coffee

This is our local coffee.

Chinese brush painting - xieyi style

It looks easy drawing leaves and flowers like these. These are practice pieces done during my Chinese brush painting classes. The teacher does not teach. We have to copy the paintings in the textbook. The teacher looks over our shoulder and tells us if we have done it right and if not, we should try till we get it right. We produce drawing after drawing and when he says "okay" that's what we labour for. 

This painting below is an original. A friend liked this very much and I gave it to her.

Bamboo - Hide-and-seek series

 In a bamboo grove, children gather to play

a game of hide-and-seek.

 Zhao wo - Find me!

 

 Wo lai le! Counting to ten and I am coming!

 

 

Lai le - coming! 

 Ren ne? Where's everyone?

 Bamboo, alas there is peace.

 

The bamboo grove - the end.

Tree at Labrador Park

All sorts of ferns were growing on this tree with lovely buttress roots. Most times I just walk past trees like these taking for granted their majestic presence, not stopping to take in the details. This is why I like to draw because drawing is one way to appreciate the world we live in.

Teochew Opera

I was early for the Teochew Opera performance at the Food Centre at the Singapore Flyer. Nearer the time of the performance we were entertained by the opera musicians, most of whom were elderly and I was told that one of them was eighty years old. Since I was alone and did not have anyone to talk to, I decided to do some drawings using an ink-based pen. I use an ink pen because I like using strong lines to depict the subject of my drawing. The disadvantage is that I cannot make mistakes with such a pen.

 I started this drawing of the stage as I saw it from where I sat. I only filled in the actors later.

Gigantic Bowl of noodles

The bowl was huge. I couldn't really see the food. Sometimes you have to catch people's attention with something bizarre to make an impression.

Old Kallang Airport Road Food Centre

A family with two boys were having breakfast while in the background was part of a queue for the Lor Mee at Old Kallang Airport Food centre.

Sweet Osmanthus Tea

I live the moment looking at this pot of 

Osmanthus flower tea

 Osmanthus Fragrans  (桂花)
and I live the moment
savouring the sweet fragrance of
this tea in surroundings that make
me feel at home
Sweet Osmanthus fragrance
tea with a friend.

Drawings in the past fortnight

View from a Hotspring Hotel in Wulai, Taiwan.

View of a three-storey teahouse in Jiufen, Taiwan from the window of another teahouse where my friend and I relaxed over fragrant osmanthus tea.

View from the waiting area of the Bus station in the Shuishe Visitor Centre, Sun Moon Lake, Taiwan. Incomplete because the bus came before I could finish the drawing.

Hotspring Hotel in Wulai, Taiwan.

Local coffee cafe on the second level of Suntec City, Singapore. Two 'aunties' having kaya toast and coffee and having a good chat.

Singapore Flyer Food Centre

Singapore's latest happening makan place at the premises of the Singapore Flyer.

Whatever will be will be

Nothing can describe what it is like to draw. There are no words, just a feeling of happiness. Nothing can describe the mundane action of repetition but at times the result can be pleasing.

Leaves

Leaves. Leave me. Leave so that I can focus.

Food Republic sketch

Sometimes I do not really want to eat. I just want to sit down and chill. Today was such a day. It did not bother me that seated on my left was a Japanese family trying out different types of local dishes and to my left were five aunties speaking in Hokkien with smatterings of English. I just kept my focus on the stall in front of me to the left.

I started by writing the Chinese characters that I saw on my notebook because I did not know some of them and wanted to check them out using my electronic dictionary when I got home.

Then I decided that the food stall to the left which was a beef noodle stall was the most interesting and started to draw whatever that could fit into the remaining space on my notebook.

Random drawings

For the record, I did these in December just playing around with my imagination, stretching it a little to see how these flowers would look if they are given colours that are out of this world:

Feathers - I always thought they would make great designs on clothing.

Drawings made from a book on Chinese artifacts in the Shang Dynasty. One way to learn about history or anything you are interested in is through drawing. Of course one must like to draw to start with.

In my next life, I want to be either a botanist or a historian. Then again an architect, a photo journalist for National Geographics are also attractive options. If I may ask for more, then perhaps an artist, a singer but never a doctor, a lawyer or an accountant because I would have fainted at the sight of blood, got sick of arguing with people or just simply have migraines looking at numbers.

Bukit Timah Hill

Somewhere there is Bukit Timah Hill hidden behind a leaf I had found interesting to draw earlier. If you look for the familiar communication towers, the body of water that had filled up over the years in the abandoned granite quarry and the craggy face of the exposed hill now covered by pockets of vegetation, this drawing might finally make sense.