My thoughts as I took these shots

I wanted to take pictures of West Coast Park that I had never taken before. This playground with a sea of white sand seemed like a lot of promised fun for kids except that it was not a weekend and the kids were at home studying for exams.
As I was framing this picture I could not help but think of Paris and I tried to imagine this being I.M Pei's glass pyramid at the Lourve Museum.
An invitation to jump, walk, dance - I wanted this photo to have that kind of appeal.

This shot was taken as I was walking around looking for something else to photograph. I thought that the patches of grass on the white sand plus the sprinklings of small leaves made the ground I walked on a visual treat.

I was attracted by the texture and patterns of the ropes. How best should I photograph them ? How could I present them as playthings calling out for attention instead of being content as mere props?
I was apprehensive about taking this picture when I realised how worn-out this particular rope looked from this angle. In the end, I decided that there is no perfection without imperfection and things or people are imperfect only because they are perceived that way by people who choose to do so.

Without children hanging around this structure, it could be an art installation.
I went around this pyramid structure taking a few shots and finally found the angle I liked best. This was it!
Then I thought that since I was in a park, I should include some of nature's construction.
This root of a tree looked to me like a small crocodile.

I like these two pictures very much because they show that the end-product of the pursuit of excellence in education is a kid who is so overstressed he wishes he could lie in a playground forever...

...or perhaps try to run away from the prison that his school has become.
I took this shot purely because of the lines and angles and how the structure appeared as a silhoutte.
Kudos to the designer of this station - it looked like a work of art and made me think of Picasso or Paul Klee.
I thought what fun it would be if two people could come all dressed up and have a drink at this make-believe bar counter.

When I took this shot I was trying to remember the good and bad of taking photos. Hmm, not too bad - something about how to use lines to lead the eye towards the point of interest. In this picture the point of interest are the flowers in the foreground. I think I got it in the wrong direction!

For this picture I wanted to show off the gracefulness of this tree. I had to re-compose the frame few times to get the effect I liked. I think I got distracted by the rocks.
Tree on fire on green grass - what a lovely contrast. Taken with just a flick of the wrist, without thinking.

See, I thought this wasn't really a great composition. When I looked at the picture after downloading it, I realised that it was pretty cool because you can see the 3 primary colours - blue, red and yellow laid out in a triangle.

I thought I should just take an impressive shot of the general scenery and took pains to compose this following picture and with some cropping at home, it is an accurate depiction of the look and feel of the scene when I was standing there.

I saw 3 Malay ladies fishing for fun to pass time. I chatted with one of them and found out that they did indeed catch some small fish. I just wanted to capture all the three women with their colourful headscarves looking towards the sea oblivious to the intruding contraptions around them.

For this shot, I just turned my camera skywards at waist level, took a peek at the LCD panel and shot on intuition.
I took this shot because of the unusual cloud that looked like the profile of a space ship or the top of a mountain in the distance visible above a layer of mist.
These reminded me of lego toys, so colourful against the darkening sky.
I knew this was not going to be even a good picture. It was taken anyway because I thought I should have a memory of what the sea looked like when I was there.
Finally, I waited for this lady to cast her line. I felt raindrops on my arms and it was time to leave.

Wasp photos

Living the moments with the Canon IXUS 860.

Copying Japanese Prints

Copying drawings from books is an educational experience. I have many art books and today I chose to look more closely at the pictures in the one on 'Japanese Prints' by Gabriele Fahr-Becker. I am interested in Japanese drawings and paintings because they have neat, fluid lines that I like. I like drawing with ink pens because I find it challenging to draw with the knowledge that mistakes are not good because they cannot be covered up or corrected as you can do with oil painting or pencil drawing. There is always the thrill of getting the drawing right the first time be it copying the work of artists or drawing on the spot.

In copying the three ladies enjoying "The Evening Star Festival" by Torii Kiyonaga I was able to appreciate the meticulous attention that the artist has paid to very fine details. - from the hairstyles to the prints on the kimonos, to the delicate shape of the fingers and especially the prints on the kimonos where the folds and drapes were made to look so fluid and natural because the prints have been placed there as if photographs were taken and the artist referred to them.

Helmet Shell

I remember that I bought this Helmet Shell from a roadside stall in Pulau Langkawi several years ago. And then it dawned on me that I have boxes and boxes of sea shells containing shells I had picked up from beaches as well as those that were purchased or given by friends. What good practice subjects they will make!

I really love using Chinese brushes as they are so versatile. I could use the same brush for lines and details as well as to create impressions of what is there.

Moments that were well lived

Drawing the outline of a tile painting (set of three hanging on my wall) with a soft ink pen.
I may leave it as it is or I may try to brush-paint over it.
A diversion - painting copies from the brush painting book I bought that teaches you how to paint animals, flowers and people.

When I had finished with those above, I thought I would try to capture the essence of the Cantonese Opera 'Princess Chang Ping' in the VCD cover picture. Art for me now is pure experimentation. I have no aim to meet any pre-conceived expectations that others may have in terms of creativity and technique. I wield a brush the way a dancer holds a fan and paint the way she dances to the melody in her heart. Because I have adopted this attitude towards my endeavour in art, I am now experiencing a freedom to explore different ways to enjoy art that I did not possess before.

Saraca Tree

After taking so many photos of the two Saraca trees in full bloom in my neighbourhood, I was really inspired to paint it. This painting was done in about 5 minutes and it was just an exercise to record my impressions of its beautiful flowers before they fade in my memory. I am getting the hang of drawing and painting without any physical reference to the subject and I am slowly beginning to like drawing and painting in this way.

Queue for Porridge in Maxwell Road Market

I never believe in queuing for food. I was not in this queue for porridge in a stall in Maxwell Road Food Centre that attract perpetual queues. While waiting, I was able to 'study' the typical people who would queue for food. When I finally got my chicken porridge and raw fish salad, I could see why people find it worth their while to stand close to 40 minutes just to get a taste of the famous porridge.

Water lilies

As far as I am able to, I want to just hold a brush in my hand and paint. I read somewhere that a Chinese painting is not about producing something that matches the real thing. It is about producing a painting that has good 'Chi' and that the act of painting is really like meditation. I don't think I have managed to project the right kind of 'chi' in this particular effort but I agree totally that painting is a meditative process, and a great one at that.

Panda

I had fun painting this panda from a photo taken by a friend.

Flower for today

I started off wanting to paint more of the Heliconia in the previous post. I used an acrylic brush on a piece of thin xuan paper and experimented with the brush for a while. And then I got bored with looking at the same picture and labouring to make each stroke more perfect than the previous ones and my vision blurred...

For a while, I wondered about perfection and if it was worth one's precious time to seek it out when it is probably non-existent. So, I thought that life should be led in a more spontaneous and fun way and if one follows one's heart, life would be more meaningful and fulfilling. It was then that I turned the page of the book on flowers that I was referencing to a new flower - the hibiscus. Because I was free from having to arrive at a perfect form for this flower, I painted with only guidance from my mind's eye. In so doing, I found that I actually discovered a new way to hold the brush to create the soft, rolling edges of the petals of the second flower. What a wonderful day!

Brush painting practice

Learning through experimentation - this is what I find exciting in using this new medium that I find suits me perfectly. I used chinese brushes for these two paintings unlike the previous effort where I had used nylon brushes. The former allows me to be more adventurous in applying the ink to the paper but the latter gives me better control. It will be great to continue to experiment with different types of brushes.

Side-by-side

New experiments - Chinese brush painting

I was at PageOne in Vivocity browsing not intending to buy anything while waiting for a movie to start. As usual I succumbed to the 20% discount labels on the books. Fortunately, I found a book that I really liked on Chinese Brush Painting with clear instructions and illustrations on how to get started on Chinese brush painting with two hundred over motifs that could be copied for practice purposes. As I could not find my Chinese brushes and ink, I decided to use my acrylic paints instead using a lot of water to dilute them. This is my first copy attempt. Surprisingly, I rather like this style of painting.

With the paints leftover, I thought I should use them to do an acrylic painting but using the brush painting technique above to paint the petals of the chrysanthemum flower.My second experiment was the use of black acrylic ink with a thinner brush to copy the bamboo and pine painting made by the author of the book. I think this style and medium suits me better since I am used to making drawings with ink pens. Thanks to the simplicity of this marvellous book on Chinese Brush Painting I think I could be getting onto something exciting and I should make better use of this book to pick up some basic skills and techniques.

The light was right

Natural light from the window made these cherries look so inviting. Drawing would take too long and I did not have paints nor patience then. So the camera made these memories possible.

Lavender flowers

This is the first time I did a painting without refering to any photos. I usually like to look at the real thing or if it is landscape, I like to paint on site. When that is not possible, I paint from photos even though I dislike the flatness of a 2-D reference.

Painting from impressions formed from looking at my lavender photos while organising them on my pc without the actual plant before me had its setbacks as I discovered. In the initial paintings, the leaves were not correctly depicted and it was rather tricky to make them look right. After painstakingly making good the mistakes made, I am determined to keep painting these flowers till they become better than this first effort.