Jiaaaqi’s Weblog

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

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 (:

hahahaha the title is just a disclaimer to say that imitation goods are really inferior in quality to the real deal. its true.

This piece of work was done as homework in Sec3 june holidays. It was fun but really tiring i spent 3 whole days painting from day to night (while watching Full House though). but still it was a really long time and i could only manage this quality.

So, salute to Lord Frederic Leighton, i really wonder how he makes Pavonia look SO real.

Pavonia 1858 by Lord Frederic Leighton , 100% hand painted

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and this is my version

Medium: Acrylic – Size: A3 – Approx. date: June 2007

It is totally no wonder why hes a famous painter and im not hahahaha.
just joking i know i’ll never ever be able to reach his standards. im not being pessimistic, its just reaaaaaaaaaallllllllyyyyyyyyy difficult.
Anyway, im still quite proud of my pavonia anyway. block out her face and the feathers, it still looks quite nice right! hahahahah the whole left patch of feathers is so disgusting because i got fed up of mixing colours haha bad choice. But i like the details on her blouse and her headscarf.

Another thing i realised during painting this was that it was a real challenge to get the right skin colour, when i did, the acrylic didnt last long enough for me to paint her whole face, much less blend it.

Overall it was a good experience though results werent as ideal. It was a good experience to really finish a painting, and to understand how difficult it really is to paint something lifelike.