With age and experience comes wisdom – or at least an understanding that it takes being awestruck to bring an urgency to creating and a need to improve. So this is a round-up of portfolios that I keep coming back to as of late (in no particular order):

1. Beatriz Martin Vidal
I love the colors and the style of her work. The tone is one filled of emotions and a simplicity that shows off more than it appears to. In Little Red Riding Hood, her innocence can be felt as though it were waving you down with a red flag; especially in First Encounter when she looks the wolf in the eye. You can’t help but scream, “Run Little Red, Run!” The muted colours are very different from my own work, but it is a profile that I admire..especially with the black sketchmarks showing through.

2. Oliver Hurst 
He has a light-hearted style that makes me smile to myself. The colours he uses gives a feather-like take on common situations. My favourite, so far, is The Day Machine- in the park. I like its flow in composition and its unusual perspective with colours in just the right spots to keep you looking in. My only gripe would be the black and white badger that take focus away from the boy but that’s my personal taste and without any context. It’d be different if this was the badger’s perspective and he’s stalking the boy…that would make it perfectly logical.

3. Daniela Volpari
This portfolio is very tongue-in-cheek and makes me chuckle to myself. I really like the pieces with animals in them such as the diner piece and the little girl standing on the panda. You can just imagine scenes as such happening in everyday life! I also adore the idea behind the reflections piece, be it the reflections of their pasts or the passing nostalgia of dreams gone by.

4. Elena Prette
What I like about her work is the strong style of her characters. Whether it’s Cleopatra or Napolean, she mixes recognisable elements with her own distinct style to create original takes of popular personalities. Even in a static medium, she makes them come alive with clear expressions such as arrogance and spunk.

5. Erica Glover
She has a fantastical imagination whether its Alice’s catepillar smoking shisha or two girls eating rainbows of ice-cream. Her work leaves you with a feeling of innocence and warmth; reminding you of a childhood spent in the company of clouds and mashmellows. I like no.4 in her illustration work, it’s a very whimsical take on the classic story of love…and only told in 3 colours!

Meet Ninja

“In the spirit of social experiments, we decided to create “The 10,000 Project”. It’s quite simple, really. You sign up, we send you a sheet of paper with a word on it, and then you create a visual representation of the word. The catch is that 10,000 other people are doing the same as you. How many different ways will tens of thousands of people interpret the same word?”

– Art House Co-op

We received the word ‘chair’ and I thought to myself, “Everyone overlooks the most important chair that’s used everyday.”

Some updates from the last post, the room makeover is half-complete. That cobblestone pink I was using on the walls got stuck so it’s a matter of finding another 2-3 cans when they go on sale again. It’s crazy, SGD$18 for one small can of spray paint but when it’s on sale, it’s like 40% of the actual price. And everyone knows I’m a queen of thrift…for some things, I just rather spend less so I can get other things.

The Art House Co-op projects have evolved into something bigger than I can handle. I didn’t manage to complete them in time, what with getting retrenched and starting a new diploma among other small, side projects. BUT the 10,000 word project IS completed. And I shall post that up soon, mainly because I would like to stroke my ego somewhat. I thought it was pretty average and commonsense but Nici swears I’m a genius. Of course, she is my biggest fan and thinks everything I do is fantabulous so I should take what she says with a pinch of salt. The sketchbook project is now 1 of 2 main projects I’m focussing on this year. The theme I got was “The Aftermath of…” but I was stuck for the longest  time. I kept coming back to the theme of innocence, fatigue and the likes but nothing resonated because quite frankly, they seemed too…one-dimensional.

I can’t ,for the life of me, figure out how I came up with it, but I have decided to base it on “The Aftermath of Light”. Basically, coming into the light, falling from it and then finding it again – sort of autobiographical to cleanse myself of demons that have been haunting me. Not that they were biblically revelationally bad, more like little imps wrecking havoc but it would be great to finally come to terms with some of it…the rest of the gaps will be filled in with fantasical imaginations and the hope is, the end result is a seamless production so no one can tell one from the other. It feels multi-disciplinary at the moment. I wanted to start from the very beginnning but I think I’ll be starting from this point instead, because an animation based on the current narrative in my head (Kate Walsh’s Your Song) feels like the perfect diving board.

Forgotten Toadstools is the other major project that I will focus on this year. One of my best friends, Nat, is currently in Mexico and she’s also looking out for other potential artwork for me to get inspiration from.

On another note, I’m getting a new toy on Tuesday! A cheap waterproof camera that I hope will re-engage this photographic rut I’ve gotten myself into. All I’ve been able to do recently is think, and think and think then conceptualise, conceptualise, conceptualise. But what I really want is a visual representation of everything up in my head and in front of me when words fail. So here’s to toy cameras and cross-processed expired films!

Let’s see where this brings us.

1) Room makeover:
Been sitting on this for awhile till I can afford it and I can get at least paints and shelves now.  I wanted to go old-skool glamour with a sleek retro/mod look. But I have a new kitten, Mojito (Moto), now and need to incorporate a massive cat tree into the design. Unfortunately, the only one I like is bright pink and purple. It fits the mod look but I need to make sure it doesn’t get too pink and girly and what-nots. To do:

• I need to paint magnetic paint for the focus wall
• Paint it red and clean up my white walls – failing which I need to paint it white
• Spray paint my dresser glitter black and pearl white and my wardrobe doors pearl white with 2 black, pink and purple stripes each
• Get white book shelves and spray paint the sides purple and pink
• Get smaller shelves for Moto and attach carpet to them and spray paint the sides purple and pink
• Get the cat tree in (which will probably arrive next month)
• Change the curtain rod to a sleek black one
• Buy new white curtains and chains for the curtain pull-backs
• Not so Get whatever else I need to tie everything up over the next few months

2) The Snail Mail Collective:
A couple of friends and I are starting a snail-mail swapping ring which will go under Zarweane’s portfolio. This will be done over 2 years, after which we’ll go to everyone’s countries and put up an exhibit. I’m so excited about this and think it’d be a great study of what everyone’s different connections produce. I have a couple of collaborative works involving jigsaws and 3D wood models in mind. To do:

• Chase everyone for their bios, photos and address by Sunday
• Compile the letters and send everything by next week
• Let the correspondances unfold

3) The 10,000 Project by Art House Co-Op
I’ve signed up for The 10,000 (people interpret one word) Project so I’m just waiting for mail to arrive before I can do anything else. Deadline: 1st September 2009! Also under Zarweane’s portfolio.

4) The Sketchbook Project by Art House Co-Op
Another one I’m awaiting mail from so I can start. So fun! i love cross-country collaborations! Deadline: 1st december 2009!

5) & 6) are my two-long running projects: the closet swimwear project and Forgotten Toadstools. I just need to find a seamstress to sew my designs and I can start on 5). For Toadstools, I’ve been collecting promising pages and will start on them by end July.

I need to put my foot down, finish 1) & 3) and start on 2), 4)  & 6) before embarking on more.

Must. Refrain. From. Drowning. In. My. Own . Enthusiasm.

Have you ever looked at a child’s drawings and think, “wow, where did that come from?” And then you tell the child what a genius he/she is, only for the drawing to be scrunched up or put aside because they’ve moved on to something else. Well, I do. Everyday.

Brilliant ideas pass through my classes every week. They’re weirdly unique ideas that a child sees with their unseasoned eyes of the world  – untouched by the criticism and cynical nature of experience. But they get chucked aside  for the conventional because that’s what they know as normal. I love my kids. They’re ingenious and they spur my need to create.

I think the imagination of children fit the ideas and ideals of forgotten toadstools perfectly. There’s tons of potential in their ideas and they keep coming up with new ones. But children don’t expand on them, because that is their nature: to seed, sprout and end their cycle in a short burst of passion. What happens when someone chances on these ideas and breathes a different life to them?

These are the forgotten toadstools.

Dolphin – New Alice Land 1
Acrylic on Art Card

Alice reminds me of Alice in Wonderland. She’s inquisitive, loves fairies and all things colourful. We were working on a competition piece for her and she came up with this completely out-of-character sketch.

The idea of this minimalistic drawing using only black, white and red stuck with me. At first, I thought I’d just add a textured white background with modelling paste but my love for colour held true. It took alot of willpower to keep everything else only red, white and black.

I guess Alice and I have one more thing in common.

The thing about mushrooms and toadstools that fascinates me is their ability to suddenly sprout one day and start withering the next…leaving no trace of them behind. Toadstools have this magical quality about them, you hear them being the meeting places of pixies and fairies…it makes you wonder, what would happen if such a world existed right where we are. Little people living on the spokes of rusted bicycles, hiding under the shades of leaves, running for cover when their warm engine bed stars purring. Can such mystical creatures live in a concrete jungle like Singapore?

Or what about my right sock that disappeared? Could it be the teleporting power of a toadstool? What if toadstools lived just like Michael Godard’s pickles do…with their own little lives and personalities?

This week’s starting points:

From: here, here and here.

Colour and words intertwining is how I have always seen the world around me. I think in melody and songs and yet, I have yet to fully embrace all that I can be artistically. I’m always too lazy to make that first step, then too scared to try. But this is it, my attempt to make the Internet my portfolio. A journal with a real journey to an unknown destination. A lot of people I know hate showing their sketches and their drafts, but to me..that’s the beauty of art; watching an idea transform itself from an innocent fleeting thought to a gigantic leap of faith, looking into the depths of someone’s mind. So I invite you in, to watch as I grapple with the concepts I have in my head and try bringing them to fruition.

Circumstances in my life right now have exposed me to a ‘serious’ blog, it has revived the wordsmith in me..that delicate balance of finding the right word to fit a prose and articulate my heart’s deepest desires in just a short sentence. That quiet throbbing of vibrancy within me as a subject starts to pique my interest…that stirring of emotions as ideas grow bones, building muscle and mass until finally, there is something to be dressed.

I’ve suddenly been inspired. Well, suddenly would be an exaggeration. The seeds of thought has been in motion for a while..but I have been too lazy to do anything about. Until, this. Matt Held has a fabulous idea and I love it so! My favourite pieces so far are: An, Angie, Elis,  Eve, Matthew K.

It turns out An (An Xiao) is a New York artist based in Brooklyn who uses Twitter as a medium to art. I’m intrigued by the idea of it. She recently had a month-long Twitter project that juxtaposed twitter with its predecessor, the telegraph.

Everyone knows the Internet is synonymous with the cloak of  anonymity, yet we get to control exactly how we want people to see us when we choose what information to publish, when we agonise over the choice of photos we prioritise to show (lest they show us in a bad light). The Internet is an interesting medium…it’s fast, it’s vast and it isn’t passe, no matter what technology you use. It’s similar to how HTML has never really gone away, it’s just evolved to all these other coding methods. Yet, say you code using HTML and you get a furrowing of the brows as someone tells you, “Haven’t you heard of JavaScript, CSS, WYSIWYG?” But it’s all really the same thing no? They’re all based on the same language.

So yes, it’s been a mix of Matt Held, An Xiao, an artistic friend who updates her work regularly on Facebook and the voices in my head that starts this sketchbook/preparatory journal off for me.

The first phrase I’m leaning towards for a project is Forgotten Toadstools. It’s based on a pipe dream my friend Gloria and I hope to set up…and an unabashed trackback to things getting lost in my head and suddenly popping out at the most unopportune times; usually times like now when I’m struggling with keeping up with school, and work , and business building BUT a new idea comes and drags me away from them anyway.

I need to stop rolling so the algae can grow and bloom.