28th January: To better understand the topic at hand, we were first taught about Kirigami. Kirigami is the folding and cutting of paper together. No glue is used to stick anything together. The beauty of Kirigami is that it makes everything 3D and pop up.

I made a tiny section of the Petronas Twin Towers. In my case, just a single tower. I first drew the outline of it; where I wanted to cut, what I shouldn’t cut. This took me quite a long time to do as the architectural work of the Twin Towers is complicated. There were many glasses and metal on it. I got a bit lazy and just drew it lesser that what was originally there.

This is the picture I took a few years ago in a nearby building called Hayatt Hotel.

After tracing, I started cutting the top with my blade. I was careful in this process as thee were many dark areas I wanted to express and make it look 3D. However, someone broke my concentration and I accidentally tore the paper with my blade, thus creating a tear in my work. I did not use glue to glue the pieces back as this project would have lost its purpose so I kept going. Once I made all the cuts and holes, I moved onto the folding. I made slits at first and then started folding like how I learnt in the beginning of the lesson but I reckon it wasn’t very well done as I did this at 4 am in the morning with caffeine running out in my veins.

Overall, this was a wild experience for me. I keep thinking of how I could improve this if I had more knowledge about Kirigami. But given the time limit and what I produced, I think this was a very good start to some thing more. To better myself for the future, I will keep on researching about Kirigami and look for ways to improve myself by finding pockets of time to keep doing it by trial and error. I believe mistakes are what makes a person better so I will keep on making mistakes and keep on improving from then onwards.

28th January: Etching on a plastic plate was a fairly new task for me. As a child I often scratched on different surfaces by accident with my pens but today, it was on purpose. I picked a square with the helmet on it from my linear drawing. I found it had various tones on it with light, medium and dark contrasts.

For my first attempt, I etched it lightly using quick lines, in fear of making the areas that were supposed to be light, dark. When I printed it on the printing press, The areas that I wanted it to be light were too light. I was told that the first print was going to be light but I didn’t want to take any chances of it becoming light again so I went back with my stylus and made deeper marks into the areas I wanted it lighter. I even compared it with my original drawing and made some new marks onto my etching plate.

After going back and etching once more, I printed my second piece. It turned out better than the first which was good. It had more darker tones however, there were barely any lighter tones on it save for the parts that were not etched and the markings that I had made had been unnatural for me. I wanted the darker contrast to shine through on the right more. So, I tried printing it one more time without etching again.

The third one I felt was a disaster. It was not polished. I did have lighter tones which I wanted but there were not enough darker tones. During the process of wiping away the excess inks away, I might have wiped away too much of it. I would consider the third one to be a failure and improved on it by making the fourth and final one.

The fourth and final one is the best out out of them all I feel as there were a range of dark, medium and light tones which felt pretty natural to me. The only thing I wish I would have done on this would be that I wish I had cleaned and polished it further to make it look cleaner and appear neater. I blame this on my lack of effectiveness as I thought I cleaned the entire plate. I guess I should have been more alert.

Overall, I thought it was a success. I learnt that my prints could be improved by etching in further to produce darker tones and how you put inks into the crevices of where I etched. I also learnt that inks could build up and become darker if you keep going back an adding inks to it. I will take all of this into account and keep progressing by producing better work next time as I have learnt my mistakes and pointed out the positives of printing and etching.

13 January: We learnt how to make our own cloth with using fibres. It was a really interesting experience as I have never made it before. I was excited at first but when a sample cloth was passed around, I grew a bit scared and hesitant to start making felt as it felt dirty and looked dirty. But then, looking at the process of how felt is made, I thought sure, let’s make this look clean and artistic.

I first started off picking a primary research from my sketchbook. I was told landscapes worked best in felt-making But I picked something other than landscapes. I picked a close up because the background was blurry and the only focus was the leaves in the middle. Then, I went on to pick my Merino Wool. I picked various shades of green ranging from turquoise to emerald green to light green. I also used a soft pink, orange and yellow to sort of give it that Impressionist look when there was no pinks or orange. I only used orange because they had no brown which was such a shame.

Next, I went to the station where the carders were placed. I picked up a pair of carders and started pulling them in opposite directions after laying down my wool in between the spikes. When I first saw them, I thought they were combs used to brush dogs which was quite funny. Pulling the carders apart required a lot of arm strength but it wasn’t a problem for me. Once I was done, I carefully picked up my wool from the carders and carefully placed them on the bubble wrap. I layered them a few more times until it was thick. I also adjusted the wool into the place I wanted them to be.

After this, we sprayed the wool with soapy water and covered the felt with bubble wrap. The next step was to massage it in, making sure I popped all the bubble pockets in the wrap. I found this extremely difficult to do as I could not pop any at first. I thought maybe I didn’t apply any force at all and tried using a bit more force but it did not work. I was a bit flabbergasted by that. I even tried targeting one bubble pocket with my finger and it didn’t work at all. My finger was slightly bent as I pressed it too hard. So, my friends and I found a solution to this. There were rolling pins set aside so we tried using them. I admit it wasn’t the most effective but the bubble pockets did pop and the felt did flatten. I then continued by rolling up my calico and bubble wrap along with my felt. As I did this, the soap bursted out. It made quite a mess but I continued on with the work. I then unrolled it and rolled it the other side. I knew this was to flatten and make sure the felt stayed in place together. I then removed the calico after unrolling it again and rolled it without the calico and went to wash the soap out.

The line to wash out the felt was insane. Being short did not bring me an advantage as I was shoved by tall people but it didn’t matter as I eventually got to wash it. The felt was extremely hard to wash as the water was cold and the soap did not go away no matter how many times I rinsed it with water and squeezed the water and soap out. I kind of gave up at the end with washing all the soap up and just let it be. I squeezed one last time and went to a nearby table and rolled it out carefully to let it dry.

The outcome. Was not pretty. In my mind it looked like a dishwashing sponge. I had not thought it through enough which was my mistake. I did however love the process of making it. It was fun and I learnt a lot by learning how people made their own cloth without much technology. Next time, I will think things through and improve on my work by designing it differently and placing my wool to make it look like leaves in the center.

6th February: I was honestly so very excited to do this. Growing up in Malaysia, everyone had to have done Batik at least once in their life. As a child, I did it quite a few times. To be able to do this in class meant a lot to me as it brought back memories.

I first nailed thumbtacks into the wooden frame with the cloth between it to straighten the cloth which was quite simple to do as my wooden frame had been used quite a few times and the wood was getting soft. I then used the Tjanting, a tool to scoop up the melted wax that was in liquid form and let the wax drip from the hole and drew the outline with it. I used a folded paper towel to block the wax from dripping down everywhere. Whenever my wax started to cool, I poured it back into the heating pot and scooped up warmer wax to continue doing my work with ease. I eventually finished outlining and moved onto my painting.

I filled it in with many different colours because Batik is supposed to be colourful. To keep it traditional, I filled up my primary resources with various colours. The only thing that I do not like about my batik is that my wax did not manage to prevent the colours from transferring to the other side. The cause of this was because there was not enough wax to resist the batik paint. The cause of this was because the wax was not hot enough to seep through the cloth but it doesn’t seem too bad.

I then went to the iron to melt the wax away. The newsprint paper is sandwiched between the cloth after being blow dried carefully. The heat from the iron melted into newsprint paper. I did this twice the thoroughly remove the wax and I was done.

Overall, it brought back memories as it reminded me of my childhood which was great but analysing it critically, I wish I could have drawn it better with the Tjanting. I liked the colours I used. I will go back to Malaysia and extensively learn about this, going to the Batik Museum, gathering inspiration from it and practice using the Tjanting and making my hand more stable.

Before using the Heat Press Machine, we were given 5 minutes to pick leaves outside the college. I went out to find the prettiest leaves and the hardest to pluck. But when I came back, I realised that all my leaves were small sized. For me, I felt it was a bit of a shame as I reckon I could have gotten more designs of leaves on it. But it was okay, I had to work with what I had.

Using the transferring inks which were INCREDIBLY expensive, I picked up the paint on my brush and painted the A4 paper without using water. When I first painted on my paper, the paint appeared strong and dark. It did not look like the colours that I applied which made me slightly worried.

This is the inks on the paper. Comparing both the polyester and the paper, they look completely different in terms of colours which surprised me.

I then brought my paper and leaves and brought it to the heat press machine. I first laid down a newsprint paper to the heat press machine. I placed my leaves carefully on my polyester and finally laid down the A4 paper containing the inks. I brought the lever down and waited for 40 seconds before I lifted it up again. The inks transferred onto my polyester which completely blew my mind as the colours were different. But it also made me a bit sad because I felt like I did not apply enough blue to my paper. I then turned over my leaves and added it to the parts that had no inks on the polyester. I repeated the process again, hoping that the inks on the leaves will transfer as I did not apply much blue ink onto it. After 40 seconds, I lifted the lever up again. I’m not gonna lie. It made me nervous to the point I held my breath. I lifted my polyester and I was quite satisfied with it. But as suspected the blue did not really transfer onto the polyester the second time around.

Overall, I would say it was pretty successful in terms of design and the colours I picked. It was really interesting working with this as this was my first time trying it. There are a few improvements I could go back and work into like darkening the colours, taking it out 10 seconds earlier to prevent the cloth from burning because the leaves had moisture in it and making sure I pick the right leaves but I would say this is pretty good for a beginner. I would love to go back and try the heat press machine and work on my mistakes to better myself at this craft.

29th January: It was my first time drawing a life model. Honestly, it really surprised me as the model stripped naked right in front of me however, I had a deep sense of respect for her as she had the confidence I never will have.

My easel was positioned at the right side of the studio. We were given thin A3 paper to work on and I drew her using charcoal at first. We were taught how to use our pencils as a guide as we stood exactly where we were. Our hands had to be straight as we measured her body and marked where her body parts were on paper. We also had to close one eye for the exact measurement so that her whole body doesn’t shift. I started with the outline of the body, lightly grazing the paper. Then I filled the the body with tones to portray the shadows casted on her.

This is my first drawing of her. Looking at this, I don’t like anything about it. The model had a rounder belly and fuller boobs. I made her appear thinner which I felt was an insult to the model herself as she so bravely stood in front of me. I also did not draw straight lines and you can see broken lines on her arms and legs. I tried smoothening the edges of her outline but the 8 minutes ran out and I sadly had to stop.

The second drawing of her was slightly better I felt as I made her appear similar as my drawing, She was sitting down and holding her phone. I used the same technique to draw, closing one eye and holding my pencil, my arms straight. However, my issue with this is that I still drew broken lines. The tonal work has slightly improved from the first drawing however, it does not entirely look good. I also used a putty eraser to erase any areas that were too dark. As can be seen with the picture above, I often used my fingers to blend in the tones and lines.

This is the third and final drawing I have of her. I used charcoal as well as a white colour pencil to draw this. Again, I started out with the outline. The outline took me forever as there were more to draw. Notice, that for the first 2 drawings, I did not draw her face. For the final one, I really wanted to draw her face and make sure I did everything right. I even enlarged the size of her as I left the first 2 drawings I did was too small. I can successfully say that I have improved in that 3 hours we had. Though there were imperfections, like the feet is horribly distorted and the hand on the right side looks like a paw, I feel like I did a goof job overall as I kept improving every time I drew. I added highlights with her body. I coloured white where her skin shined. I feel like this is what she looked like despite her eyes and lips as she kept moving them as she read her book from her phone. I can’t wait to see how I’ve improved over the course of drawing more. Before, I drew based on pictures and it was relatively easy however, now that I’m drawing real life, it’s harder. I will improve further by drawing more live drawings.

25th January: We learnt how to create scenes of stories from our depictions of how it may be. But first, we started the lesson learning about different shots and the composition of the video/movie.

In the first hour and a half of the lesson, we studied the 5 basic angles, and how it made the viewers feel. The first shot we learnt was the Eye Level Shot. This shot is to portray an equality with the viewers and the character. The next shot was Birds Eye View which could be used to give the viewers an astonishing view of what is below and what the characters feel when they are there (in the video/movie). High Angled Shots. In this shot, the camera is facing downwards towards the subject of interest, to make them appear small and insignificant. Oblique Angle is an angle that tilts the entire scene so that it will appear dramatic. Oblique angle is also called Dutch angle which portrays disarray, giving the audience that kind of feeling as well. Low Angled Shot is an angle that gives off a feeling of fright as it makes the character feel supreme and powerful. Then we learnt about composition and Cinematography. This meant learning about mid shots, close ups, full shot and long shot tilt down and how they could be used to enhance the feeling of what the audience may feel for it.

Taking all this into account, I created my interpretation of how I think an exert of the story looked like and made a storyboard. The movie is titled Anna Karenina. Working in a pairs of 4, we created our characters and depicted them as best as we could. No one in my group saw the movie, much less read the book except Veronika. So we tried taking her lead as she watched the movie. However, we had a slight complication. We did not have enough time to draw her characters to her description. Her drawings were also quite detailed. While most people were almost done with their characters and were moving onto creating their stories, we were still drawing Kitty’s parents. We were all frustrated with this but didn’t get angry. So we suggested we take another alternative to this. Imagination. Eventually, we started drawing characters that did not look entirely human but still human. We came to a conclusion that imagination was the best choice and decided to work with that. I was satisfied with how they turned out in the end. Once we were done, we went on with creating our storyboards.

Using what I’ve learnt from the lesson, I created my storyboard using close ups, full shots, and mid shots, using various angles.

I was told that the best storyboards are usually the ones that have lots of details. Overall, I would like to think that I have nailed the details and the characters but there’s always more room for improvement. I even added comedic scenes into it when it was supposed to be serious which I thought was pretty cool. For someone who never did storyboards before, I would say this is pretty successful however, there are things where improvement could be made to this. I wish I had more full shots to give a better scene of the whole ball. I would take that into account next time I create a storyboard and think about what I should do rather than just going straight for it. It was a very eye opening lesson for me as I had never really thought about what went into creating a video/film/movie.

This is my inspiration for my collage. The date was the 31st of January 2019. I had to do a book cover collage using different medias. I first painted the background using acrylic colours with a big brush that was slightly wet. I did not want to waste the paint. Not only that, I thought it would be a hindrance as thick paint dries slowly. For the top, I used green and blue paints that blended on together, creating a lovely contrast. The same went to the red and yellow. I tried to create some dry brush strokes in the middle to kind of create that tear effect between harmony and suspense. Harmony and serenity being green and blue and suspense and anger being red and orange.

While I left that out to dry, I cut out leaves of different shapes and sizes on a rough wallpaper with a rough texture. With that, I painted the cut out leaves and painted it with different colours and stencilled it onto the background. I repeatedly did this many times throughout the background.

This is the finished product. As can be seen, the stencils are in the background. For the lines on the leaves, I used a thin brush to go over it. For the vines, I used dry brushing with a big brush. I did not wet the brush and went over it. There is a middle line which I represented as wood covered in moss. I used the stencil technique to create that. Baloo has same interesting, rough texture to him. It is a mixture of dry brushing and sponging. However, I did not have a sponge at hand so I used the tip of a hard brush, dipped it in concentrated acrylic paint and dabbed it it on him.

Mowgli and the tree are from the same paper that I painted on. At first, I mixed dark blue, dark green and a small dollop of white to create the colour. Next, I added water to the acrylic paints to make it diluted as I watercoloured it on the paper. While it was wet, I quickly used powdered paints and sprinkled them all over the paper. Soon, the powdered paints spread. This can be seen on top of the tree. Some parts were already dried and I thought it would be a shame to waste the powdered paints so, I lifted my paper up and let the water travel everywhere on the paper, going over the dry bits of the paper, creating raindrop effects onto it.

Obviously, I painted the papers first before I drew, and cut everything out. It is slightly different to my inspiration however, I wanted to make it my own by incorporating my ideas.

Overall, I would say Mark Hearld’s work would be similar to my work.I say this because I feel like he had a lot going on in his background as do I. We also both used a range of different colours and techniques. He has included many leaves to give it a feeling of a forest. Not only that, he has managed to add in birds and made it seem alive. We are similar in a way that we stencilled out works and used dry brushing techniques. Not only that, he focused on his background and has a bit of paper cut outs like me.

Overall, I feel like my collage will attract children. I used a range of colours that will attract their eyes. I believe a child’s mind is attracted to bright colours and their characters that look interesting. I will give an example to support my point. Many fast food restaurants use the colour yellow as it stimulates hunger without us knowing. Like children, they don’t know why, but the colours will appeal to them. I used Baloo and Mowgli as children may recognise them and may be attracted to them. I did a silhouette of them, making them think when they first glance as to what the character might be. When they stare at it long enough, they might recognise the characters.

I really like making this collage as it brought me joy to create. I liked the colours that I used. Not only that, I really liked the stencilling job in the background, using the wallpaper to create the leaves. However, there are a few things that I want to note that did not go well. I reckon I used too little techniques to create this, thinking about how the design will look instead of focusing at the different techniques taught as hand. It is a bit of a shame that I did not incorporate other techniques to my collage. I feel that it would have been better if I did. To make up for my lack of techniques on my collage, I will learn more about the different techniques, study up on them and apply it in my future works.

On the 29th of January, we went out to take pictures using Aperture. English weather is dark and cloudy. On a rare occasion today, it was partially cloudy with a bit of Sun shining through the clouds that day. Almost perfect for taking photos. Almost.

Aperture confused me in the beginning but I knew it had something to do with blurriness. With this Photography lesson, I learnt that aperture is the amount of light used in an exposure. With this, I understood that a low aperture like F6 makes the background of a picture blurry, as it lets more light into its lens. With a high aperture like F22, the picture becomes more clearer and appears slightly darker as it lets lesser light into its lens. As can be seen with the pictures above, you can clearly see the difference between high and low aperture. Taking these pictures made Aperture easier for me to understand and respect it. With Aperture, I can focus on a subject making the background blurry, or take a clear background or foreground (like a landscape).

My personal favourite of the all the photos I took are the ones with dead leaf hanging on the railings because you can clearly see the low and high Aperture in comparison. One picture has a blurry background and the other one has visible leaves on the ground. It was also very hard to take as I hate getting dirty so it was a fun personal challenge for me. Although I think I did a pretty good job, there must be negatives as well. The picture that I like the most has its flaws as well. The leaves in the high aperture picture are not as visible as I would have liked. I would call it a success if it were clearer but it isn’t. With this into account, I hope that I can take this as a learning experience and progress further as it is after all my first time understanding Aperture. I will continue taking more pictures using aperture to help me correct my flaws.

22nd January, a cloudy day it was for photography. However, we went out anyways to learn more about Shutter Speed and to take some photos.

First, we took a panning shot by the roadside. We used a shutter speed of 1/50. This will help focus on the car and make the background blurry. While the car is moving, I moved my camera to where the car moved as well to make it steady and clearer. I have taken panning shots before so it felt familiar to me. I used the wheel on my Canon camera to change the shutter speed. In the camera, before taking the picture, I saw the meter which helped me see what shutter speed I was on. It was extremely useful.

Next, we took a high shutter speed photo with 1/500 shutter speed. I have done this many times in my previous school, often taking photos of people playing water polo. It was my first time taking a picture of someone jumping so I was determined to get it right. I did get multiple shots of the model however, there was only one picture out of many that I liked. High Shutter speed appears to not be moving. For example, we know that water is a not a fixed matter and has no definite shape but by using high shutter speed, we can see what water looks like in mid air, appearing like it has a shape. I do like that my pictures were clear and there were no signs of any blurriness.

Finally, we took a slow shutter speed photo. This was was pretty hard to take. Even a slight movement of your camera can make the whole picture blurry. I learned that to take a slow shutter speed, my hands had to be very still and steady as the object or person moved while the background is still. I used a shutter speed of 1/15 for this to get that blurry moving object and the background still and clear.

Overall, the photography class taught me a great many things. I finally understood that a shutter speed is how much exposure time given to capture a picture. I didn’t know this before and just used it blindly. Now I know. I did like how my photos came out. I captured the moments with many interesting colours that drew me into clicking my camera. However, I felt a bit sad that there was not much time to venture out and capture more pictures that could have gotten more attention. Not to mention, the gloomy weather as well. But I find challenges particularly interesting. I believe, despite weather conditions and time restraints, I can prove myself by finding more interesting subjects to capture. Hopefully, in the near future, I can improve my photography skills with patience and diligence, taking these lessons into account.