wyn-ning rants

today (Feb 14), while a vast majority of the male population proudly paraded themselves in towns, neighbourhoods and restaurants, a small group stood by in envy, of the accessory they were accompanied by, complete with flowers in-hand. if you look amidst the happy couples feeding and making eyes at each other, you would be able to catch a glimpse of these dwindling species, often found in pairs or groups, congregating together, to celebrate another day, special to their kind.

we call it, Singlehood Awareness Day, in short, S.A.D.

while the pagans out there taunt us with their seemingly blissful lives, we the minority choose to believe that this is a day to celebrate the more important things in life.

after catching a movie with a fellow S.A.D member, nothing beats sitting down with a trusted friend and chatting about life, girls (and the lack of them), work, and ultimately, debating on what is true friendship.

the conclusion of the night? this will be our last S.A.D outing. the following year we shall attempt to join the rest of the world in their evil ways.

i dun usually blog about daily happenings in my life, mostly what is seen here are recollections of events, (and art, if any) to go with it. so this should be unexpected. this chinese new year, as I’ve told some ppl, has been rather quiet for me. Without the usual visitings and stuff..it almosts feels..empty..

grandma passed away last yr, so the ng family is officially still in mourning and isn’t allowed to celebrate cny(and birthdays i heard)/visit each other. The closest thing I had was a dinner with my mum’s side of the family (also missing some relatives) on the first day yesterday. Was expecting a drastic drop in ang bao income but hey, what do u know, its actually about the same. =)

Had a little squabble with my mum over stuff, was pretty affected by it. Had some time to calm down and think about things. Procrastinated, waited, reasoned, thought about what to say, before going out to sit down beside her as she ironed some clothes. Took me another long while before I poured out my heart before her. I hope she knows my heart. At times i dun mean to be rude, but because I tend to retort back without thinking, things go bad. My mum isn’t really the kind to respond with “its ok i still love you” or outright break down in front of me. But I think this is sowing something into her. Ever since her accident, my heart for her is that she would rest, and that she would accept that God had something intended for her this time. That it would slow down her pace, and really force her to rest. I know I haven’t been too responsible at home too, but sometimes its hard to tell her what I think. It hurts me when I hear her say stuff like why did she have to get injured, out of nowhere. Its as if she hasn’t accepted the fact yet. No matter what others may say, I choose to believe that what happened was cos I prayed for the entire ng family to get closer together. And I am seeing some fruits. So I’m choosing to hang on.

Ok thus endeth my rant for today. Will post up my birthday happenings and photos when I get them all. Happy Chinese New Year to all.

waitaminute, sketches aren’t supposed to be organized aren’t they?

so what if i spent some time making them organized then? so sue me =p

just lumping together whatever stuff doodled in and out of office (mostly in). done mostly in green pencil and tweaked.

01 women (some nudity)

ever since having proper life drawing classes, my understanding of anatomy has improved, and so has my drawing of women. (previously I couldn’t draw a proper one to save my life)

02 men

got women must have men wad right? a little masculinity wouldn’t hurt i guess.

03 some character development

an intergalactic pirate and realistic versions of Stoneboy and Stanley anyone? moving on…

04 Spideys

no surprises here..

ok 3am..what’s with me and blogging in the middle of the night?

2 cards produced in e mth of dec/jan….

the 1st is my annual christmas card..with this/last (2007) having more of a theme/symbolic meaning to it than last/yr before last(2006) year’s. (gosh its so confusing to say)
here we go..let’s see if anyone can decipher the symbols intended in it. sketched and cleaned up in flash. done thru the nite from 22nd to 23rd Dec..rush work as usual..pretty happy with it

up next is another rush job card (seems to be the trend with me) for fiona and charmaine’s joint birthday celebration. (altho the girl turned out looking more like fi) had to skip children’s church to finish it….not good not good

Joel’s been telling me to work faster so I can go into something like doing customised cards for birthdays and earn a bit of extra money..but i dunno…i could be faster if i din have to clean up so many lines i guess..going by the workflow right now..still a tad bit slow..

as some may know, YC had our very own musical production for the christmas week (a huge success) and the highlight of it for me was what i as tasked with.

Initially I was suggesting to do simple illustrations of either the cast or the set or little ones that can be used in the flyers or program sheets if any. Something that was still manageable given my schedule. Then Caris asked me to join her deco team, and put me in charge of grafitising/dirtying/painting/decorating a huge piece of canvas to act as a facade/back alley/backdrop when the office in the show was not in use. shouldn’t be too hard?

After discussions with the commitee, they decided to have a shop front instead. So i had to put a little bit more effort into it, as the intensity of work/commitment escalated. I had to do research, on the look, the shop name, so it would look as authentic as possible. It was both exciting and stressful at the same time. I worked out a 3D schematic, drew over it on tue night, making changes on the shop name a few times. Transferred it onto a transparency, grabbed an OHP and my tools, and went to where the 4 m by 2 m canvas was hung. BY then it was about 10 or 11 pm.

Using my trusty conte, a ladder and some metal rulers, i painstakingly traced the projected image from the OHP onto the canvas alone, keeping watch on the time, trying hard to balance myself as i drew over the words on the top. By the time I finished it was about 2 am. Caris had promised to send me home after her meeting.

I came back the next day after work, prepared to stay over. Assuming that the canvas was more or less painted by whoever was there during the day to help, i went in only to realise that only the main shop sign had been painted. Needless to say there was much more work to be done. Thanks to April mei, Aaron, Rachel, Ernest, Junice, Dawn, Jing En, Ben Wu, May May, and (some others I might have left out) I finally manged to complete the canvas on Thurs evening, (a few hrs after my given dateline)

After figuring out how to put it up (and make it unfold naturally), we were ready for business!

Here’s a quickie look at the creation process.
3D schematic to nail the perspective

sketch transferred onto transparency

Final Product (photo cred = gracie)

have to say am pretty proud of it, given that this is the first time I’m working on such a large scale, with little reliance on the digital format. After this project I’m definitely more confident of doing banner-sized projects (with enough assistance of course). (More photos of it are floating around facebook, many ppl were posing in front of it after the show.)