Final Project

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Final Images:

Sunny Street Scene. This is the first bigger piece I did in charcoal. I found that I am not familiar with the material (willow charcoal) and I have difficulty controlling them. This happens to my subsequent pieces as well. For this piece,  i really wanted the strong sunlight so i kept the street completely white and hard edges beside it to show the contrast and the change of light/shadow.

Morning Classroom:

I initially struggled with this piece quite a lot as my tonal ranges were all very similar. It doesn’t create any mood or atmosphere, everything just turns out flat. I know that i want the morning light to be the main brightest area, hence i toned eveything else down. However, now looking back, i think i can plan the area of tones more to give more variance and  make the image more interesting.

For this image, i tried to give interesting shapes to the trees to that the eyes will be led around the drawing. However, i think that the edges of certain parts of the forest could be even softer.

the challenge for this was to give the place a mood as the real place was a very well lit area. I did that at first, but similar to the classroom drawing, it flattens out the whole image instead. Following Woon Lam’s advice, i gave it a main “brightest zone and i set it to be near the counters. other parts of the scene will be toned down more.

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Studies done at the cafe: finding the shapes and experimenting with different ways of creating an image. it is still a struggle for me to maintain them in big shapes when there are alot of things in the scene. I will still tend to draw them as objects, but i have to constantly remind myself that I have to draw in shapes and how all things are in relation.

 

 

Studies done to explore backlit effect and how the hard & soft edges work with each other to create the mood I want.

Studies I did for the atmospheric before the actual. these didn’t work out that well as the big shapes are messy and the tonal range wasn’t right.

Practice Sketch

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Tried practicing the concept that we learned last Thursday. Sketched this while I was traveling home on the bus yesterday. It difficult to imagine and plan for the amount of space each section takes up and also the “correct” angle.

Assignments & In Class exercises

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Assignments

Asg 1: Horizontal format in A2 size paper

Asg 1: Vertical Format in A2 size paper

Asg 2: Create large scale format of humans in different viewing angles

 

Week 3- In Class Studies for figures in perspective

    

Studying how the old masters draw their human figures in perspective and getting use to drawing angles that we are not used to seeing.

Week 6- In Class Study

Usage of different textures, tonal values, and edges to create an atmospheric environment.

Thoughts: Its hard to control the edges and keeping the overall picture coherent with the correct tonal values. Need to see shapes and connections better

Week 8 – Zoo Trip!

 

Week 3 Space Design Exercise

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Combining interesting design from totally different spaces into one page. The shapes that we thought will be totally out of context and look weird will fit in somehow. As long as when we are drawing the new designs, we make sure that there are always interesting turns and leading lines for the viewer to follow around the painting, even if the perspective is wrong, we can still create a nice, “correct” looking image.

In Class Exercise:

Horizontal Long Format exercise

Vertical Long format exercise

 

Assignment: 

Asg 1: Horizontal format on A2 size paper

Asg 2: Vertical Format on A2 size paper

Challenges while drawing: I find it challenging to lose what is not needed and keep the important shapes and lines in the drawing, hence it might end up being overworked and too much. the tonal design of the scene could be improved as they should compliement each other. I think my vertical one looks more coherent as one drawing compared to the vertical one. but the edges between each shapes could be improved.

Reflections

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Initially, I believe like many groups, we had the idea of doing “Singapore landscape” on Japanese screens, when I first imagined the product, it thought how cool would it be! However, after attending the lecture on Japanese art, Bijingas, which was introduced during the lecture, caught my attention. I took this idea to the group and we started having discussions on how should we go about creating a visual response for bijingas. What struck me the most was the drawing style, their special postures and also the elaborate designs that we painted on the kimonos. We had ideas of changing gender (since bijingas only features females) and changing them to having expressive postures or facial expressions. The ideas weren’t coming out so well until we decided to do the difference of how women are viewed/behaved during the different era.

While we were researching, we came across this beautiful series which looks different from the original 17th-century bijingas that we were shown, the Shin Bijinga (真美人)series done in the 18th century.

 

“Toyohara Chikanobu: Shin Bijin 真美人 (True Beauties) – British Museum”. 2016. Ukiyo-E Search. https://ukiyo-e.org/image/bm/AN00433988_001_l.

Shin Bijin (True Beauties) Depicting a Woman Playing with a Kitten, Modelled…. 2016. “Shin Bijin (True Beauties) Depicting A Woman Playing With A Kitten, From A Series Of 36, Modelled… Giclee Print By Toyohara Chikanobu At Allposters.Com”. Allposters.Com. http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Shin-Bijin-True-Beauties-Depicting-a-Woman-Playing-with-a-Kitten-from-a-Series-of-36-Modelled-Posters_i10060894_.htm.

After more researching, we have chosen to respond with Dancing with Fan by Yosho Chikanobu.

After we decided and found what to do, our team had fun coming out with ideas. We had decided that our response will be base on the changing clothing and accessories. It is created as a “dress up” game/theme where people can switch through the style easily.  Our main idea was to respond to a response. Shin bijinga was a response by the artists to the original bijinga. As we come to the 21st century, many things have changed, and now, we choose to do another new response base on the Shin bijinga.

Bjinga -> Shin Bijinga -> Shin Shin bijinga (our view)

Final Product:  新。真美人系 (New True beauties series)

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Postcards included as a set!

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Clothing and accessories on transparencies where people could switch them up!

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What we envisioned for this was that, it could be produced, with a set of few more bijingas and also clothing and accessories from the different generation to show the change of women in different times. It could be made into a toys/ sticker object like this which allow people to change the clothes, for an interactive and hands-on experience.

It was certainly not easy trying to duplicate the unique drawing style that woodblock prints and bijingas have. I have to make sure that the linework that i did correspond with the original art and everyone else in the group (each of us did a design) so that it looks like a complete set of artwork.

It also made me appreciate how the artists in the olden days painstakingly created these amazing artworks traditionally, using woodblock printing. The designs and the intricacy of kimonos and accessories are astounding. This project also allowed me to understand more about the history of how japanese women are portrayed and the unique points of Japanese art.

For my part, on the Tshirt design, i decided to put the word “美人”on it to link it back to the original bijinga and also show how people love t-shirts that have interesting text on it. To not lose the original essence of the bijinga, the intricate patterns were recreated as patterns. The colour scheme (for T-shirt and shopping bag) was kept similar to the original bijinga.

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Lastly, I really want to thank Ms. Sujatha for all the guidance and patience, I really managed to learn a lot!

Zine: Final

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Cant believe that a year flew by so fast and this would be the last OSS post that i will be posting on foundation 2D…

Here’s the photo of my very first zine!

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運命なんて瞳閉じれば 過去も今日もその未来も一つ

強く優しく翼に風を

眠りについたホントの君 放ってあげましょう

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果てない空を見た時 あなたは何を思うだろう?

君の瞳に映る僕 何を想ってるの

だから決意は強き翼 運命なんていらない

いま不死なる夢を羽根に 明日を飛ばないか?

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次の…旅立ちに決意して 生ききる力だと賭けした翼広げ!

I am really happy that my zine turned out to what I hoped it to be! To think that I am able to use my watercolour pieces and combining them into a book, I am really happy that I get to do so! For the text of this book, they were actually lines I found that fit the images. However, after having the lines, I found out that the whole text actually flowed as a book too! It basically has the idea of being lost, but starting a journey to find yourself, having your true self and finally using that determination and fly towards your new future.

Grateful for all the lessons and guidance I had in 2D. I managed to overcome the challenges that i thought i couldn’t, and I had fun throughout the semester!

Zine Process 3

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With my layout more or less finalised, I did a test print at home to check my font size and the placement of pictures and text.

Even with my printer, i was very surprised how well the grayscale version of the test print turned out. Now i feel like printing a grayscale version too.

The test print as very useful as i could check if the picture was placed accurately and if the text size was suitable for the page. After reviewing my test prints, i went back to indesign to made the changes.

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Now i am really excited to see how my final zine will turn out. For the final zine, i would have to choose the correct textured paper and will recreate the effect that i wanted

Zine Process 2

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After finding the correct text that could fit with my picture, I planned for my zine per brief says with 12 pages.

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original layout

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cover and back page

For my cover, i wanted a cut out of a circle which reveals part of the content on the second page.

I also had text that i thought it would fit very well as the start of my book. I tried putting it in various positions, however, considering the cut out, that was one of the nicer position where i could position my text at. however suddenly, i thought of wanting the words to be seen, as the title for my book. I wanted to be to printed on a tracing paper, this will create a double layer effect for the cover or the book.

I created a mock up to see how it would look like if the circle is cut.

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revealing only part of the picture. Emphases on “time and cycle”

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Effect after having the tracing paper. The words will be right beside the clock needle

However, after consultation with Prof Ina, she gave alot of wonderful ideas and also suggested me to add a few more pages to beef up my zine. We played around with this full page spread and created a few interesting pages to add into my zine

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while i was drawing and painting this, i did have the idea of it being able to work as an whole painting, but also by individual parts of the painting. I am glad that this would be able to be presented in my zine. It also acts adds variation of pages in my zine.

After adding the page of tracing paper, i still have 4 pages that are empty.

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And then,  I realised that there was still a piece of watercolour that I forgot to include in my current zine. I added in the hummingbird drawing. I was very concerned by the empty page before my final page, which had content on. My final page has a feather that had dropped and landed. I decided to make my past page a page where the feathers are floating. I drew and painted another piece and it fits beautifully to my layout.

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