37 Description of Coursework

In dreams, the sky's the limit! This artwork, created using coloured tissue paper on traditional Thai lanterns, was made to remind viewers of the joy of childhood dreams. This joy is not as irrelevant in the stressful system of secondary school as it seems; rather, it is a joy that should, and does, remain in us. Lights inside the lanterns symbolize the flame that fuels our dreams. (These lanterns are, for now, earth-bound, but our dreams are not.)

36 Blackbird, Fly

I know grading for Art is over but I did this the other day and have become accustomed to posting anything art-related on this space. (That's a good thing, right?) Anyway in my boredom of mugging I decided to challenge myself by coming up with a wearable collection of clothes.

Sounds strange, but seeing as most of my inspiration comes from runways and couture and whatnot, my designs tend to be in the form of gowns and runway pieces- wearable, but for the red carpet, not your typical suburban shopping mall. So I came up with a couple of sundresses.

One thing that always intrigued me when I started trying to turn my hobby of fashion design into something more serious a couple of years ago, was how designers came up with prints. Before that I always squiggled curly lines where I wanted prints to go, and I assumed designers just blew up stock images from Google Images (hahahahaha, I know). Now I'm paying more attention to detail (eg. HOW TO DRAW LACE... still a novice at that, I'm afraid).

I've heard some designers design prints based on their own photographs, which they manipulate digitally. Sounds interesting, so I decided to try it myself. I've always got some prints in mind but I never really know how they'll turn out.

Using Paint, I came up with this strange gem shape. It looks kind of religious, doesn't it.

I coloured in this hummingbird illustration (from Google...) using the watercolour tool on Paint, with reference to kingfishers. I know, I know, my references are all over the place.

I took this screenshot cos I thought it looked funny, like birds were attacking Powerpoint.

Taa-daa!

I like the background blue, and the hummingbird turned out lovely, but the gem shape looks kind of strange. I thought it would be nice to have a few not-quite-white gems falling in the middle of the birds but bleh, I probably got bored and dumped this strange symbolic-looking... thing instead.

35 All Hands on Deck!

I've been at it again, doing product photography and making spreads... during EOYs...

34 A Night For Inspiration

reactivity
is the antithesis of
creativity.


the world
is in flames,
and you
just sit there,
reading
the comics.

all collages and captions from www.wearedeadpaper.tumblr.com.

33 A Lack of Focus

above are two samples of artwork by eric blum, whose paintings caught my attention via clothes horse.  it's quite curious because his chosen medium is heated beeswax, pigments and watercolour; are they still paintings? for me i thought they were photographs, blurred on purpose. if you look for a long time your eyes start to seek out shapes; for me, it's chandeliers in an old diner/cafe for the first picture on top, and cars stuck in traffic for the second! it'd be quite interesting to see what different people make of it.

as for me, i love taking pictures blurred on focus... unartistic as they may be...

a picture of mine from the art trip to SAM last year

32 In The Gallery...

Today my friends and I took a stroll around the art gallery during recess and took a minute by my lanterns. Credits to Fiona for helping me take these artistic shots with her phone. (The wonders of technology!)

with a 'dreamy' effect- how apt

the blue one's looking a little deflated*

*I suspected this to be because I didn't iron the blue and green lanterns, but another point my mother suggested is a lack of starch (from the glue), since the red lantern has considerably more/larger elements than the others, which feature mostly dreamcatchers which are drawn on with pen and hence require no glue.

And Then There Was Light. props to Mr Chang for helping me set up the light bulbs

31 InStyle Sketches

The very first fashion magazine I bought was InStyle back in December 2008. I've been a loyal follower since. Recently I bought a quintessential pack of yellow Post-Its, and celebrated a particularly drowsy morning with a fake cover.

I used to make fake covers of friends and family using Photoshop to frame for presents.

Last year I used my tablet to draw this (on reflection, very ghastly) sketch of Diane Kruger's InStyle UK cover. It's kind of embarrassing, but a testimony to how InStyle's stayed with me all this while.

next up: pictures of the lanterns!

30 Final Chapter of Coursework!

As I may have mentioned in the previous posts, I'm done with my coursework! :) Here are some photos of the end process, end results and my prep boards.

the last lantern, lying out on the table in the mac lab as i put final touches to it (ie feathers and gold foil).

one regret i have is not ironing the last two lanterns. i wasn't quite sure how to do it at home (and my mum kept asking me skeptically, 'IRONING a LANTERN?') and if it really made any difference but after i attached the rims i realized it was probably one of the key reasons my red lantern was the only one that didn't slump slightly. it stands better; now in the gallery my blue one's already a bit deflated.

note to future art enthusiasts: gold foil is VERY messy. i used tweezers at first, but it stuck to the tweezers too and now there's this huge clump of dried foil all around the tweezers. can be washed off fingers, though!

the following photos are how to attach the lantern rim (finishing steps!)

the original rims are attached to the lantern via glue. i bought extra lanterns. each lantern comes with only one rim whereas i adapted mine to have 2, so i cut rims out from the extra lanterns.

the original lantern has a square base at the top but i made mine thoroughly cylindrical, so i cut off the square excess.

attach the rim to the ends with bits of transparent tape. it's just a casual step before the actual glue so you can make sure everything stays in place.

attach super glue to the rim and then fold the paper in. press hard and hold to make sure the paper sticks right.

attach tape over the glued parts again just to be doubly/triply sure. (kiasu mah!)

i had to crawl inside the lantern for this one... reach your hands inside and paste little strips of tape down the middle of the lantern. it's helpful if you have someone at the other end holding it together. then go down it one more time with one long strip of tape.

attach a second rim to the other side.

taa-daa!

prep board 1/8
(top L-R, clockwise) my 'visual mindmap' of fairy tales and old stories; artist statement and inspirational lyric from In Dreams by Enya; pictures of lanterns from Thailand and China; Lola's Magic Ballet Shoes by Tracy Paul; Serenade (Darcey Bussell) by Gordon King; and a more wordy mindmap of ideas/themes associated with 'childhood dreams'.

*i forgot to take pictures of prep board 2/8! many apologies! in it i explored the idea of fairy tales and more ballet with Degas' ballerinas as inspiration... as well as watery paint that got too watery.

prep board 3/8
(top L-R, clockwise): dreamcatcher; Clemence Poesy with a butterfly; mash-up of Clemence and May Angels Lead You In (a Lookbook entry); a painting of a dancer with a dreamcatcher ribbon; references; a man held aloft/carried by birds.

prep board 4/8
(top L-R, clockwise): explanation of thought process; 'Day and Night' compositions using bird, star and castle motifts; song lyric compositions using girl and castle motifs, 'You Make My Dreams'- Hall & Oates and 'Moon River'- Audrey Hepburn; reference pictures of castles; 'What makes a set?' mindmap*; mash-up of ballet and fairy tales.

*since i chose to do a set of 3 lanterns, i had to have some common points or motifs throughout to identify them as a set, as part of a common project. i had different ideas, like same colour schemes... same materials (i chose coloured tissue paper in the end)... and same motifs, like birds/castles/girls/stars (i chose the first 3 in the end). i decided that an interesting way to do it, would be to have the same motifs but in rotation so each lantern would have a diff motif as its chief focus.

prep board 5/8
(top-bottom): a pastel rendering of a screenshot of Tangled; a line-art/pastel work with the girl motif, featuring stars and birds (inspired in part by MC Escher's Day and Night).

prep board 6/8
(top L-R, clockwise): line art on coloured tissue paper on tracing paper; coloured pencils exploring the idea of wings representing hidden potential; artist inspiration from Josephine Wall and MC Escher; a dreamcatcher cut out with feathers; line art paisley prints (inspired by the henna we did last year).

prep board 7/8
top-bottom: line art over blocks of coloured tissue paper, i later decided more exact tissue paper shapes would be better; my colour schemes and draft compositions. the first composition is underneath the flap, which is an experiment i did using coloured tissue paper on transparency (the kind we used to use for our projectors back in primary school... good old days) and watercolour paint on tracing paper for the background.

prep board 8/8
the final compositions, with lantern 101 (how to make a lantern; see pictures above), and a before-and-after shot of the lantern! the blank at the middle right is for a picture of the final works hanging in the gallery, which i haven't taken yet.

my 'babies', as i affectionately call them, hanging in the gallery on the first floor. lights have been installed in them already but i'm hoping to get yellow lights instead of white lights for a warmer glow. it's also more realistic since you normally have fuel cells/candles in the original lanterns!

29 Wish You Were Here

above is a photo manipulation i made on photoshop. i usually blend images together using the clone tool and use curves to try and make their colour schemes compatible if the originals were shot in different lighting (i usually do manips for film screenshots), but this time i decided to do something a little more jarring. so i took a photo from gabrielle angeline photography (her website is here), made it black and white, and cropped it in a very angular fashion... then i set it against a picture of a sunrise, which i got from google images and then put to high contrast.

i don't really like how the background turned out but you may be interested to know that this was inspired by the set of postcards currently hanging in front of the sinks in the mac lab. one of them reads: i wish you were here/ because that would make the rest of my day. i thought it was brilliantly creative and set the second line as the 'subtitle' of this photo when i posted it to tumblr.

unfortunately my personal computer crashed at the beginning of term 4 and took my photoshop down with it. i've been having withdrawal symptoms since, especially since i only just started rediscovering some of the better functions of photoshop and exploring with photo manipulations.

28 The Princess and the Pea

I'm not sure if it will work but clicking on the picture above should lead to the source.

I've finished my coursework! More pictures to come later but I'm immensely proud of how far I've come. In fact, I feel somewhat vulnerable with the lanterns hanging in the gallery already. I'm constantly scared strong wind or careless hands will tear the paper.

Above is The Princess and the Pea. I'm reminded again of how much I love fairy tales, and not just the obvious ones like Cinderella. When I was young my mother used to buy me all these illustrated books with obscure fairy tales with beautiful drawings. (Hence the wish to be a princess. I assumed all of them were born fantastically beautiful, just like that.) I can't remember them all now, but a fun fact: I found out one of my favourites was based on King Lear! Wow.

My personal computer broke down a few weeks back, bringing my Photoshop down with it. But I'm looking forward to using it again, perhaps in school, so I can post more artwork here. (Ah! non-coursework artwork! a rarity.)

27 August Updates

Below is a sheet of paper onto which I planned out my colour scheme using the colours I already own- given that the packet of tissue paper comes with a myriad of colours, it's easier to have a visual representation of exactly which blue, or which pink, to use. Also, some very basic sketches of the inside structure of the lantern which I then planned to build and use-- I'll be adapting these later when I finish my lanterns.

 Below are my original sketches for the 3 compositions. I have since edited the bird once to make the birds bigger, and also added dreamcatchers as an element instead of butterflies (final composition all the way below). I'm still working on the girl composition but I plan for it to include dreamcatchers as well.

a completed swallow! I'm really proud of them.

One special thing I'm trying to do, is come up with original dreamcatcher patterns that relate to the lantern. For the bird one above the dreamcatcher's actually made out of five-pointed curvy stars, if you noticed! and for the girl composition I am trying to come up with one based on tiara designs-- I found a book in the school library on the set/costume designing behind the film Lord of the Rings, and I'm now fascinated by patterns.