experience nature within the city

"Experience Nature Within The City" is the tagline for COEX Aquarium.

These are the last set of pencil sketches from my recent trip to Korea. A sketch subject that I was not familiar with when the prolific Korean sketchers brought me to a large shopping mall across the Bongeunsa Temple on 22 Dec 2009. COEX MALL, is the largest shopping mall in Seoul, Korea. They brought me to the aquarium on the upper level of the mall and it was interesting to me that such a huge aquarium could be housed inside a big mall. As I started sketching and exploring the fishes, I was so impressed with the scale of the aquarium! It was huge! We walked through a seeminly frameless curved tunnel that passed through 2,000 tons of seawater. The automatic walkway in the tunnel took the visitors through big sharks, large turtles and other marine creatures. My favourite of all was the feeding session at the end of our visit. My Korean sketcher friends captured the act very well here and here.

Growing up in Singapore, my memory of an aquarium is so remote after my favourite Van Kleef Aquarium was closed in 1996 and demolished in 1998 at the foot of Fort Canning, River Valley Road opposite the current Novotal Hotel at Clark Quay.

quick pencil sketches

I have been back from Korea for about two weeks but could not find time earlier to post my travel sketches. First, three very quick pencil sketches of the folk drumers and the Bongeunsa Temple, Seoul, Korea.

something different

Something different again. It is about an idea.

something different

click to enlarge.

On something else not location drawing. This was done many years ago. I did many of these in the past.

when i was 13

I found this picture of my drawing in the file. I remember I did this when I was 13 years old. I was learning art under Liu Kang, Singapore's pioneer artist at his studo at Kirk Road near Cathy Cinema when I was 10. I left his studio when I was 17 or 18. I visited Liu Kang and his family periodically till he passed away in 2004 at the age of 94.

I must say looking at the drawing now, I am very impressed with what I could do at the tender age of 13!

bilbao

I started collecting pencil holders after I acquired the first one in Japan in the 80s. I bought a crayon holder in Barcelona when my friend and I went to Bilbao in July 2001. I used it to do a sketch on the famous Frank Ghery's Guggenheim Museum. Norman Foster's underground stations were still under construction then.

I will like to revisit Bilbao one day. Bilbao is always reinventing itself and Singapore can learn from them. In early 2000, Bilbao was rejuvenated by building a new city with famous landmarks designed by world renowned architects including a modern airport by Calatrava. I built a website in 2002 for that trip here