comment on Yeong Tyan’s coursework ‘08

link : http://melonfarmer.wordpress.com/2008/08/24/35-paintings-from-coursework-2008/#comment-54

Omg omg i love your work!!! especially all the girls they look so cute. I think the main character is really well designed and polished! Great job!
Also i think you have a few very good compositions here. I like the 4th,5th and 6th pages because you bring the viewer into a different perspective and angle of looking at things. The fourth page is very cool! Really brought out the feeling of loneliness and fear.
I also love the colours for the 6th picture, very vibrant and very delicate details which really made the picture very interesting
However i have a question! whys the girl sometimes in white? haha
the only thing im apprehensive about is that sometimes the composition gets a bit messy like the 7th piece.
Otherwise, great job! woohoo nice book:D and i think your book looks prettier in real than scanned anyway

Official handing in ceremony of Sec 4 GAP coursework!

)) coursework is over! Jiayou everybody for viva voce!!~

And lets have an outing after EOYs okay! as GAP! *hint dada hint*!

Art gallery@nanyang

Theres been an art gallery revamp at nanyang! It currently showcases all the Sec4 coursework done by the AEP students this year, as well as some old works by seniors.

These posters are designs of makeup products. I think its very cool how Theresa makes use of oriental objects and include a modern touch to them. Very cool! They would look very pretty in real. Also i love the design of the posters, the toned down colours add a quality of mystic in them

This following piece was done by a senior and exhibited also at the 2007 AEP exhibition at NAFA.
She very cleverly uses double meanings on common food items to create her claywork, (eg. smoked salmon= salmon on a smoking pipe, pork chop=pig doing karate). Its nonsensical and fun!

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

research work for toilets.

I always loved D.I.Y. stuff. They just always add a very personal touch that is the beauty of it all.

I randomly decided to make my own calendar some time in june because i was too bored from mugging for block tests. So i took paint and paper and cardboard and ribbons and did a very random free calendar just for fun. And followed suit the following months

It doesnt have to be nice because who cares!, you’re gonna be the only one who is going to see it! As long as you like it

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 (:

This was something my team gave a teammate for her birthday.

Yep a framed up piece of trampoline to display in her room and remember our days together

and this was something 402 made for Mrs Wong for teachers’ day. Each of us folded red straw hearts, then qianwen and i stuck them together onto a piece of paper to be put in the frame.

Framing a piece of treasured memory up, or personally designing a frame for a friend is a great gift idea. it can be a piece handmade abstract art in her room(:

Otherwise, you can frame up your most important piece of memory to and put it up in your room as decoration to add personality((:

Im going to frame up a piece of trampoline in my room too!

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btw the frames are from ikea, 50cm by 40cm
$19 each

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