Category Archives: Art

Relax, don’t cram

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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. Continue reading →

Getting black and blue from watercolours

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Hello, everyone. It’s been a while! After a whole month of exams and assignments, I’ve spent the past couple of weeks cleaning up my room, after it became a dungeon of paint and paper during the busy end-of-term period.

In my earlier post, I shared with you what I learnt about landscape painting from my watercolour course at ADM, taught by Asst Prof Ng Woon Lam. During the course, I learnt that apart from technical skills, it’s important to know the basics of colour theory. This allows artists to select the best matching colours, hues and tones when painting.

I’m definitely not a “pro” at this, and despite all my ADM profs going through colour theory with me over and over again, I still sometimes give them a blank face. So it’s been a real challenge for me to improve the “colour” aspect of my watercolour paintings, since I’ve worked mostly in black and white with pens and pencils, like this sketch of Jiufen that I did during my recent visit to northern Taiwan.

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For someone more used to sketching, my first few watercolour paintings were an absolute disaster. You won’t see them here as I don’t wish to strain your eyes. Continue reading →

Look hues painting

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Hi, everyone! It’s been awhile since I wrote something related to school. In this post, I’ll be touching on something not new to most of us – watercolour painting.

My ADM professor, Asst Prof Ng Woon Lam, is a well-known watercolour painter in Singapore. He recently won his second Bronze medal from the American Watercolour Society.  I’m very inspired by his work.

Chen Yixi (1)

So, what is there to learn from watercolour painting? Quite a lot, as I recently found out from a module I’m taking that teaches watermedia landscape painting.

Continue reading →