage and backpage were a last minute resort too! Did it in the last 15 minutes of handing in coursework!
In short, one big lesson learnt is to organise myself alot better, and prevent from doing last minute work.
2) Water colour painting. Through this first hand experience, I have learnt alot more about painting with water colour. It is something that can only be learnt through getting down to painting it. Water colour is a beautiful medium that has a transparent quality special to it
3) Lastly, the most cool takeaway i have is discovery about the world of paper engineering. The world of paper engineering is vast and very cool! Don’t you just somehow awe at how amazing 3D models are created by the flip of a page, but yet can lie exactly flat when the page is closed? It was something that amazed me alot and while doing research for coursework, it was a definite eye-opener for me learning and looking at all these ingenious creations. Also, i thought that pull-tabs and spinning wheels were so cool, allowing images to move in a book. The magic in these mechanisms is the personal interaction the reader has with the book!
I have a few links to share on paper engineering. if you have time do explore this wonderful field of art!
-Links from the internet
-http://robertsabuda.com/everythingpopup/index.asp (world of pop-ups)
-http://www.pop-up.dk/english/Mekanik.htm#20 (some really cool projects/designs of paper engineering)
-http://www.popularkinetics.com/volume_tent_page.html (d.i.y templates for basic pop-ups)
-http://www.popularkinetics.com/links_page.html (cool links for pop-up resources)
-Music videos using the idea of paper engineering:
Clumsy by Fergie
OK by Shitdisco
-Books i used for research, available from libraries in Singapore
-’The Pop-up Book’ by Paul Jackson
-’The Usborne book of pop-ups’ by Ray Gibson
-’Pop-up Paper Structures’ by Heidi Pridemore
-’Making books that fly, fold, wrap, hide, pop up, twist and turn’ by Gwen Diehn
-’The art and craft of Paper Sculpture’ by Paul Jackson