Relax, don’t cram

Hello, everyone! First things first, here’s wishing you a Happy “Goat” Xi Fa Cai. Do excuse the bad pun, just wishing everyone a happy and good Year of the Sheep! It’s a new year and a new start – our chance to do better, keep our heads up and move ahead.

One of the biggest lessons I learnt at the School of Art, Design & Media (ADM) last semester is don’t cram all your studio modules into one semester. You will NEVER have the time to finish all of them. So a heads-up to my ADM juniors! 😀 But apart from that, I thoroughly enjoyed the last semester, especially my Applied Drawing and Art History classes. They made learning all the more interesting.

During my lessons in Applied Drawing, we were taught to notice the smaller details and capture what we see in a different way. For example, sometimes when we draw an object, it can look a little weird. Try a different approach by drawing the “negative” shapes instead. By doing so, we capture the forms around the area, rather than just focusing on the object itself – another way to achieve the end goal.

Art History lessons are well… HISTORY lessons! Perhaps in another blog post, I’ll go deeper into that. But for now, let’s just say it provides a deeper understanding of culture, which all artists need to be keenly aware of, especially if we want to design something with a particular “feel”.

In just one semester, we’ve seen so many new buildings popping up around campus. We now have the new Pioneer and Crescent residential halls and the upcoming buildings along the South Spine like the new learning hub. This really shows that time flies by in a blink of an eye!

Over the past few months, apart from drawing, I’ve been catching up on recently trending Japanese anime, games and Korean webtoons. In a way, these act as a source of inspiration for some of my own work, from conceptualisation to character design. So for those who say reading comics and playing online games is a waste of time… well, I disagree with that statement! Haha.

Frankly, if we were to look deeper into the nature of games, comics and webtoons, they’re all storytelling mediums. And experiencing them in their various forms, I have learnt to appreciate different “storytelling” styles as well as discover my own style. One very good anime I watched a long time ago is Full Metal Alchemist. Believe it or not, I think it’s one of the greatest stories ever written. Given the choice, I’d definitely pick this story over a full literary analysis! Perhaps one day, I’ll dedicate a whole blog post to comics, cartoons and games. 😀

With that said, I’m looking forward to posting more blog updates again. And last but not least, here’s a little greeting card that I drew for all of you – have a good festive season!

YH

Cheers!