a drawing trip at Boat Quay

On Tuesday, we had our drawing class at Boat Quay, Singapore River. I did this sketch during my lunch hour at a local cafe / restaurant called DOME. The two ladies were so engrossed in a conversation that they did not notice me sitting diagonally across their table. I was using the new aquired ink called 'Perankan Brown' specially made for the local market by Noodler's Ink of America. The coffee stain was from the last few drops of the black coffee that I ordered. At the restaurant, I also met Colin,the gallery owner whom I just talked to on Sunday. What a small world!

The weather was hot but great as it was raining on Monday and Wednesday. The weather was with us! Students never failed to impress me with their attitude and enthusiasm, many had also improved so much considering this was their tenth day into the drawing class with me. Great job guys!

Here are some photos on the drawing trip. I really love their sketches, well done!

day two of wood firing

I stayed overnight to help out with the wood firing at the stoke holes at two sides of the dragon kiln. Helpers came at 2am and 4am so again, I was not required to feed the dragon but helped with minor duty instead. I helped with preparing clay slip to seal off the stoke holes and recording the temperature readings etc. I also got to take a nap in the comfortable air-cond office while others had to sleep in the cars or on the benches in the open air.

At around 6am, we took the buggy out for a spin on the jungle trail admiring the sun rays penetrating through the thick foliage in the woods. When we returned from the jungle adventure, I did another watercolour piece in the early morning and this time, on my favourite tree house and the banyan tree.

day one of wood firing

The wood firing at the dragon kiln started on Friday, 28 May at around 8am by Martha Stewart. Yes, she was in Singapore and they did the filming at Thow Kwang Pottery Jungle early morning! Wood firing was a 2-day, 1-night event and with so many helpers around, I did not have to do my shift of throwing the wood into the fire box. I had time to do a watercolour piece on day one at around 6pm before the BBQ when the sky turned pitched dark. The turnout for the BBQ this year was fantastic that for the very first time, late comers had to park their cars outside the main gate along the kampong (in Malay - means village) trail.

For this piece of work, I splashed some colours on the watercolour paper and let the colours to dry completely before using the fountain pen to do the line work. I then added the colours to bring out the mood and depth of the fire box. At this time inside the fire box, the temperature was around 700 deg C, so I could feel the heat too sitting near to the fire box doing this piece of work.

another sketch after dinner

I realise I have not posted this sketch. It was pouring like cats and dogs so I stayed after dinner at this eating house. I sketched with my new acquired Noodler's Peranakan Brown ink made exclusively for our local market.

video on dragon kiln

Fired by Passion: Dragon Kiln Firing - A Journal from phototrails on Vimeo

Thank you Carol for allowing us to post this video produced by her in 2003 for the dragon kiln. All of us look so young then in this old video. This video is so well done that it is probably the only professional piece of information on the heritage of the wood kilns in Singapore.

We are conducting another wood firing today, come and join us. Leave your comments on Thow Kwang Clay Artists.

Sketch Walk this Friday and Saturday

Sketchwalk for the month of May will be held at two separate locations on two separate times:

FIRST LOCATION
Friday, 28 May 2010, 5pm till late.
1. Tia and friends invite you to join them as they do wood firing and sketching at the Thow Kwang Pottery Jungle, Boon Lay area. 5pm till late on Vesak Day, Friday 28 May 2010. There will be a BBQ too (contribution of $5). Please contact Tia at 96968080 for more info. Directions: drop at Boon Lay MRT station, take bus no. 199 to bus stop after Jalan Bahar flyover, walk in along the kampong tarmac road. Lots to sketch along the way - big and small trucks, motorcycles and cars, trees and plants…. then about 10 mins, you will see the very interesting gate…..and POTTERY JUNGLE!!!




SECOND LOCATION
Saturday, 29 May 2010, 9am.
2. Andrew and James will lead another group to sketch at Ghim Moh wet market/hawker center. On saturday morning, 29 May 2010. The place is bustling with people buying they groceries, eating breakfast and selling goods from small makeshift stalls. This old market/hawker place might not be around too much longer so this is a good opportunity to draw it before it is torn down and turned into a modern hawker center. Breakfast can be eaten in between drawing.

To join us, simply meet us at Bouna Vista mrt control station at 9am. We will then begin walking to the market at 9am sharp. If you can’t find us, call Andrew at 91070735.

a visit to PIXAR exhibition

Today 5 lecturers brought about 130 students to visit an unique exhibition entitiled "20 years of Animation - PIXAR" at the Science Centre. The purpose of the field trip is to get the freshmen to draw and Tuesday is the only day of the week that group drawing and sketching are pemitted inside the exhibition hall. I hope students were inspired to sketch their favourite characters. I certainly was motivated to do one on moleskine and a few on scrapbook.

The displays are awesome!

my interview with Veronica Lawlor

This interview with Veronica Lawlor was first published on the website of First International Urban Sketching Symposium at Portland, Oregon. Vernoica and I are the presenters for the symposium.

Veronica Lawlor aka Ronnie, as she is affectionately called, never fails to amaze everyone with her fluid and dancing quality line work with urban landscape, figurative and festive themes. Recently, her May 11 post on Urban Sketchers which she drew New York City from a tall building in Wall Street stunned us with such genius loci, great sense of place and abstract line quality. A true New Yorker, Ronnie's interpretation of the big apple is incredibly filled with rich emotions. She always knows which parts to omit or reduce and what lines to use in all her drawings. I am also impressed with her choice of colours in some of her sketches.

I first knew Ronnie through her work on Urban Sketchers and I am excited to meet her in person during the first Internatioanl Urban Sketching Symposium at Portland this July. Coming from similar background with years of teaching under our belt, I have the following questions for her:





Understand you are one of the founders for Dalvero Academy and you also teach at Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design. What is your view on the relationship between art and design and how they should compliment each other?

To me, art and design are synonymous. You can’t have a good design without art and I can’t imagine a piece of art without design. As a teacher I love drawing because it reveals the truth of the artist’s own sense of design. Drawing reveals where a student’s strengths lie: fashion, architecture, sculpture, painting, film, illustration, photography, you name it. And then drawing helps them to get there. It’s the tool of the artist and also like a crystal ball to their future.

When I search for “reportage drawings”, your name appears everywhere on the results. What is reportage drawing and why do you think reportage drawing as an art genre is important?

The word reportage comes from the French, meaning ‘the act or process of reporting’. Reportage drawing can be journalistic or descriptive of place and can carry the artist’s opinion. Since it is painted or drawn and not photographed, reportage illustration can take liberties with ‘reality’ in order to be clearer in meaning. It is important to the art genre because it is a direct artistic response to a place or situation, right there on the spot, and it becomes very instinctive. In that it is different from the majority of artistic experience that involves the artist alone in a studio working.

Since there is a direct connection between the artist’s hand, eye and mind, it can be very emotional as well. Reportage is so rewarding for me because I love it as a way to interact with the world and contribute.

You are the author for several books and your works are exhibited in galleries and museums. Can you tell us more and what these achievements mean to you in your role as artist, illustrator and educator?

The gratifying thing about having my work published and in gallery or museum settings is that I am able to reach the public with it. To me, art is always about communication with people. When my drawings of September 11th were exhibited at the Fire Museum in New York City, I had firemen coming up to me with tears in their eyes telling me how emotionally affected they were by seeing them. That kind of emotional connection is such a big part of the reason why I started drawing in the first place. I can be a bit shy at times, but I’m really an extrovert at heart, and drawing allows me to reach out to people who I might otherwise never come in contact with.

You are the only artist to draw, on the spot, the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, share with us the emotion and how did you manage to go through the wreckage to do the reportage. Was it tough and how did you recover from it?

The attacks on the World Trade Center were such an unbelievable source of grief for New Yorkers. Many of us (myself included) lost friends or family that day; all of us lost the World Trade Center. I have lived my entire life in New York City; those buildings are alive to me. Every day when I look up and see the Empire State Building and I feel like I’m home. The World Trade Center was the same.

I was in shock when I was making those drawings, but it felt like the right thing to do. Documenting what was going on was a way to work through my emotions, both during and after the attack. Over the next few months I drew and drew everything that was going on. It gave me a purpose and made me feel as if there was something I could contribute in a situation where the reality was that I was powerless over it.






more drawings by Veronica on 911 here

As one of the Board Directors for Urban Sketchers, what do you wish to see at the upcoming Symposium in Portland?

I hope that the symposium will promote the art of drawing on location and bring its practitioners from all over the world together. There’s nothing better than being with a group of people that have the same love that you do. And I hope this symposium will be the beginning of many more!

• Veronica's blog.
• Veronica's website.
• Veronica's drawings.

Tree 78

After a cup of coffee at the near-by food centre, I drove to the carpark behind this block of flats through a narrow driveway. This block of flats reminded me of the 'high density low rise' housing concept in the early days. I believe this carpark was a park before. This sketch was done inside the comfort of my car looking towards a steep slope with the typical orange-red roof art-deco flats on top of the slope at the far end. The rear staircases formed an interesting urban element in this charming old estate called Tiong Bahru.

still kicking and alive

Sorry for the lack of update here. Wood firing is scheduled to be on 28 to 29 May 2010 so I spent most of my time on the potter's wheel and not sketching.

You can visit Pottery Jungle to find out more about the wood firing.

Anyway, here are some pictures on why I was missing from the sketching scence.



More can be found on my clay site here.

old flats where I grew up

I lost my Hero M86 fountain pen. I might have lost it after I did the last sketch. So I used Zig calligraphy pens - black and grey to do the outline of the flats after the watercolours. I quite like the watercolour effect on the yellowish smooth moleskine card surface.

I did a post on my birthplace here. I wanted to sketch places I grew up and schools I studied. Unfortunately the old flats I grew up at Queenstown were demolished but my first home look like the one here. This old neigbourhood at Commonwealth is now the foreign students' hostel as I saw them walking in and out of the flats with backpacks and groceries plastic bags. The railway track is just next to the flats and the train only appeared once as I was sketching. The ants and mosquitos were everywhere that I had to leave early and finish the flat details at home. There must be at least ten mosquitos bites on both of my arms and feet.

I will need to get another fountain pen and I will add a small bottle of insect repellent on my art material list.

caught the sketching bug during work

A colleague brought this bicycle to the studio for students to draw. The sketching bug got onto me that I had to sit next to the students and sketch. The young student sitting next to me must have felt so intimidated as he took a very long time to just draw a few lines. I remember talking to myself : "How is he going to finish the drawing with tonal values before the class ends? Oh dear, I better leave now." So I left the class without looking at his face and please if you are that student reading this, I apologise for intruding into your class.

photos of night sketchwalk at Geylang

Night Sketchwalk at Geylang

Sketches at first, second and fourth locations. Geylang is hailed as the red-light district in Singapore. So you can imaging our reaction when the idea of a night sketch walk at Geylang was mooted. As I was waiting for the sketchers to arrive shortly after 6pm at Kallang MRT Station, I sketched "7-Eleven" - a popular local convienient store near the entrance so late-comers would see me. Next, we arrived at the corner of Sims Avenue and Lorong 7, Geylang Road. We ordered a few drinks so we could sit comfortably and sketched the durian stall opposite the coffee shop. There were many uncles in the coffee shop and I saw a young lady approaching a lone uncle offered to sit with him with a big smile on her face. She looked decent in her laced dress but who would ask to sit with a lonely man at Geylang?

Durian stalls were mainly found along Sims Avenue and KTV, bars, pubs and bright neon signs were the common sights along Geylang Road. We stayed together and sketched at the corner of a back lane and Lorong 19 after a sumptuous meal near-by. It was so difficult to sketch in the night especially under the dim sodium street light when I could not see the colours properly. YES, interesting activities around us. Uncles were all around here and there pretending to be walking, smoking or waiting for someone. I saw many cars going into the dark alleys where the girls were standing at both sides. You could see bright lights at the end of the road in the sketch and it was the lights from Paramount KTV at Geyland Road.



Sketch at third location along Lorong 9, Geylang proved to be an interesting experience too. I was sitting alone on my small stool at the corridor when the sky turned pitch dark. I could only see my sketch with the help of the bright light from the coffee shop opposite where I was sitting. Passers-by often stood a short while and looked at my sketch. Constrant stream of people, cars, buses and trucks making the place noisy and lively. Why was I alone? other sketchers were sketching the workers working in the middle of the road and I chose to do the streetscape that took a longer time. I later met up with the sketchers for a dinner highly recommended by people who frequent the eateries at Geylang. It was a wonderful night full of excitement throughout with good company, good food and good sightseeing of a different kind.

Night Sketchwalk this Saturday!

Thank you Drewscape for the original post.

The upcoming sketchwalk will cover the colourful geylang stretch where there are durian stalls and many busy eateries. We will meet at Kallang MRT station at 6pm and start walking off at 6pm sharp. Then we will move on down the road toward Aljunied MRT station. At 7pm, we will break for dinner at a coffeeshop with good food (you may also find your own food depending on your preferences.) Then we will continue the sketchwalk as a NIGHT sketchwalk. For sketching at night, there will be more dark areas interspersed with colourful bright areas, so do bring black markers or inkbrushes that can colour black spaces fast. We will conclude our sketchwalk at 9pm at Aljunied MRT station. Please call 91070735 if you can’t find us on that day. No need to sign up, just show up on that day.

ps: It is adviseable for female sketchers to dress with longer pants and less revealing shirts to avoid being scanned by uncles:) But we will stay away from the sleazy areas nonetheless.

Coffee Club on a hot Sunday

At local coffee chain called Coffee Club in the quiet Central Business District on a hot Sunday afternoon. Coffee Club opened Singapore's first gourment coffee house in 1991 with its own on-site coffee roasting facilities. Today, they have 24 outlets that promote a modern cafe lifestyle.

Camp Odyssey Performance Night

Every year during orientation period, the students will be giving the orientation camp a fanciful name. Last year it was called Camp X and this year it is Camp Odyssey. Orientation has becoming an important part of students' life here in our design institution. The last night of Camp Odyssey was the performance night. I arrived early so I started sketching up in the viewing gallery when the hall was quite empty. When I finished, the hall was packed with students with their tribal flags and props. It was a memorable night for staff and the students.

my favourite mee pok noodle shop

Again, at my favourite noodle place for lunch. There was another one done here.

things around the house

It was hot, hot, hot at 32 deg C outdoor so it was a stayed-home Sunday for me. I was getting quite bored at one point that I grabbed these cute little dolls I bought a few years ago from Hong Kong and did a quick watercolour sketch while watching TV at the same time. These little dolls were joined together as a mobile and the colours already faded as they were washed once in the washing machine. The stuffed cotton was also exposed at some spots so they will be thrown away one day but my sketch will be around for a long time.

at starbucks

Last Saturday evening, I went to the neighbourhood Starbucks with my son. He was studying and I was sketching. The place was packed with young people with laptops and earpieces hung around their necks. Two guys in a group occasionally spoke so loud that you know they were boasting about their investments. I was sitting at the far end near to the corner wall having the best view of the entire cafe.

I had another earlier sketch of the same Starbucks here.

skyline of Singapore

Skyline of downtown Singapore seen from the Marina Bay which is on reclaimed land. The coloured tiled roof are the dwarf but charming historical buildings along the shoreline against the giant skyscrapers in the background. You can find out the names of the towers here. On the right is the relatively new motorway bridge that spans across the mouth of Singapore River with the iconic Merlion at the end of the bridge. I am proud to be living here enjoying the view like this on a lazy Sunday evening.

Nakhon Kitchen

At Nakhon Kitchen, a Thai coffee shop at Bedok South, the public housing estate. There was a constant waiting line during dinner hours. I sketched while my family members queued in the line. I added the shades when I finished my dinner. The picture was taken after the dinner. Yummy!

another TP Canteen

It is vacation time for the students. Our canteen at the Design School is closed so I went to Engineering School for my coffee. The coffee here is not as good as the one at Design School but what choice do I have?