by ·0 Comments

TASK 1
Object and representation of self

This simple cheap ring was bought from those places that rented out boxes for people to sell their products. Why would something as plain and normal be something of significance to me? It’s because my grandmother gave it to me as a random gift.

A simple plastic ring made up of a twisted arrow.

My grandmother is very dear to me, she’s been taking care of me since I was born and I can’t imagine growing up without her. She’s been a constant part of my life, every day and every night I greet her and say goodnight. It’s the little things that show genuineness.

Wistful.

It’s kind of silly but the feeling of having this constant on my index finger comes off really comforting to me. I fidget a lot. I have a terrible habit of picking at my fingers, even when I’m not nervous or anything at all. The ring? It helps a lot, I end up toying with it, twisting, pulling off and putting it on whenever I’m trying to focus. While it does act as a great fidgeting tool, it does unwind me. Life is stressful, sometimes it’s just nice to sit and contemplate things you know? A long look, an unconscious twist, it makes me reminisce and think about what I could be doing better, or even just to relax and revel in past memories. Super glad I haven’t dropped it into a random drain with my fumbling fingers.

A constant.

Inspired by Rengim Mutevellioglu’s nostalgia-inducing photographs, I attempted to bring out the sentimentality in my own photos with what I learnt by studying her work.

For the general look, I used muted tones and this controlled contrast that’s present consistently in her photos. The overall contrast of the photos aren’t too strong, but when it comes to shadows, they get darker and harsher. It creates this old, vintage look that tugs at your nostalgia.

The 2nd shot’s a full body interaction shot. The perspective lines from the roof of the shelter and the path point towards me and the ring, bringing attention. By positioning myself towards one half of the shot, it leaves a void, a space that feels like longing.

The final shot is a close up interaction shot, with the ring as the point of interest. Wanting to create the illusion of movement, the hand is angled a little as it tangles slightly in my hair, but the ring remains a still constant in the shot. It stands out, being in the central position, contrasted by the shadowed background.

 

TASK 2
My World

Fuchun Primary School, where I started growing into my own shell. This place probably houses all my earliest prominent memories, it was an eventful kid life. Fun fact! The school in these photos isn’t actually my ‘first’ school. I spent half my primary school life in the older school, which still rests at the same place, deserted and so worn down. My remaining 3 years were in this one instead.

The ol’ hang out.

It’s the weekend; school’s out, students out. Nobody’s in or even around the school, it was serene and so quiet in comparison to the lively, chaotic weekdays. This spot was the void deck opposite the main gate that students liked loitering and chilling at.

Repainted, renewed.

I realised I never actually saw the school clearly from afar before, so I went up to the highest floors of the surrounding HDB flats to check the view. It didn’t hit me until then that the school had actually renovated slightly and has a new paint job! The bright colours are so modern and fresh, it bittersweetly reminded me just how many years has passed since I graduate from there.

Quiet.

The neighbourhood rests, along with everyone else. It’s extremely relaxing by simply watching the clouds float idly by with these sentimental buildings filling my sight. I’ve been in this neighbourhood for my whole life, and honestly I haven’t felt so soothed and calmed here. I should do this more often.

Architectural and scenic photographs are very intriguing to me, especially the way Arkos Major shoots his. Trying and hopefully, successfully, incorporating his lighter yet also muted tones into my own photos, I managed to make the shots feel nostalgic and a bit more personal.

The 1st shot was taken in a tilted lower angle to show more of the bottle and how the school is ‘away’ in the background, since the focus is how this is a place students spent time outside of school, after school.

2nd shot was simply to show a bird’s eye view of the school, this colourful yet old, sentimental space holding many memories. The added ledge as the foreground made it more visually pleasing.

Last shot is a flat shot, showing just a lining of buildings and the nearby foresty area, the top stretching wide with a cloudy blue sky. This conveys more of the underlying emotions. It’s a peaceful, slower moving neighbourhood, like the clouds.

by ·0 Comments

For this particular assignment, since we are supposed to take photographs of things and places that are of significance to us, I’ve settled on focusing on bringing out the sentimentality. Before jumping to shooting for the project, I did some research for inspiration!

RESEARCH

RENGIM MUTEVELLIOGLU

http://www.rengim.com/shoots

http://www.rengim.com/shoots

Rengim’s photos have this unmistaken feeling of amenity, a soft kindling of something nostalgic with her usage of duller, muter tones. With these comforting colours, it truly expresses the softness of sentimentality.
The depth of view and chiaroscuro effects are combined seamlessly, making the photographs seem untouched and pure.

I really enjoyed browsing through her gallery, every piece had its very own unique warm, content feeling.

AKOS MAJOR

http://www.photographyoffice.com/blog/2014/9/minimalist-waterscapes-by-akos-major-photography

http://www.designstudio210.com/2013/05/on-the-wall-photographer-akos-major/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Akos had an eye for minimalistic shots that showed little, without losing its impact. Looking at his photographs, you just feel so serene and at peace. There’s not much happening usually, but the flatness and negative spaces he leaves gives this feeling that hey, there’s much more but this is what you see, and you will feel calmed.

Similar to Rengim, he uses slightly weaker tones and hues too, maximising the feeling of peace and quiet sentiments.

PROCESS

All I used for this assignment was my trusty Samsung S8+ camera and a friend as a tripod! (thanks man)
I’ll mostly be editing the lighting and a little of the hues with Photoshop after selecting the final 3 photos for each task.

For Task 1, I chose a ring my dearest grandmother bought for me from those rental box shops! It’s nothing much, but it means a lot to me.

CLOSE UPS

Close up test shots of the ring. I used a background that contrasted with the ring, especially since it’s a tiny object, I wanted it to pop out and avoid blending and disappearing from the viewer’s focus.

FULL BODY with the object

Full body shots ended up being mostly fail shots as my chosen object is way too small to be seen or focused on in these shots. But I still tried to convey the feeling of sentiment from the posing, although not proving to be as effective as the object of interest isn’t really obvious.

FULL BODY interacting with object

Similarly to the earlier full body shots, the ring is really small in the photos. However, compared to the earlier shots, with the simple act of interacting with the ring, it shows that there’s actually something there for the viewer to see.

MID-RANGE
 

Mid-range shots have a slightly more personal feeling. With the closeness but not too close either, it gives off this feeling of understanding.

These shots worked better in showing the nostalgic emotions, hopefully making some sort of a subtle connection between photo and the person viewing.

 

 

CLOSE UP of interacting with object

The close up interaction shots gave decent results I felt. They just felt way closer, personal and it really brings the ring into focus.

The ring is shown clearer and minor actions and details and be seen and portray some expression and maybe a little implication of a story?

After looking through all the shots, I prefer the full body interactive ones the most, but I’ll edit them and see how it all turns out!

 

 

For Task 2, I went to my primary school and the general neighbourhood area around it.

As it was a weekend when I went to take these photos, the school was obviously closed. It was really quiet and I couldn’t really get in to shoot. So I improvised and just went around taking photos of the routes and places I used to go or just hang around at.

I went up a few HDB blocks trying to take some top down shots of the school and the neighbourhood and I’m glad the weather that day was really nice.

All in all, some of the shots ended up a little off, with the emotion not being conveyed properly, being blurry, odd angles that just didn’t work out. But they were all just learning points in the end, and a few turned out decent enough for post processing, so there’s that. It was a little hard taking photos with just a phone and no actual tripod but with what I have, I’ll have to make do!

by ·2 Comments

CONTRAST was the theme I drew from the box.

What exactly is Contrast? It happens when various aspects are obviously different from each other, causing juxtaposition a.k.a contrast.

With that in mind, I attempted to construct sketch models, each consisting of 3 different boxes that varied in size and lengths. I also tried to make sure every view would be different and still work with the theme Contrast.

WK 1 SKETCH MODEL 1

As shown are 3 different views that show different ways the boxes are laid out.

The drawn-on boxes are categorised this way:
BLACK: The bridge or the connector, in a way
RED & BLUE: The Contrasting parts of the model
—
D: Dominant
SD: Sub-dominant
SO: Subordinate

As you can see, each view has it’s own unique sense of how the boxes are balanced together, however still retaining the sense of Contrast. For example, in the 2nd View, the Blue box is laid horizontally and is stockier while the Red is upright and slimmer; showing the juxtaposition in its elements. This reflects on the other views too, with the Black box being the one that joins both as a singular model.

A mistake on my part, I forgot to apply the principle of Dominant, Sub-dominant, Subordinate while making these 2 sketch models. As you can see from each photo, each box does not have a stable, assigned role of being either Dominant, Sub-dominant or Subordinate. I’ll be rearranging and editing the models after attempting to implement this principle.

WK 1 SKETCH MODEL 2

The colour legends here is the same as above!

The main difference between Model 1 and 2 is that Model 2 over here, has a smaller, thinner Black box acting as the connector of the 2 contrasting parts, and 2 different boxes switch between being a connector and contrasting part.

With a constant bridge, the contrasting parts become less subtle, bringing out the difference. Like in the 2nd View, the Red box is way larger compared to the Blue which extends horizontally out from the main body. Thus, contrast is made with the difference in size and also alignment.

Similarly to Model 1, the principle of Dominant, etc, isn’t fully applied here. I’ll be editing this model as well.

WK 2 SKETCH MODEL 1

After consultation and thinking, I decided to make the green box even smaller and thinner by using foam, to enhance the contrast in sizes between the boxes. It becomes the subordinate, being the smallest.

Materials wise, maybe the Maki-san box could be translucent and made of acrylic? While the smallest box could be wood and the biggest box could be something of a darker colour, plain texture, to bring out more attention to the 2 smaller boxes so there’ll be more interest in the contrast.


WK 2 SKETCH MODEL 2

For this model, I remade the pocky box into a much slimmer and shorter foam block, so it’ll look more like a sub-dominant as it’s supposed to be.

For materials, the transparent box could remain transparent. The pocky box could be made of something metallic, and the cookie box could be wood? I’m not too sure yet.

FOAM MODEL TECHNIQUES

Wedging ideas

It was a little tough deciding between cradling, wedging and piercing or just simply glueing surface to surface for the models. But I’d like to try mostly wedging the boxes together, hoping to create a more ‘fit together‘ look but still retaining the ‘Contrast‘ aspect showing. Anyway, I did some quick sketches of the wedging idea I had in mind to try for the next model.

 

by ·2 Comments

WK 2 In-Class Experimentation
We got our hands dirty, tables messy but we got to get cracking on our mark making! Playing around and experimenting with black inks was honestly really entertaining, especially when you’re just trying out something and the results end up surprising you in all the good ways. 4 hours spent, 4 hours of productivity!

End results:

Tadaa! All of that was created with block printing ink, Chinese calligraphy ink and various different random objects found in daily life! Pretty cool that with just some black ink and random things you can make so many diverse prints, am I right?

I’ll talk about some more interesting techniques and marks I managed to accidentally discover while literally just fooling around with simple ideas.

Rubber band: dragging

Rubber band: snapping

RUBBER BANDS
Something as plain as a rubber band can be utilised in more than just 1 way.

It’s flexible and stretchy, making it easier to manipulate it to create different shapes and thus, different marks. I tried simply dragging the rubber band around and it created this tumble-y, merged chaos of ink. Whilst when I chose to snap it against the newsprint, it created another effect: sharp, aggressive lines that made tiny splashes at the end, along with a solid circular marks as it lands and retains its original shape.

 

Palette Knife: creating strokes

PALETTE KNIFE
Who decided that palette knives were only for mixing paints?

Palette knives make decent inking tools I realised, with their sharp tip and diamond-shaped surface. It can create both thin, precise marks and also thicker, smudgier marks.

 

 

Lip balm: Mixing

LIP BALM
I wanted to try something that had a stronger slightly 3D-esque texture, something
that isn’t basically just ink on paper. So I mixed ink with another substance, which is an unwanted lip balm here.

Okay, it does look slightly gross but hey you end up with a nice, creamy texture! It definitely draws more intrigue, being a mark that isn’t just black ink.

Though, using this pinkish lip balm meant that some colouration stuck; it’d be better to add more black ink to ensure it’s just grayscale.

Lip balm texture

Applying the Clear Nail Polish

NAIL POLISH
Most techniques include ‘addition‘ of ink to create marks. What about ways to create a mark that’s the negative of the ink, if that makes sense.

The clear nail polish clearly (pun intended) refrained the ink from being absorbed by the newsprint, leaving a whitish, clear mark of whatever mark it made before applying the black ink! By patting it with a tissue before it dries removes excess ink and the mark becomes more obvious.

 

Clear Nail Polish: 🙂

Bubble: Printing

BUBBLES
This part was the most fun for me, I can’t remember the last time I played with bubbles! I mixed soapy water with the black inks, but I had to continuously balance it out by adding more soap as more ink made it less bubbly. Took a while to achieve a satisfactory monochrome tone!

First I tested out by blowing bubbles into a small container and pressed the newsprint on top of them, resulting in a clean-cut, circular print with many overlapping spheres of various opacities and sizes in it.

Bubble Print

Bubbles: Blowing directly onto newsprint

Another thing I did was blowing bubbles straight onto the newsprint with a straw. There’s slightly more control this way as you can choose where to place the bubble. However the size and opacity of the bubble is kind of random, but it still makes nice circular pops of ink.

 

 

Bubble: Picking up with finger

Scooping the inky bubbles was just for fun at first, but hey idea! Next thing I did was to just gently place it down, making sure the bubbles pop properly and not end up as just 1 big splotch of ink. Turns out, it makes this interesting cluster of irregular round shapes? It looks like something organic, something that belongs under the microscope, cells and tissues.

 

WK 3 In-Class & Own time Experimentation
Okay more experimenting!

In-Class End Results:

FOOT

Foot painting + toes printing

Am I a real artist now that I’ve used my foot and toes for the sake of art? I’m kidding, but not the foot part. I picked up a brush and just let my foot do its thing. It was definitely sporadic and hard to control, if you thought using your non-master hand was hard, well there’s this.

Foot: Painting

Foot: Toe printing

 

There’s no rooted pattern or rhythm as you can see from the finished piece. Fun though, will recommend, will try again.

 

 

POWDER
So far I’ve tried mostly markmaking on a white background with darker mediums. Fragrant powder is a white powdery medium, which made it suitable for trying something different with a darker base.

Powder: Puffing from bottle

First, I painted the strip entirely black, using the still wet ink as a sticky base so that the powder can somewhat stay on and not simply get blown away, bye bye.
Then, I gently squeezed the bottle to puff out powder little by little, angling it to show movement and direction.

What you get is this slightly explosive texture that goes everywhere, but kind of with purpose, maybe.

Powder: Attempt 1

Above is the 1st attempt, but it didn’t convey its supposed emotion as much as I liked, which was ‘Astonishment‘. Here’s attempt 2, which turned out more effective woo.

Powder: Attempt 2

UHU Glue: Applying onto strip

UHU GLUE
Glue’s sticky and man, it can get so messy.

Which makes it perfect to just play around with while trying out weird textures.

UHU Glue: Messing it up with tissue

UHU Glue isn’t too tough to control but at the ends, it always has this extra unwanted drip that’ll leak out and cause extra splotches. For this case, it’s a good thing, making things more organic and untidy.

As it slowly dries and loses it’s adhesiveness, I quickly dabbed it with dirty inked up tissue and pulled it around, leaving bubbles and residue in the glue, gross. It further enhances the messy feeling.

 

UHU Glue: Attempt 1

I actually tried this twice, initially on white paper. It didn’t end up usable as the glue stains were barely visible. On a black base though, the transparent glue along with the ‘whitish’ bubbles and residue, made it pop out just enough.

UHU Glue: Attempt 2

Thread: Applying glue

THREAD
This was so tedious, I spent so much time placing every individual thread I watched like 3 episodes of a show while doing so. But at least it ended up just as I wanted, phew.

After putting strips of glue, I had to cut the thread to approximate lengths and place them down one by one. Repeat this cycle like at least a hundred times. why did i do this to myself

Thread: Look at this mess

When the entire thing is covered in just thread, trimming and clean up was done. Those stray ends were everywhere.

Thread: Making the gap

After cleanup, I pulled apart an area of the threading and glued them down, ensuring the white negative gap staying in position.

A loose, lonely, curly thread was added last over the gap. 

Overall it creates this controlled mood, but with a minor fault, a tiny piece of uncertainty?

Thread: Finished finally

Torn Paper: Tearing up

TORN PAPER

I ripped tissues and papers accidentally and thought oh, I could use this for something.

So I tore a hole and a smaller, receding shred on a black piece of paper, creating this effect of something tearing it open.

Torn Paper: Crumpled dirty tissues

 

 

Stuffing the empty space with crumpled, inked up tissues I used to clean up messes prior to this, it made a nice filling for the void. Pulling out some parts of the tissues, it looks like it’s ‘bursting’ out.

The dirtiness of it emphasises it even more.

Torn Paper: Finished

All of these were the more interesting techniques I tried and fooled around with while experimenting for this assignment! Now for the finalisation and making of the selected 6 emotions! 🙂

by ·0 Comments

1-Point Perspective

2-Point Perspective

3-Point Perspective

1-point perspective shows a single long, endless path stretching out.
For 2-point perspective, it creates a more spacial feeling compared to 1-point.
As for 3-point perspective, it’s similar to 2-point but since it has the added aspect of a bird’s/worm’s eye view, it makes the image look more vast and makes the viewer feel like part of the scenery.

Perspective creates the illusion of depth on a 2D, flat platform with the use of lines; visible and invisible.
With that said, lines exist to guide the viewer’s eyes along. In perspective, when 2 lines converge it creates a vanishing point, and that’s usually where the viewer’s focus will end up at.

by ·2 Comments

Portable hand sanitiser

For our class activity, I chose a portable hand sanitiser to present as an interesting 3D Object and learnt important 3D fundamentals just from analysing it!

3 interesting views: 

Side View

Top View

Bottom View

Let’s start off talking about the colours. The dominant colour is a bright shade of green, a visual cue that we usually relate to hygiene/health products and that is what the hand sanitiser is for: to clean and kill bacteria. Sub-dominantly, it has a translucent, colourless cap that contrasts the main body of green, to bring alternative focus upon it. Lastly, it has a splash of pinks and white on the print itself that brings attention to itself, which makes that a subordinate feature.

From first glance, the hand sanitiser might seem like a fairly simple small-sized object until you try to dissect it mentally into even simpler parts and pieces. As we’ve learnt, everything’s constructed by shapes, be it similar or differing shapes.

Shape Breakdown

The cap is a cylinder. The bottle’s a trapezoidal prism. The strap is made up of a triangle and an elongated cylinder with spherical bumps running along its length.

The hand sanitiser is actually both symmetrical and asymmetrical. The outlying factor causing asymmetry being the strap and the varying widths of the trapezoidal prism, both affecting the symmetry on the same plane.

Side X-axis: With the strap stretched tautly, it’s symmetrical

Side Y-axis: Asymmetrical ends

Top Y-axis: Symmetrical

The overall shape is pretty much static, the only exception being the strap extending from the main (heaviest volume) body of the hand sanitiser. The oddly shaped extension becomes the dynamic aspect that ‘pops out’ of the regular shape.

As for proportion, it’s made up of a cluster of contrasting volumes. The main bottle being around the L sized, the cap’s about S sized, the strap would be M sized and finally the small bulges along the strap will each be XS sized.

by ·0 Comments

Mark Making. What exactly is Mark Making? It’s basically the creation of any sort of marks made by any medium on some sort of canvas. These gestural marks purposefully create texture, lines and patterns. With such ‘simple’ marks, they do not fail to evoke emotions and thoughts from the viewer.

  • A single mark creates a dot.
  • An extended mark becomes a line.
  • A cluster of marks become a shape.
  • A series of repetitive marks become a pattern.
    Quoted: https://www.thoughtco.com/how-does-mark-making-affect-your-paintings-2577630

I enjoy the fact that Mark Making can be done with literally any medium, from just a simple pen or even smoke, which isn’t exactly the norm when it comes to art. It makes the process, well in a way, liberating and free as there aren’t any ‘rules’ set in stone and you can just experiment away!

Techniques
Although Mark Making does not have a set way to do it, there are some intriguing techniques that artists have used for it. I did some digging around and found a few various techniques that I personally found interesting!

FUMAGE
Creating art with smoke! The art pieces feel so intangible, just like the medium used. Steven Spazuk is a prominent fumage artist, one of his more impressionable works to me is shown below. It’s something slightly abstract in nature, but you can still feel the emotions resonating in the piece.

http://1aike31wshtt3k0e9u2nxtwz.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/steven-spazuk-8.jpg

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
Putting it simply, it’s abstract art that focuses mainly on an expressive and spontaneous act, a.k.a Action Art. This includes actions like paint splashing, an iconic technique done frequently by significant abstract artist Jason Pollock. Emphasised gestures and actions that express ideologies and emotions.

https://rocksmag.com/blog/artist-profile-jackson-pollock/

BUBBLE POPPING ART
This isn’t a revolutionary art technique, instead it’s considered kiddy and simple! That’s fine but Mark Making means any medium is considered a-okay right? So why not a childish medium? This idea popped (pun not intended) in my head while I was washing dishes and remembered that I used to blow soap bubbles as a kid. Every time they popped, they create a tiny explosion that splashes. This threw me into research of how I could use it for mark making.

It’s also an inexpensive way to create nice spherical textures, which suits my broke needs. (Art student life is the poor life)

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/e5/36/b8/e536b8f9990272f57dc3319ac252c3e9–d-street-art-charlotte.jpg

With research done, I’m excited to try out Mark Making hands on in class! I’ve noted the things I’ve decided to bring and the ways I could play around with below for personal reference. Hopefully I’ll be able to achieve the expressions I’m aiming for while discovering new things.

try to make them not just 2D, 3D: touch, perspective

STAPLES: bend, stack, align, twist. use staples to draw/paint
HAIR WAX: swirly, dab it, cementy? hair spray might harden it
HAIR SPRAY: setter/hardener, create a lil texture?
NAIL POLISH: create shine (transp), sleek, smooth
TOOTHBRUSH: sprinkle, drip, dab, scratchy
CHAPSTICK: smudge, lips? spread, crush
SOAP?: bubbles pop, put bubbles on paper, add paint wait dry, then pop bubbles to hopefully create a boomboom effect
              or at most just create some swirly texture
CLING: transparent but can create fine textures
             can wrap, layered on top of smth to create a barriered effect
SUCC SPROUTS: organic, swipe it, print it, cut to smaller pieces?
TOOTHPICKS: stack, align, chip or make them thinner, their splints can be used? 
WHITE GLUE: create patterns, texture, modify appearances of objects ( add shape etc )
STRING?: add many messy layers, but of a gradient effect? getting darker etc
PAPER/TAPE: paste and tear, create violent effect or smth, ripped
FINGERPRINTS: identity, control opacity, smudgey? u have 5 diff fingers to test