Time has flown by so fast! 5 months of Grade 12 done and we have welcomed a new year already!

But anyways let’s just get down to the meat and start reflecting about Memory Project!

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So I started my Grade 12 year in Memory Project redoing the painting I finished in my last session of it in Grade 12 (Around start of February so almost 1 year! *sweats*)

It was unexpected for me at first, as I wanted to join the group in starting a new portrait that we’ve just received from the organisation, but when the supervising teacher showed me the piece, I immediately understood that I needed to redo it because this drawing below? Is an injustice to how the girl looks.

What is that skin?! Why is it so orange? The chin is too long and unrealistic and the hair is so flat! I had to do something about it.

At first I attempted to do some touch up on the drawing directly in hopes that I can somehow salvage it, but after spending a lesson on it, I thought that I was only making it worse. And sometimes, you just have to start over – there’s no harm in it after all.

So that’s what I did – and I quite like the result!

Looking back at this drawing, I can now see some parts where I could have worked on like the neck and the nose bridge, and I just think that’s improvement right there – to be able to view your art more critically and learn from it. : )

 

So since everybody was still working on the latest portrait from Memory Project, I decided to take up one of the incomplete drawings from the Blue Dragon pile.

Taking over this piece was a new kind of challenge for me – to somehow paint the headtilt upwards and the teeth without it being awkward and odd – it was a new experience for me

When I started painting this, I was initially a little put off with how it had looked, with the 2nd session ending with the picture below, looking like a mash of colours that is amateur looking with odd colouring and lack of cohesiveness – some regrets that time when I was looking at this drawing

I mean it is actually very natural, for it to look like a lost mess when we just begin, which can be demotivating really because we can start feeling uncertain about what to do next, we can start imagining about how horrible it would look, we can start doubting our skills and experience. But then again, that is natural, and that is what we have to overcome not begrudgingly dragging our feet with the goal of just getting this portrait over and done with but really to complete it to the best of our abilities of that time, and fill it with our sincerity and respect to the subject and of course ourselves. Keep pushing. That’s how we improve, and that is really the difference in quality. (I mean sometimes but you get what I mean)

I think that’s also what makes me admire my friend who I paint beside with a lot. While my art style is to paint with thick colours, Shangyu’s style is to paint like she’s painting water colour, thin and semi-transparent. And in the beginning or even towards the end, I would look at her artwork and found that it is like a patchwork – it felt incredibly odd and incomplete, but experience with her tells me and still fascinates me how her thin layers of paint can build up so much depth and life in her drawing that it is realistic. You never know what is really going to happen in the end.

So that’s what I did, I continue to paint, and the picture below is what I managed in two sessions:

And I really love it a lot – and although there were concerns really about how the skin tone was quite dark compared to the picture, the usage of colours once again wowed me when I painted the background.

Below is the final version of the drawing. Along with a little smoothening of the highlights, only the background was added on, changing the whole lighting of the subject.

So for the background, I used colours from the shirt, mixing in some burnt sienna and yellow from the highlights into it. This technique was actually something I had learned from digital drawing, which is to share colours of the subject with the background vice versa in order to make them more eye pleasing and blend in. And I just want to point that out because I’m proud of the fact that I’m applying things I’ve learned in digital into traditional. Which I guess is a little weird but let me have my moment here haha.

 

My latest portrait that I’ve worked on is an initiative from the group, which is to celebrate the staff members of UWC East campus! We didn’t go for teachers, which not to say we aren’t thankful, but I don’t think we’ve really said thank you to the people in the background (?) The ones keeping our school running systematically.

Whilst many went for librarians, secretaries, security guards, I decided to ask permission from a cleaner that I see every Thursday after service (0WES)

As part of the leadership team for the service, I often stay back to discuss about the plans for the next meeting and organise the logistics for events. Even if the meeting does end early, I sometimes stay back in Ms Li’s room to take naps while waiting for badminton to start after a tiring day in school. And I would always meet her. Sometimes when I notice her coming in I’d try to sit up straight and put my legs down but she would tell me it’s okay for me to relax and sleep, that I can go ahead and rest because she’s going to clean the room fast. Sometimes, I’d be holding the door for her as she comes in to clean on the way out.

It’s just like a nice person, who I can correlate my highschool experience of being sleep deprived or tired and needing to nap after school, or that I stay back to actually be part of a team. And I’d like to thank her for that.

She looked confused to be honest when I asked her, probably really asking what this girl is doing in her mind *laughs*, and I was also really nervous to ask. But all went well – got her portrait and I have to say I did pretty good! Haven’t been much of a good photographer after all (I’m often in charge of the lightings when we take photos)

So for this one, I wanted to try something different. Which really isn’t that different to be honest, more like relearning a skill again. You see, I used to paint watercolour, even attended class for it! But that was around 13 years old, so 5 years ago.

And I love watercolour, especially the aspect that you can’t exactly redo anything, can’t hide the mistakes, have to make do with them and go forth. Watercolour is also one with patience, think like Shangyu’s style but except hers is still much exceptionally confuses me on how she paints really.

I’ve never painted a watercolour portrait as well actually, often stuck to still-life and sceneries, so adding that bit of life to the drawing was going to be fun.

Oh this, hahaha. The colours of the shirt and the hair were awfully light. Didn’t know how many layers I was going to do until Mr McGrath walked by and taught me how to get richer colours and not dilute them too much. Which to my delight works very well as you see below. This obstacle reminded me of when I was learning watercolouring really – I would always be asked by the teacher why can’t I get dark colours in it, everything was very light to be honest, light and shadow was minuscule and only differentiated by the bright saturated colours which I, funnily enough, was able to get it rich and colourful.

And of course, with the dark colours surrounding the face, the skin looks a lot paler and less lively – oh the joy and wonders of colours and balance really right here.

I decided that I needed more of the colour red in the face, mixed in with a little brown from the hair to darken it. I looked at the picture closer, noticing the extra layers of eyebags and the shadow of the cheeks as it curves into a smile, and added colour there. For the background, I wanted to push myself a little, by making it look spontaneous.

Funnily enough, another memory of when I was younger came up, with the teacher asking me why can’t I make the background look explosive, like how you see watercolour backgrounds accenting by spreading out in seemingly random and natural directions, it was really a reflection of how I was to be honest. I didn’t like to be spontaneous, I can think on my feet if I was forced to, but I didn’t like having no plans. It felt odd, and this experiment I was doing, reminded me of this.

And I overcame it funnily enough. Added the black (which actually there is no black, just navy blue and burnt umber mixed) to the background richly, before dipping my brush and filling it with lots of water, then spreading the colour around. Did that two times. Cut out a shape which covers the subject, filled my brush with lots of colours before flicking it, this time wearing an apron lest I’ll be washing stains out of my clothes again hahaha. And I love how it looks. It felt so satisfying to see something that I couldn’t do before, something that kind of has been holding me back when I think of painting in watercolours,  being achieved. I grew and improved. And I’m proud of myself.

 

I think that this is honestly a lot of reflections. Maybe I’m getting a little too sentimental because of the fact that I’ve been constantly reminded that I have only (as of now apparently) less than 4 months left, 15 weeks of school left, 45 school days left.

It’s been fun really. I’ve just submitted my yearbook stuff. Photoshopped my friends onto my leavers box. Shoved a random nice quote I like into the senior quote section to make up for how crazy and hilarious my leavers box is. Grade 12 huh? It’s really only hitting now.

LO1 – Identifying your own strengths and develop areas for personal growth
LO6 – Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance

 

We began the new year with a new project – this time, with Blue Dragon GC!

As I have mentioned in one of my posts, Blue Dragon flew over from Vietnam to participate in a fundraising event in our campus, thus as a token of gratitude, the GC enlisted the Memory Project club to make a heartfelt portrait for each member.

Unlike previous times, we students were given the freedom to choose whatever medium we want. Some went for digital painting, while some went for colour pencils. I decided to stay with acrylic paint.

This is because I want to further strengthen my acrylic painting skills – I found wanted to play around more with the skin tone and the medium, want to improve my painting speed while keeping them consistent.

However, one of the primary reasons is that I do not have much time to explore a new medium. This year’s Season 3 sports started at 10 Feb (including tryouts). Taking the Chinese New Year break into consideration, I only had 3 weeks to finish the portrait!

It would be unfair and mean if I, out of my selfishness and curiosity, left this portrait unfinished just to explore other mediums, thus I chose to use acrylic.

I decided to make the background green with a dash of warm bright colours to make her stand out while at the same time keep her in uniform with the colour scheme.

Although I am proud that I managed to finish the whole painting process within 3 weeks, I still wished I had more time. I could have made the hair “rougher” to make it more natural, or I could have worked on the chin as it looks elongated.

This upcoming week was meant to be the start of Season 4 – in which I can return to the club after the long hiatus.

Although the current situation (COVID-19) does not allow me to continue with Memory Project, I still try to draw as much as possible – and this is where Instagram comes in (although I tend to draw stylized instead of realism hahaha)

It was also heartwarming to see our efforts recognised by others, as well as a glee in my heart when we received word that the children liked it!

 

I’ll leave it at that for Memory Project. If you are reading this, I would like to thank you, Ms Dinsdale and Mr McGrath for making this club and providing us with such a great atmosphere to draw in. And if somehow, any other members of Memory Project are reading this, I would like to say that albeit we don’t talk much, it has always been great sharing art with you guys.

Thank you.

 

LO2 – Demonstrate that you have undertaken, developing new skills in the process
LO5 – Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

 

I am not a stage person, nor someone who likes to be in the centre of attention. Since young, I have been shying away from stages as well as any key roles in fear of making a mistake due to the perfectionist in me. Though over the years, this attribute of mine became milder as I push myself to step out of my comfort zone by doing little things like being the one to break the silence in a class by at least responding something or volunteering myself to go first and make mistakes.

This time, as a fresh start in IB, I’ve decided to sign up for Kahaani.

Kahaani is an event arranged by the Kolkata GC as an annual awareness and fund-raising event. Recently some of the children from the NGO, Voice of World (which the GC supports), managed to conquer a mountain climbing expedition that is 19000ft high. This is even more amazing as the children the NGO supports are blind. To commemorate their resilience and strength, the theme of this year’s Kahaani show is Victory.

Apparently, there are a whopping 250+ dancers that signed up, which is really amazing and at the same time no surprise because of the fact that there is no auditioning needed (which is also the same reason why I was encouraged to join).

So far, despite the tight schedule as well as the many events being held on a Friday (Cancer Awareness day, the final day of term 1 etc.), I think that our Friday group has been doing pretty well. Yes, there were a couple of times we went a little off track, however, I personally think that the speed in which our group is grasping the dance is really amazing.

My favourite part would definitely be the circle dance in which all of us dance in one gigantic circle in sync, which not only looks cool but in the process developed a bond between each of us as we struggle to grasp the concept of it initially)

Above is a video of one of our practice of the song Jai Ho.

I am looking forward to how the event will work out to be as well as the satisfaction of conquering my shyness once again.

LO1 – Identifying your own strengths and develop areas for personal growth
LO6 – Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance

 

Since the last post, I have completed 2 portraits. One for Zain, and another one for Yousaf.

In the first session of painting my very first portrait, I found my experience to be a mix of frustration and amusement. I expected myself to be able to capture Zain well in the first session, knowing my experience with acrylic, however, not only did I found it hard to blend, but also to capture the skin tone right. As I try to dab my colours onto the canvas, I found that I had to brush up (get it? brush) on my painting skills with acrylic as incidents such as diluting too much of the paint with water, mixing unevenly the colours etc.

So it was quite delightful to find that I still have lots of room for improvement in painting portraits, which replaced my goal of learning how to draw portraits. Though I guess it made sense because I put myself in the impression that if I was able to paint still lifes, then I should be paint portraits, even though they were two different things and I didn’t think the same way as for drawing.

Though the frustrating part was when I still ended up with his skin on the brown shade rather than the orangey shade the reference photo had, despite pushing myself to paint over his entirety around 4 times throughout the whole process before I thought that I should cut short, wanting to meet Mr McGrath’s expectations of finishing 3 paintings by December.

Painting the shirt and the background was quite a learning as I have come to learn the existence of pretty useful paint tools that I have never seen. In my third session, I painted the shirt and a small part of the background. During this session, Mr McGrath noted that my colours were not only too similar but also too cold. So he introduced the existence of an acrylic gloss, which makes an acrylic become semi-translucent to add a coloured layer, basically watercolour. This helped save a lot of time as that meant that I didn’t need to repaint the entire shirt! (The good and bad of acrylic) Another tool that I learned of was a painter’s tape. The painter’s tape is basically like masking tape, and it’s used to block out sections so that there will be a clean paint line. Though similar to masking tape (which I have tried before and the results were not fabulous), the painter’s tape gives a medium level of adhesion, which will allow itself to be removed cleanly after the job is done up.

For the background, I was pretty satisfied with it when I finally finished the portrait. However, looking back, I wished that I had used a thin brush to possibly add some clothing texture to the background in order to relate it to the stitchwork Ralli, which means mixing and connected, in order to further build a better connections that crosses boundaries between him and I.

Finishing the first painting gave me a lot of confidence in my painting skills, seeing that I was ahead of others. However, with just 3 sessions left (2 for me since I had to miss a class due to piano exams, though I made it up by going afterschool), I was assigned an uncompleted drawing of Yousaf.

I immediately started working on the face. I had to paint this time with thicker coats of paints due to the dark pencil outline of the portrait. Though I tried to paint to match Yousaf’s skin tone, it ended up in a shade of brown again, Except it was worse this time, as it wasn’t similar to the photograph at all.

At that moment, I decided to step back and observe how my friend Shangyu paints her portrait. I realized that despite our extremely different painting styles, because she uses orange paint (name forgotten…) along with burnt sienna to create her realistic skin colour.

After that breakthrough, I was more confident with the painting of the portrait as I move on to the painting of the shirt. Because I chose the shirt to be yellow in hopes that it will be in contrast with the blue background (Yousaf’s favourite colour), the paint is more translucent, which would mean I would need to paint multiple of layers in order to cover up the outline of the drawing below. In order to finish the portrait against the time, I decided to use more opaque colours when painting on the outline and blend it out further with the bright yellow.

For the background, I kept it blue, albeit with rough shades of blue as I used thick paint to mix them unevenly and colour it on to the canvas. I decided to have ocean motifs painted all over the background in hopes of making it more fun and bright.