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I painted this watercolour of Old Supreme Court and Raffles City while waiting in line to get tickets to the last of Neil Gaiman’s upcoming talks during the Singapore Writers Festival.  I thought I’d be doing sketches of the people in the queue, but this view from the Arts House of such stark architectural contrast sustained my interest for most of my time there. Many flaws with my technique, but it was still fun to paint. Next time I think I’ll try painting a simpler subject in more detail for practice. Oh yes, special thanks to the generous girl who shared her umbrella with me.

Woo.. been so busy that I forgot I prepared this post sometime in July and somehow neglected to hit the publish button. This was the first after work life drawing session conducted by John Mahoney (the concept artist/sculptor/all round visual guy, not that dude from Frasier). It’s been pretty cool so far. It’s really great to have an opportunity to work on my drawing and design skills in addition to the CG related stuff from work. In fact, combined with daily painting practice on the DS it’s directly improving my painting skills.

I realise now that before this I’ve been approaching life drawing sessions reaaally seriously..  It’s been fun exaggerating proportions and not being a slave to reality, and drawing inspiration from assorted artists to inject a little more life and colour into my work than I would usually add.. Muting the cynical, perfectionist critic in my head has lead to a lot more finished drawings – that’s a big plus..

Click on the thumbnails to zoom in.

I now have a Nintendo DS on loan to practice digital painting on the go, courtesy of my jet-setting cousin. I’m finding Colors DS pretty intuitive to use as far as picking colours and navigating goes. As for actual painting technique, I’m hoping I’ll be able to improve with practice on my daily commute. Thanks Joy!

It’s pretty much a mixed bag so far these past two weeks. Did some spaceships, some facial studies focusing on painting skin tones. I even did some sketches with it along the Southern Ridges yesterday during the OIC Sketch Walk(where I fed more mosquitoes than I sketched pictures, need to learn to simplify and not claw in every detail like I’m trying and failing to there).  Even so, it was good to catch up with old friends as well as meet new ones.

For those who say there isn’t much to do in Singapore, the trick is probably in finding like minded people. In that case, it’s possible to get deluged with more events than you can handle (Portrait Day / Life Drawing / Sketch Walks / Dr. Sketchy’s / Sketch-On-The-Beach-Day – OK.. so I made the last one up.. I think it might be a good idea tho..) and that’s just on the art side! I haven’t had the time to go and participate in music related stuff like the Songcraft Writing Circle, and the only time I serendipitously stumbled upon the Open Mic Night at the Singapore Art Cafe it just happened to be the very last night before they stopped having it.

On the work side, things have been good. Going further down the rabbit hole, gotta work harder but it’s getting increasingly rewarding. They do know how to play hard too which is great, I’m enjoying the company culture (not to mention levelling up at pool) Anyways, as my work stuff is largely confidential, it looks like I’ll be posting much more 2d stuff like this, as well as my personal projects and collaborations that I’m kicking back into motion soon.

Borrowed some pretty useful books from the library, one on painting skin tones, and the other on wildlife. While doing this I was trying to focus on the difference in colour temperature between the shadow and highlights.

Also tried to simplify and not over render things, a bad habit of mine. The tips on colour helped quite a bit I think, but still have a long way to go..

This is the final piece I gave to my Grandma last Sunday. You can see where my Mom got her habit of blinking whenever a photo is taken. I thought it would be harder to get my Grandpa’s likeness right, but my Grandma’s likeness was trickier. Would have liked more depth in it, but darker shadows wouldn’t look very nice. Ah well, I’m happy that she liked it. Shall pick up more painting technique when I have the time, this week has been spent troubleshooting my rather temperamental computer..