For last week’s class, we did memory sketches – closing our eyes, visualising a piece of memory related to the emotion given, and letting our hands take over. It wasn’t an easy exercise for me as I am accustomed to putting things behind, hahaha. And I have a gold fish memory too.
angryhappysad
To sum it up, here are some attributes I’ve observed for each of the emotions:
Hey thereeee. For last last week’s class, we experimented and had fun with ink!
Let’s talk about lino cut first. The lino was surprisingly difficult to slice, but carving wise, it was okay for me. Unsure of what to carve, I somehow decided to carve words as I’ve been a bit into calligraphy lately.
Yes, it did occur to me that the words would come out mirrored……. But I was too easily convinced (by Kai that it wouldn’t be mirrored, we had a short debate and we both ended up carving words) and decided to just do it anyway.
I wasn’t very happy with what I carved, but I liked the effect of the first print – spreading ink, and then removing bits of the ink by scraping over with a fork. And hey, flipping over the mirrored print, it says ‘qawn hea’, like some sort of secret code. Hopefully I’ll get an opportunity to work with lino again, this time, with a clearer idea of what I want to do.
Next up, mark making! For most of the class, we were experimenting with rollers, the mark making tools that we brought to class, and black ink. I bought a ton of random stuff to experiment with. Some turned out well, some not so. But I did end up with a lot of newsprint paper.
Here’s a pic of some of my mark making tools!
Attached below is a collective of all the marks I’ve made. It’s unfortunate that I didn’t manage to get much process photos because my hands were covered in black ink most of the time. We also went back one day after class to make more marks.
For this week, I am looking at choosing a few relatable marks and developing them further.
A whole newsprint dedicated to experimenting with stringsManaged to try out the chinese ink during round 2. It is much more watery as compared to the black ink – so I tried to just drip and let the ink flow down
We found white ink somewhere and managed to experiment with it too!
Hey there! Last week we blogged about our trip to Thieves’ Market, this week, it’s time to realise what we’ve envisioned – making an animal out of junk (there probably is a nicer word for this, but let’s be realistic, they are junk).
I wanted to make a bird, and here it is!
I was initially unsettled at first as I thought that the materials I had scavenged wasn’t enough or ideal, but I am pretty happy with my end product!
I started off with the giant spoon and the tail feathers, cutting up pipe for the feathers. I liked how they turned out and how I could organise them differently for the feathers to fan out differently. During the process, I also noticed how you cut the pipe (inner/outter) affects how it curls (outwards or downwards).
I knew I wanted to use the forks for the legs. Initially I was afraid to bend them in fear of breaking them. Being careful not to over bend and break the utensils, I made the decision to pose the legs apart, so the sculpture can stand and look more dynamic all at the same time solving my initial problem. It is regretful that one of the toe broke as I was trying to pose it to look like it was propping up.
Aaaand meep meep! It looks like the road runner!
I knew the creature I had in mind existed, but I couldn’t find what it was until I actually started with the sculpture.
The general idea of how I wanted to use the materials maintained, though the head and base of the sculpture were pretty much impromptu.
Let’s talk a tad more about the base which I thought was a rather smart and resourceful solution. I needed something to hold the forks, so I was walking around class scavenging for something someone didn’t need. I found the left over metal bowl of a tea-light candle – perfect! Cutting two slits on opposite sides, I slid the forks in and topped it with hot glue.
Ah yes, not to mention, initially my bird had door knocks for wings, but I deemed them unnecessary because without them, my idea was still conveyed and after all, less is more, right?
The whole project was stuck together by hot glue gun, which worked amazingly well. However, I could have been much more careful with it (to avoid screaming profanities as the hot glue touches my skin), as well as improving the workmanship of the sculpture.
All in all, this project was fun to make and it turned out surprisingly well, in my opinion.
I was really rather clueless with all these junk that I procured at first.
Bull’s Head by Picasso
Last but not least, this sculpture was really cool. With more practice, perhaps my project could also have been way more abstract.
Aaaand up and onto the bandwagon of adding -ization behind words.
For our first 4D Project, we were tasked to create images with the use of addition, subtraction, substitution, and superimposing. I was a little confused at first because of how these four methods seem to overlap, but here is what I managed to come up with!
Addition – When I first thought of the concept of ‘addition’, I thought it could be ‘adding something where it isn’t supposed to be’. A bare hand in the middle of a crowded bush, that’s not something you see every day! It signifies how men appeared in nature out of no where, soiled their hands and plucked plants out with all our urbanization. Are human beings supposed to be here?
Subtraction – Double subtraction – subtracting the other parts of the animal to emphasise on the focal point, and a literal subtraction of the fur. There is a story behind every picture, and doesn’t it make you wonder why / what?
Substitution – Substituting regular sun glasses with rose-tinted ones for the phrase, ‘seeing the world through rose tinted glasses’. It also prompted a series of the next few images, which involved idioms and body parts.
Addition / Super impose – A literal image illustrating ‘I’m all ears’.
Superimpose – A literal image illustrating ‘My lips are sealed’.
For the series of images, the body parts / idioms chosen are tied to the phrases, see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.
Superimpose – Something fun, combining my love for the superhero world and reality, complete opposites. Will this ever come true? Will they blend well together? And how will people react?
To me, it seems like the way I executed this project was of rather stark contrast to how others did it. I’ve found out that the way I tackled it was a lot more literal, as compared to the majority of deep and abstract pieces my classmates presented. Perhaps it is a ‘style’ that I’ve come to realise, but for future projects, I would like to explore more abstract possibilities as creating abstract art has always been a challenge to me.
Another thing I realised was, as like my personality, the explanation to my pieces are a lot more open-ended, hoping to trigger questions instead of having a ‘final message’ behind images. Perhaps this is because of the myriad of life and philosophical questions I seem to have, and my belief of how things can be interpreted differently (aha, semiotics?).
This project consisted of a lot of self-discovery for me, surprisingly, especially in terms of style. It was fun to make after getting through the confusion (of the various terms)!
Edit: Too bad they don’t appear as videos! Clicking the links will download it, but really, they’re nothing much, just my Snapchat story.
As a starting point, the class went down to the infamous Thieves Market, the largest and oldest flea market in Singapore where there were tons of old parts and second hand goods up for grabs. I’ve always seen this place on TV and thought it was pretty cool, but have never found time or reason to visit it. Despite the blazing, blazing sun, it was fortunate that we got to visit it now because the market is scheduled to make way for the Jalan Besar MRT by 2017. When we visited, the market has already been reduced from it’s original size.
Here we go, first stop – where the class gathered was a physical store before delving into the Thieves market. Nice Uncle 1 sold lots of stuff, both old and new. A short conversation with the uncle also revealed that he was surprised that that many students (9 classes) are studying arts nowadays.
Moving on to the actual Thieves market. Some said they’re selling junk that you already have at home, but really, there were all sorts of stuff. Yes, those are ice skates! They look pretty new too. I wonder where they came from. I would have asked the seller but uncles were busy playing poker.
There were quite a variety of characters at the Thieves market, mostly made of the older generation. Some were nice, some not so. There was a beautiful parrot at the end of the market and when I tried to take a picture of it, I was not-so-nicely told to “EH DON’T TAKE PHOTO, THE PARROT SCARED!!!” by a kid probably aged around 11-13? The adult at the same stall also went on with a 5 minute rant on “don’t know why Chinese Chinese all like to take photo”.
Aaaand nearby the parrot-stall was where we met Nice Uncle 2! Really the uncle was the nicest person I’ve met around the market and it’s regretful that I didn’t get a photo of him or his stall. We were browsing and I am pretty sure we didn’t look like we were gonna get anything, but Uncle did something we never expected. He took out three packets of tissue and handed one to each of us and told us to wipe our sweat. Waaaaah soooo nice of him. Because of the service, it prompted us to take a closer look at his goods. We picked up some trinkets and asked how much it costed, but uncle said just take it! It was a nice closure to the end of the day. Faith in humanity, restored.
So here’s my take-away! Yes I broke something (typical ST) so I had to buy it, Auntie charged me $10 for it and I didn’t dare to haggle because I broke part of a set. But it’s a challenge to make something out of it!
I don’t think I have all the parts I would need, but I think making feathers out of transparent pipe would be pretty cool.
I am the supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Shi Teng and here’s a distorted picture of my face (note flying hair) with a drawing of super-me done by Celine!
The super power I would like to have is Telekinesis and my super hero name would be eSTee. That’s my initials spelt out, which happened to make a cool English name for my commonly and unfortunately mis-pronounced Chinese name.
Thank you VanessaT for vigorously fanning my hair for this shot. #gotmyback
Edit: Maybe Estinesis would make a more hero superhero name.
