Singapore Art Show 2009 - Art In The Works

I was involved in a 2-day art workshop/demo event held in conjunction with the Singapore Art Show 2009, called Art In The Works at Raffles City Shopping Centre, in downtown Singapore, on 12 and 13 September

The objective was to promote various forms of art and to engage the public to appreciate and take part in visual art. There were chinese calligraphy, chinese seal carving, oil, acrylic, pencil & charcoal drawing, Indian sand art, glass art, and of course, watercolour (being represented by Singapore Watercolour Society).

On the first day, I did a 2-hour demo of a landscape painting, based on a plein air piece I did recently. Thereafter, my former teacher, mentor and good friend, Mr Loy Chye Chuan painted a close-up of an old staircase.

Here are some pics taken on the first day.

Javier came in the morning to help out with the setting-up

Daddy, where do I place this book?

Yours truly
Almost Done
Mr Loy Chye Chuan at his best!

The completed demo painting by Loy Chye Chuan

Kids having fun at the watercolour workshop

On the second day, I did another demo, painting the scene of Boat Quay along Singapore River, while Mr Seah Kam Chuan did a demo of window shutters of a peranakan styled shophouse. I will post the photos taken on the second day as soon as I get the photos from the photographer.

WIP - Balinese Ceremony

I have noticed that usually there were many street scenes, landscapes and florals in most of the art exhibitions that I have taken part in, while portraits and figure paintings were less frequently represented, so for the upcoming SWS Annual Exhibition this November, I've decided to paint a figure painting, not one, not two, not ten... but at least 30? I've lost count.

This is a religious ceremony in Bali called "Odalan" where devotees were kneeling down to offer prayers to celebrate the anniversary of the temple. This is going to be the most challenging painting I have ever attempted not because I've ventured outside my comfort zone (street scenes and landscape) as I've done portrait and figures before, but because there are sooo many of them!

I just hope I have the patience to deal with all of them...

OK, here's the very detailed drawing which I spent almost 3 hours to complete...

Full sheet of Fabriano Artistico Rough Watercolour Paper 300gsm, stretched and stapled to a 20" x 29" strectching frame.

In landscape painting, I'll often start from the sky and work downwards, but for this painting, I decided to focus on the main subjects, ie. the devotees in the foreground. The Balinese are usually tanned, so their skin tones are painted with mixture of burnt sienna, transluscent orange, burnt umber and a touch of cerulean blue. An assortment of colours which include permanent rose, cerulean blue, ultramarine violet, yellow orche, etc. are used for their clothings. 

Here's a close-up shot of the figures...

After that, I added more details to the figures, and gave each of them some hairs on their heads... Ha! Ha!

Next, I painted the various buildings and structures around the scene. This is where I'm back to my comfort zone so I did it pretty quickly. If you're wondering what are those things in yellow, there are yellow-coloured cloths which were draped around the temple to celebrate the event. 

Then, I painted the sky and trees in the background, which were done quickly and loosely.

Next, I painted the ground with mixture of burnt sienna + cerulean blue + whatever dirty colours left inside my water con


Finally, I finished it off by painting the details, touched up some of the figures and adjusted some of the minor mistakes I found... did you notice that earlier on, there was a brown coloured stain on the middle of the paper? Instead of removing it, I added a pair of sandals to cover it... then, I added the shadows and highlights with a touch of white gouache.

Here's the finished painting.

I hope you'd enjoy my step-by-step work-in-progress...  

Glorious 39 - A pictorial

Just wanna share with you some of the photos taken during Singapore Watercolour Society's 39th Annual Exhibition 2008 - Glorious 39 held two weeks ago from 26 to 29 September 2008.We had quite a good turnout, good crowd on the opening and over the weekend, the standard of watercolour works are getting better and better each year, and we also organized the 2nd Singapore National Junior Watercolour Competition for children aged between 10 and 18.


On 27 Sep, my former teacher and mentor Mr Loy Chye Chuan did a 1.5 hours watercolour demonstration showing the audience how to paint a sliced watermelon, a bananna, a tree, a crack on a concrete floor and ended the demo with a quick seaside scene painting.


The following day on 28 Sep, while the whole Singapore is witnessing the first Formula 1 night race, we're busy with another demo where Mr Seah Kam Chuan, did a 1.5 hours watercolour demonstration. He painted a rural riverside scene, showing how to retain the white of paper using masking fluid and creating texture using salt.

Here are some of the pics...

The exhibition venue at Ngee Ann Cultural Centre, Teochew Building

The crowds on the opening day

Guilding the VIPs while they view the artworks on display

Explaining my artwork to the Guest-of-honour, Dr Cheryl Baumann

Dr Baumann with the winners of the Junior Watercolour Competition

Paintings by winners and finalists of the Junior Watercolour Competition

Mr Loy Chye Chuan's demo

We used a video camera to shoot and show what he's doing onto a projection screen

Mr Loy answering queries from enthusiastic watercolour fans

Results from the 1.5 hours demo

Mr Seah Kam Chuan's demo

Using hair dryer to speed things up...

Notice how he used salt technique for the background trees and masking fluid to leave out the white paper for the poles, leaves, boat etc.

The finished demo painting in 1.5 hours...

This is the only photo I have taken with my painting as I was too busy attending to the guests on the opening day, and the next two days I was the assigned photographer for the 2 demos.... therefore only managed to snapped this one.

Pandan Shipyard & me

My other painting in the exhibition - Imperial Palace, Tokyo - the one on the right is Mr Loy's painting.

Thanks for looking.... hope you like the photos....

Demo - Imperial Palace, Tokyo

Here's a demo I did recently.

This is the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, Japan (aka Kokyo), the residence of the Emperor of Japan, based on a photo I took while I was in Tokyo for a work-related business trip a year ago.

Full sheet of Fabriano Artistico Rough 300gsm stapled on stretching frame.

Let's start with the drawing...

First, a glaze of wash is done wet-on-wet on the background foliage with mixture of yellow ochre, sap green and turquoise blue. Next, the first wash of the rocks is painted ,also wet-on-wet with mixture of yellow ochre, burnt sienna, permanent rose, cerulean blue and turquoise blue. I also painted the gate with turquoise blue, prussian blue and yellow ochre. These will serve as the colour foundation of the overall painting.


Next, I moved on to the main building. The Imperial Palace is majestically built on top of a hill supported by the rocks and heavily guarded. The curved roof is especially fun to paint with minimal brush strokes to suggest the details. Then I painted the windows, roof tiles, beams, etc.

I also painted the shaded areas of the building and started to define the rocks with shades and cracks (this will be very tedious later on but fun to do nonetheless!) . I guess you can tell now that Yellow ochre and Turquoise blue are the colour theme of this painting.

Also, notice that I didn't use masking fluid to cover the lamp post and the guard houses. Instead, I chose to paint around these structures as I hate the very hard edges created by masking fluid. I only use it when really necessary.



I painted the rocks slowly and merticulously, very tedious task but someone still has to do it ... I didn't follow the forms and shapes of the rock exactly as in my ref photo (that would be insane), but a close interpretation would do, as long as they look like rocks.Also added more texture and layers to the background foliage but I kept it very light as I want to keep that area of the painting bright to contrast it with the rest of the painting.


Finally, I added more details and shades on the rock wall, painted the guard and lastly added more detailed branches and leaves on the background foliage.... happy that I've painted something for almost 2 months, but not really excited about it... may be because painting all those rocks in detail turned this into a tiring labour rather than a work of art? I don't know...

Anyway, here's the finished painting.


Here are some close-up shots:

Hope you like it... comments and critiques are welcome as usual.

Demo ~ Shopping at Gambier Street, Kuching

It's been ages since I did a proper demo. So I guess I should do one again.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I was invited to an exhibition this coming July in my hometown in Sarawak, Malaysia where the theme is "Our People, Our Culture". I did one portrait of a local native man recently, and was quite satisfied with it. Now, I'm going to paint a street scene. I wanted to show the community in its daily activities, so what's better than to paint shoppers in a busy market.

This is a scene based on a photo I took several years ago of a strecth of shophouses selling spices and groceries. I've painted the exact location at a slightly different angle about five years ago. I believe my painting skill and style have improved and changed since then. So, hopefully this one will be a lot better, crossing fingers and toes.

Here's the drawing, on full-sheet of Fabriano Artistico stretched on 20" x 28" stretching frame.

Then, I painted the first glaze of colours wet on wet, but pretty controlled using a no.8 round brush, which I reckon is a decent size to use for such detailed painting as it holds sufficient water and yet small enough to control where I want the wash to go to.

Before the wash is completely dried, I lift out some paints to get the highlights on the clothes and rice sacks.

This is a messy chaotic market so I need a lot of patience to paint all the different objects and yet not to turn the whole thing into mud.

Next, I built up the forms and structures of the various objects in this complicated scene. I made use of negative spaces, lines and glazes of darker colours to define shapes of the carton boxes, rice sacks etc. while at the same time I darkened the background. Also, the main figure is slowly built up with glazes and strokes to indicate shadows and creases on her cloths.

After that, I threw a variety of colours to the upper shelves to create more interest which would have to be darken in my next instalment in order to contrast the main figure against the shopfront. I also painted the canvases on top of the shop. I used mainly wet-on-wet technique on the blue canvas and while the paint was still fairly damp, I lift off some paint with a clean brush to create the soft highlight effect. In contrast, I used the dry brush technique on the green canvas just below to vary the textures and feel. However, I'm not sure if this is a good decision as both canvases are so near to one another and yet they are rendered so differently.

More details were painted, adding more darks as appropriate to the sacks, boxes, merchandise hung from the top shelves, then I darkened the background. At times, I have to paint carefully around the various objects as I hate using masking fluid which will always leave a trail of harsh lines so I try to avoid it.

Finally, I made some corrections to the left side of the blue/orange canvas, painted the ropes using white gouache, gave the background another cerulean blue + burnt sienna wash to darken it so as to create more contrast against the main subjects and lastly, finished it off with some darks here and there as I deemed fit.

..and last but not least, here are some close-up shots of the painting...

Glad it's done now... hope you like it. Comments and critiques are welcome as usual.

*EDIT: Change of title to "Shopping at Gambier Street, Kuching"

Demo - Taman Ayun Temple, Bali

It's been ages since I did a full-sheet watercolour and I'd have to admit that I'm getting rusty at painting large-size watercolours.

Anyway, Singapore Watercolour Society (SWS) has been renting a room at Telok Kurau Studios, a Art Housing Scheme by Singapore's National Arts Council, as its official premises since the start of the project in 1997. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Telok Kurau Studios, the management committee of the studios will hold an art exhibition and invited three SWS members to represent the society in this event. As the society's Secretary-General, I was chosen as one of the society's representatives but I haven't got any recent painting for the show, so I painted this full-sheet watercolour over the past two days.

This is a photo I took nearly 3 years ago while holidaying in Bali.



Step 1 - Drawing the outline



Step 2 - Painting the first glaze.
I did the sky with Cerulean Blue and mixed a little Cobalt Blue and threw in some Ultramarine Violet to add more interest to the sky. The roof of the huts are painted mostly in Yellow Ochre with a little touch of Turqoise Blue and Translucent Orange. The Pagoda-like buildings in the background are painted in Sepia, Yellow Orche and Burnt Sienna, while the foliage is painted in Sap Green, Azo Yellow and Cerulean Blue. I also painted the ground with light washes of Yellow Orche and Burnt Sienna.



Step 3 - At this stage, I started to build up the values of the various structures by glazing darks over the shaded areas, paying attention to the light source. Colours used are essentially the same as the previous stage but using more pigments than water but making sure I maintain the fluidity of my paints so as not to turn the darks into mud.


Step 4 - Finally, I added the finishing touches to various things throughout the paintings by painting in the details and decided to darken the foliage on the left, soften the clouds in the sky, emphasized the shadows, painted the plants on the foreground and the two figures, etc.



Below are some close-up to show you parts of the painting in detail.




I used mostly Winsor & Newton, Rembrandt, Schmincke, Holbein - all artists grade watercolour paints. Paper used is my favourite Fabriano Artistico 300gsm Rough.

I hope you like this little demo that I've put together. I can see quite obviously that the painting s I do at home more detailed compared to my outdoor works as I have the comfort and time to sit down and paint slowly. This is painted over 2 days (or should I say late nights), approximately over 8 hours in total. I hope this is good enough for the show. :)

Critiques and comments are welcome as usual.

EDITED: I realized that the distant tree on the top left-hand corner was running almost parallel with the roof line. So I changed the tree a little to get more variations. Also, I felt that the foreground foliage was weak and decided to darken it and add a few stronger and bolder strokes to punch it up. It served to anchor the whole composition better that way.


Now, that's better... :)