napkin sketch

Cathy Johnson, a fellow Urabansketcher, posted a napkin sketch. It reminds me of the one and only napkin sketch I'd done two and a half years ago during a dinner at a Chinese restaurant. The quality and the texture of the napkin; or we call serviette; was not good and ideal but I did like the flow of the ink on the surface. The original sketch was given to the little girl and I kept an image with a camera. I used my favourite Lamy fountain pen to sketch and it has been my faithful companion till this day.

the last sketch of the day

In the evening, I went to attend a book launch at my friend's new bookstore called "Polymath and Crust" at 86 Club Street. It now gives me reasons to visit and sketch more of my favourite street. Photos here. The sketching bugs following me even on my day off. Three sketches on the same day when I am out of the office. *smile*.

at the car showroom

I did this sketch of Nissan 370Z at the car showroom when I took half a day off from the office to send my car for general servicing. It is very expensive to own and drive a car in Singapore. The reason is because we have to pay for a 10-year Certificate of Entitlement, (COE)before we can own a car. This beautiful Nissan 370Z will cost around S$160,000 (about US$110,000) and it is probably much cheaper in other countries. A typical car will cost around S$70,000 easily.

smoking, no smoking?

In public area, smokers can only take the seats marked with yellow line. This popular food centre at Adam Road hang huge A3 size 'smoking' and 'no smoking' signs at the umbrella poles.

doodle at a meeting

I doodled to keep awake at a meeting. I listened while my hand moved.

Public Housing

This is Rochor Centre, a public housing complex in Singapore built in the 70s. Over 80% of Singaporean live in public housing like this and we call them HDB flats. HDB stands for Housing and Development Board. Rochor Centre is unique with its location near the city area with four slab towers above a few floors of shops, eateries and offices plus a huge basement carpark. I signed up for music lessons this afternoon at a music school above the coffee shop on the left and I did this sketch while enjoying a cup of local black coffee sitting along the corridor. The colouring was done on location too.

Can you spot the laundry above? People staying in the public flats hang their laundry on the bamboo sticks outside the kitchen windows to dry. It is a common scene for our public housing estates. Some say these are our "national flags"!

my life in these sketchbooks and journals

Small fraction of my 'books'. I always buy two journals / sketchbooks / notebooks of the same design. The two on the right are of the same type but one is more 'seasoned' than the other.



Internal pages of my travel journals. Hand drawn map of Boston in the front and small New York map at the back.

Laksa - another national dish

I did a sketch of a coffee shop selling our national dish 'chicken rice'. Yesterday I went to eat another popular national dish called laksa. The name 'laksa' traces back to Hindi/Persian lakhshah, referring to a type of vermicelliis. The laksa I had for lunch was white noodles with seafood ingredients such as cockles, prawns and fish cake served with special soup stock enriched with coconut milk and local spices. A standard bowl of laksa cost only S$2.00 (or US$1.4)- very cheap and rare in our city-state country. The tasty broth was scooped out from a traditional shaped aluminum pot placed over charcoal flame - very unique and rare in this modern times when gas or electric power are used for cooking. This laksa stall is so popular that there is always a constant flow of customers. The display cabinets are decorated with newspaper clippings, media write-up and stickers from the food critics.

never ending road work

Before turning into Club Street from Upper Cross Street, there is major construction work for the mass rapid transit line along Upper Cross Street. Usually it is quiet on Sunday but this particular Sunday there are workers with boots and helmets. One man wearing the LTA (Land Transport Authority) vest told me these are called crawler cranes. The operator for the crawler crane is a Japanese or Korean. The workers standing around are mainly Indians and the LTA supervisors are local Singaporeans.

Another drawing on dragon kiln

I posted a few drawings on dragon kiln. Here is another sketch on the same place with the dragon kiln at the back in colour wash. My sister bought a bottle of Noodler's waterproof ink from New York for me that I am able to experiment with colour wash with my Lamy fountain pen. However, I do find it less fluid but I guess it is something I may need to get used to.

graduation ceremony

Today is the graduation ceremony at Temasek Design School. Plenty of time for me to do the sketch as the graduants walked on the red carpet to receive their diplomas. Congratulations!

their first paintings

I did a sketch last Wednesday when my students were busy painting. They were happy and enjoying their first piece of big art work of size 1m x 1m. Many of them do not have any proper art training in their formal schools, and now they are on the foundation programme to be trained as a designer in the next 3 years. I hope they enjoyed the class as much as I enjoyed their company.

the new back lane

This is the back lane of 81, Club Street. Now that it is occupied, the mechnical systems are all hung on the back wall. I find the old back lane more attractive with the cracked wall and a small plant grew on top of the parapet wall. See the sketch here

Rare Oval Windows

There are three main ethnic neighbourhoods or hitorical districts in my country - the Chinatown, the Kampong Glam and the Little India. These shophouses at Syed Alwi Road in my sketch are gazetted for conservation under the larger Little India Historic District. This area is characterised by a row of two storey shophouses with heavily ornamented oval windows decorated with fruits and plants. The richly decorated oval windows contribute to a visually interesting architectural style that cannot be found in other part of the city. However, in recent years, the traditional trades are fast disappearing and the thriving newer businesses bring in uninspiring larger than usual signages and posters grabbing everyone's attention. The historical ornaments are also painted with very strong colours. Personally, I find them very loud and disturbing - the grand old lady has been putting on too much cosmetics!

our staff lounge

We have a very well equipped staff lounge in the office. We even have a game corner complete with Wii games and a dart board. However, I hardly see anyone plays in there. I go to the air conditioned staff lounge quite frequently to read the papers and take my lunch when the outdoor temperature is around 33 degree Celsius. The staff lounge is a sanctuary for urban people like me in a tropical climate.

Tibetan Temple in Singapore

Probably the only Tibetan temple in Singapore. A very simple building with so many colourful flags adorned the roof of the structure. A big yellow or gold prayer wheel could be seen from the main road. Rows of small red lanterns were hung from the ceiling and the feel was more Chinese than Tibetan. I was sitting comfortably opposite the coffee shop although I had great difficulty sketching the lower part of the building as the big vans and cars often blocked my view. I added the digital colours later.

awesome video from urban sketchers!

another crazy week

Semester had started so it was a crazy week with lots of paperworks, meetings and teaching. Teaching was drained but fun when you did things together with the young people and I would hear everyone talking. At meetings it was only a few people talking. Back to my desk, I was talking to myself silently.

On the right is another doodling at an important meeting this week. It was done with a common ball-point pen. On the left is a sketch of part of my study desk at home done with my favourite Lamy fountain pen. My family is so looking forward to this weekend as my elder son will be back from Hong Kong to celebrate Mother's Day.

Thinking of Tuscany

I was so busy lately but the landscape of Tuscany by Alessandro prompted me to post one of the sketches from my travel sketchbooks. I never got tired of vineyards after vineyards and olive trees after olive trees in Tuscany. The skyline of Tuscany was just breath taking when I first arrived at San Gimignano. Instead of sketching the tall towers of San Gimingnano, I wanted to capture the Toscana spirit. My mood at that time? "To live life alla Toscana, you cannot rush...."

also blog at urbansketchers

past works

This is probably the last poster I did for whom I rather not know. But the works displayed at these exhibitions were of very high quality as a result of close supervision. The other posters can be found here

another cool experiment using iPhone

more drawings on club street

I love to capture shadow like the drawing above. This is the shophouse with the only traditional wooden gate as it is still occupied by a Chinese clan. Some time I just went very loose with the linework from my fluid fountain pen like the drawing below. I have also just uploaded a few more to my flickr. Enjoy!

my location drawings - street directory

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this is so cool

View Club Street , Singapore in a larger map

lantern street lamp post

Last year I had been spending most of my Saturday mornings sketching at Club Street. This idiosyncratic shophouse building is at the corner of Club Street and Gemmill Lane. The advertising or design firm was above the comtemporary furniture shop. I like the 'stop' sign on the 'lantern' street lamp post which is a rare and interesting sight in this area due to the narrow road and very tight pavement. The street lightings and public signages are in oriental theme because Club Street is a stone away from Chinatown.

Once again, I had to work fast to make the shadow part of the composition.

club street drawings on T-shirts

I made the stencils and printed my club street drawings on six T shirts - two blacks, one red, two yellow and one white. It was an experiment and I learnt a lot during the process. My children love the black Ts because they are 'cool' for young people. I have no choice but to be contended with the white and yellow t-shirts. I use fabric paint to touch up the missing lines and added the rectangular frames for the yellow and white shirts.

at the figurine workshop

Thursday night my friends gathered to work on small clay figurines with reference made from Michelangelo's David. They leaned in on their respective pieces with their heads lifting upwards and right hands holding tight to the modelling tools. Well, as I did the sketch on my new sketchbook, I realised we all needed proper reading glasses for this type of work.

I let the pen skirt across the surface of the paper while my eyes were combing across the room. As I scribbled with dots and lines, my friend Carol was taking a picture of me in action. I felt a sense of satisfaction when I let myself get excited on the repetitive details of those greenwares on the shelves at the background. I added the patterns and textures to the clothings according to their preferences. For example, TY on the left wanted dots and Kuan on the right was wearing a black T-shirt. Mrs Tan in the middle was OK with a plain blouse while Tay, the instructor, was happy with a checkered shirt. The youngest group member who was wearing an apron, was standing at the back and he provided a vertical element to the composition.

This is what we hardworking urban people do after our daily office routine on a Thursday evening.

retreat or more meetings?

meeting, originally uploaded by tiastudio.

Last two days we had meeting(s) outside the office at a beautiful hotel. Talk and think, eat and drink. I did a sketch and can you tell who is the boss? Now back to office I am busy writing, writing and writing. There is no scanner in my office so I used my camera to take an image from my sketchbook. Hooray! This sketch is the very last page of my sketchbook. Will start a new sketchbook over the easter holidays. OK, back to work. I have deadlines to meet.

Happy easter holidays to all.

a small neighbourhood

This is a sketch at a neighbourhood where foreign workers and residents co-exist amicably side by side. Or is it? This small neighbourhood made news last year when an owner was charged with allowing ninety foreign workers to be housed in a 1,300 sq ft private apartment. Although many new private apartments were built in the recent years, this place still maintains a large number of original richly ornamented shophouses where prices are now beyond reach of common folks.

I did this sketch under the cool shade of a big tree with current hot temperature at 33 degree C. The row of shophouses on the left is lined with front gates adorned with elaborated designs that suggest these are middle-class families. However, the row of shophouses on the right which is facing the busy main road, is the heaven for either low-income families or foreign workers. The tell-tale signs are the barbed-wire railings, derelict wooden planks, canvas and the large quantity of laundry hanging at the crumbling balcony. It is also uncommon to find flying cable and large numbers of TV antennas in this tiny city-state country.

Write-up in Chinese

Write-up in Chinese, originally uploaded by tiastudio.

our first and only staff exhibition in the late 90s.

pastel portraitures

Since I am on this 'figurative' mood, I thought I post these two portraitures that I did when I'd just left the architecture school. I used to attend a once-a-week figure drawing session with an interest group at Cairnhill Community Centre in the mid 80s. Many group members are now professional artists or work in the art related field. This prompts me to wonder "if you are not selling your art, does it make you less of an artist?" or when people ask me "Is this (art) your hobby?" to me, these people have a brain as small a pea..oooops!

LOTR characters

Found these in my stack of rough papers. I remember I was really bored then so I did these sketches in front of the TV on rough A4 papers with a normal ball point pen. I loved LOTR movies then and today I still love them.