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

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.)

22 Slow on the uptake

Source:  intoxicatedteenagers

So I know I've been posting a lot more inspiration than updates recently. This week we had our first art lesson back and I spent the entire time listening to music and cutting out castle shapes from my tissue paper! One thing I found out, for some colours the sheet of paper is just enough so I may have to make some trips to Art Friend soon... (sigh! it's quite far from my house) 

It's sufficient for now, though, so hopefully in the next week I can start pasting stuff on. I am not very sure if I should paste it first or construct some kind of firm structure (using chopsticks??) inside the lantern first to stabilize it. Foundation, or decoration? 

Also, the lanterns are wayyy troublesome to bring to school. I brought two to be safe the other day, and one got torn. I think it was by my art folio cos I put it into the same bag and it has buttons and a flap so that might've gotten caught. Either that or I've been too flippant banging the bag everywhere and letting my lanterns get into all kinds of scrapes.

I am such a bad lantern owner!

You should've seen the way the Thai airport staff look at me when I carry the lanterns in. When I first bought them they actually stopped me to ask if they were khom fai, because they were scared I'd brought the fuel cells (used to lift the lanterns up into the sky) along and (probably) planned to set the plane on fire. (Thankfully my mother had the sense to leave them at home.) On the second time during my June trip I brought them again and managed to sneak into the checking area without the security officers at the front stopping me, because it's embarrassing when you look like a thirteen year old and are mistaken for a terrorist.

Anyhoo, tomorrow is Youth Day Funfair! Have fun, everybody! We're selling handmade notebooks and keychains (which are REALLY PRETTY) (I want to buy the ones I made myself, I'm emotionally attached now), but in my time off I hope someone's doing nail polish. Last year I painted rainbow nails for the first time and my ballet teacher nearly had my head. Something subtle this time, then.

20 Jetting off!

I'm flying off for the holidays tomorrow, but will hopefully be updating this space with photos of my progress (I'm bringing some materials -including lanterns! they're HUGE, sent me on a frenzy to find a bag big enough to handcarry them!- over to Bangkok to work on). In the meantime...

this looks like a pretty achievable idea for sketches- a dreamcatcher in white paint over what looks like watercolour lines in the background. what's more, the way the dreamcatcher's pattern is painted is different from the ones i encountered before- and the feathers have been replaced with much welcomed leaves!

also, I just bought some coloured tissue paper from Art Friend- two packs of just baby blue and light pink for the backgrounds and a pack of 20 multicoloured sheets. I'm configuring the colour schemes for the different compositions right now so I figured that since my colour pencil set is notoriously limited, it would be easier to use the computer! hence, i went all squinty-eyed and used photoshop to try and get the 17 colours as precise as possible and created the swatches above. pretty professional-looking, huh ;-)

some colours are not exact but they're around there so i'm settling for now cos i was going cross eyed! it was pretty hard trying to imagine everything in my head, the way the colours worked -or didn't work- together. now i'll have to figure out which ones to put where because now that i've given up the idea of pastels (it wouldn't stand out enough given the  mediums i'm using), i want really contrasting colours that give a POP together.

the only ideas that really stick with me right now are greens and blues for the castles, and orange and purple for the swallows. a strange colour choice for the latter and i'm still deciding if it'll be too similar to the hair colour of the girls, but i really love how orange and purple look together.

(okay, maybe not orange in this example, but...) as evidenced here by the very lovely Miss Karlie Kloss, who's one of my favourite models.

16 More Inspiration

source: perchance to dream

Just a wonderful picture from Tumblr that I wanted to share here...
The other day we were at Cineleisure and saw a store selling really colourful dreamcatchers. Now I'm thinking I should (pardon the lameness) 'catch them all' and hang them in my bedroom when I have space.

13 Inspirations

I mentioned in the previous post that I'd be blogging some of my inspirations next, so here they are! Not necessarily in order of idea flow and not in full either because I forgot to save my sources, so I'm refinding them all!

Source: Sweet Fruit

I commented that my sketch of Clemence Poesy looked skewered, like a bobble-head... well this was sort of the kind of drawing I was referring to. Also in mind were Danny Roberts' illustrations for Harajuku Girls, pictured below. Click here for more of his works.

below is a watercolour painting of Darcey Bussell by Gordon King, entitled 'Serenade', which I sketched.

above, the image of a dreamcatcher which I referenced in my sketches.

the iconic screenshot of Ariel singing the reprise of 'Part of Your World'... better in the actual movie!

 the picture of Clemence Poesy which I massacred in my drawing ):

above is the Lookbook submission, 'May Dreams Lead You In', which I mashed-up with Clemence in the last sketch I posted. it's absolutely beautiful, isn't it? maybe I should do a digital manipulation of the two images as well...

more to come when I find them!