Just another Open Source Studio site
Myself as an artist. Always got the ideas in my head but I can’t get them on paper.
Myself as a dragon. Dragons don’t need to have wings! I’m acrophobic so I’d never fly if I were a dragon. Majestic border for a majestic dragon.
Transformation! I used a reference photo I found on pinterest for the frogs.
Painting this was really fun. While I was painting this, my dad joined me and painted one himself! I’ve attached his version below.
One issue I faced while painting this was managing the colours to increase the depth. I had to tone down the colours of the lavender at the back or it’d lack depth.
My inspiration: my neighbourhood. My house is quite near a forest area, and has a big canal running through it. On rainy days, the canal just looks like a river surrounded by lush greenery. My neighbourhood does not have lavender flowers unfortunately, but it’s one of my favourite flowers every since visiting Australia a few years ago. My best memory was driving past a lavender field with the windows open.
My work:
My dad’s work:
Same design, different colour scheme, different moods. For this work, I first printed the black design, then went past the point of no return and printed the colour backgrounds. It was honestly quite stressful hahaha. Aligning them as perfect as I can and getting the best ink printed.
I actually did experiment with some colour lino printing when doing the B&W one, but I used 2 lino boards instead of 1.
My inspiration: Bob Ross paintings. His paintings always had a mountain, some trees and the sky. It was only through his videos I watched a few years back that I realised how much colour can change the mood of a painting. Just a little hint of orange can tell us it’s in the evening. Purple, maybe it’s going to rain, or maybe the sun’s rising?
For this work, I have it as (top to bottom):
sunset, sunrise, clear 10am sky
This work was THE most time consuming work for this module. The difficulty of controlling the etching needle coupled with the complex detailed pattern required so much focus and work. I wanted it to be as precise as possible.
My inspiration: Bug videos on YouTube. I was inspired by a bee hive. The operations in a beehive may seem busy, complex and messy, but in fact, they have an organised system that allows them to create beautiful (albeit trypophobic-inducing) honey comb patterns.
Hence, I used the structure of the honeycomb, and filled them with different patterns that I got inspiration from Japanese intricate patterns.
Here are my prints:
. 
First print above. Didn’t like how it was uneven at the top edge. Also, some details were not showing.
Second and final print above. Yessss! Love the even colour distribution across the pattern. I also scratched out more material before this print to get some of the details to show better. Turned out great! It’s now displayed in my bedroom 🙂
The process:
Feeling great! Excited to see the end product
What did I get myself into………………………………………………….. Around 4 hours to get to this stage. I spent quite some time experimenting with the needle. What’s the best way to hold the needle? Which angle for less strain on my thumb? For straight lines?
Regretting my life choices… Stayed up real late to do this. But they weren’t deep enough to get the print nice and dark.
finally………….. i think i only slept 3 hours before art class that day…. ok but to be fair, i did procrastinate sooooo….
This exercise I did when I was at home, together with my mom. We kept alternating with each other and separately completed the following:
We spent around 1.5 hours in total doing it. My mom loved it and it was great fun looking at the different characters we made. I’ve also attached my mom’s version below. She recently learnt to draw mandela art, so most of her backgrounds have mandela components in them.
Title of each character (L to R)
1st row: (1) Mom? That you? (2) Shy Girl Next Door (3)”Didn’t think stealing a cookie’d get me into THIS much trouble!”
2nd row: (4) Big Boob Betty (5) Submission! Quizzes! Finals! (6) That was funny, wasn’t it?
3rd row: (7) Huh? (8) Long-legged Besties (9) My Head’s a Piece of Bread?
Story:
There once was a timid, gentle, eloquent girl named betty (2) who had a crush on the school’s most athletic boy, Jovan. Jovan could do anything! He could study, run,cook…He was THE guy in school. Popular, he had many friends, but not all of his friends were good. Jovan lost a bet and was forced (say no to peer pressure!!!!!) to steal 1 cookie from the nearby stall. Well, the store manager called the cops and he soon was running away from the police car (3). Yikes, those legs were made for running, but not running from the cops! Jovan got sent to jail and that broke Betty’s heart. Trying to mend her bleeding heart, Betty drank and went to parties. The once school shy girl with the big specs soon wore revealing clothes, showing off her big boobs (4). Months later, Jovan came out and found out about Betty. They eventually spent a night together but was woken up by the smell of bread. To his horror, he was turning into bread! (9)
1 – One chilly night, a man decided to embark on an adventure
2 – Venturing through a bamboo forest,
3 – and scaling mountains softly it by the moonlight,
4 – he stumbled upon a torii, a traditional Japanese gate.
5 – As he walked through the gate and up a flight of stone paved stairs,
6 – a shrine emerged from a distance.
7 – Rows and rows of lanterns gently lit up the corridor.
8 – He entered the shrine’s doors,
9 – and prayed to a Shinto god.
Starting with the fascination of small timeless Japanese shrines hidden in nature, I wanted to depict a tranquil night scene in Japan.
This is a simple story of exploration being a process of ones enlightenment. Many a times, we are confined in our own little bubble of believing things that we want to hear. If we rush, we miss out on things, despite them being near us. Even in the busy Japan streets, only by slowing down and exploring, then we can learn more and understand different perspectives. With different views, then we can get a clearer picture.
Here is the pencil sketch of my idea:
Started by drawing out the design using a ball point pen. The challenge i faced was drawing a circle as perfect as I could with no tools but a ruler. It was also pretty tough getting the cats as even as possible with occupying half the circle. While designing the pattern on the cats, I had to take into account how the pattern can affect the features of the cat. In order to bring the eyes out, the patterns around the eye had to be streamlined such that the shape of the eye is visible.
Here’s the B&W print that I like. Even distribution of colour.
My first time experimenting with colour on lino cuts. Turned out really well. Loved how the red is the fierce shadow of the cat.
Popeye the sailor man! Here, he isn’t really a sailor man, but more of a papaya?
How I came to think of this story was when I was amazingly helping my mom cook dinner at home. I’ve never stepped foot into the kitchen, and I was tasked to do the most important thing, which was to cook rice. I spotted some grains of uncooked rice behind our rice container, and started thinking, wow it must be sad for that grain of rice.. It took so much energy and resources for it’s parent plant to painstakingly (at least what I think happens) grow out this one grain of rice, and through the process of harvesting, milling and packaging, there is always that possibility of it getting wasted. I just had to wonder, “How would I feel if I was that grain of rice? I’ve gone through so much just to be forgotten.”
Well, now that I think about it, it was a really uneducated thought hahaha. I could’ve been thinking about food waste, but there I was, afraid of hurting the feelings of a non-living grain of rice.
So that led to this, showing how happy a papaya seed would be if it were to be successful. Enjoy
This papaya starts stranded in the middle of the ocean. How, when or why it got there was a mystery. How this papaya can float in water, is also a mystery.
In this papaya, there lie an weary papaya seed. Stuck floating in this seemingly endless ocean, and probably forgotten by the rest of the world, what would her future hold?
Guess that papaya lucked out. It manages to reach land away from a dangerous erupting volcano.
Shocked by reaching land, the seed became happy. She saw some hope. Her growth into a papaya seed was not going to be wasted.
Tok tok tok.
The bird pecks at the papaya and ingests the seed. Would this be the end of her life? Digested or not, the seed was already happy to be of good use by giving the bird some nutrition.
Instead, the bird poops the seed out. Life is always full of surprises, isn’t it?
The seed finds herself in the middle of a forest. With surrounding water and nutrients, the seed spreads it’s roots deep into the ground. This is one ambitious seed. She’s going to grow into a big strong tree and she knows it.
Finally, the adult tree grows up. Providing her surroundings with resources, this tree is contended, and even works to produce papaya seeds herself.
Colour wheel!! I tried to make it as clean as possible :’)
Exercise 1: The top one was the one I first created, but the difference in dull/bright of the red square wasn’t as big as I wanted. Hence, I created the second one. I chose a colour closer to orange. I also darkened the blue, which is opposite in the colour wheel, to try to make the orange seem brighter.
Exercise 2: Here I’ve experimented with another colour. I think this came out pretty successful as the green square looks like a brighter shade on the left.
For my future self: