16th July: Prior to this workshop, I went to the Zoology Museum to draw some sea animals who are victims of pollution. One of the animals I drew was a leatherback turtle. With that I had an animal to cut out. On a cardboard, I drew out my leatherback turtle with a twist. The turtle had plastic wrapped around its’ waist and appears to be suffocating. I drew it out and then cut out the shape using a scalpel. I thought it was enough and I could just varnish it with shellac however, it didn’t seem likely no matter how deep I hacked it. I had to add bits of material. I thought it would take too much work but I found it quite therapeutic and fun despite the sudden fire alarm that rang in the studio and we all had to evacuate. I thought my work was going to be burned down. Thank someone it wasn’t anything serious.

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I went back to the studio to continue adding bits of materials like sand. dead plant fibres, cello tape to make it smooth and netting around waist. Once I finished this, it was times up. Who knew collograph took a lot of effort and work?

The next day, I varnished it the whole day so I couldn’t print anything.

The following day, the shellac dried and it was finally time to ink. I originally wanted a green as the turtle is green in colour but there was no green so I had to make due with blue which is the colour of the ocean so it’s fine. Like etching, I applied colour using a scrapper, removed the excess using a cloth and then polished it. It was then ready for printing. The first print wasn’t so nice with dark and light tones only. The second one came out better with more tones but the third one that came out was exactly the same as the first one. Determined to make it right, I decided to do 4th one. I used a stick to squeeze all the colour out from the collograph plate. It came out and I breathed a sign of relief.

The next step was to roll on another colour, like lino printing. I still wanted a green so I had to make it myself using white, yellow and blue. I added the white because the blue is very dark. To contrast it, I used white for a brighter colour. Once done, I rolled on the colour on the plate and readied it for printing. I only did one as time ran out. Though, my first and last print with colour looked good so I was very content.

Collograph is fun but I would like to do it again to improve myself at it.

3 July: There was a glass making workshop that I so badly wanted to attend. I had very little research at this stage, with only a few museum visits. One of them to the Natural History Museum in London. The experience was eye-opening and I knew if I made a volcano, it would somehow be related to my project as it does produce harmful gasses.

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2 weeks later, I got my glass back. The volcano looked like a volcano but it was starting to become pretty irrelevant to the project as my main focus is of human pollution and how we are harming everything including us. It is still good experience as I now know to to make glass. The iceberg did not glue back together however, it turned out well in the end as I watched Our Planet

I made a volcano out of glass frits and a bullseye glass sheet. I didn’t want to just make one glass sheet. I wanted many that came together to form a volcano like how volcanoes form land. To cut the glass sheet, I used a glass liner to direct me a straight line as I used a glass cutter to cut out the shape. To glue the frits on, I used a glass glue. Later on, they will be put in the kiln ready to be fired and melted. I thought it was a waste to do just one so I did another one with an iceberg. I went to the Scott Polar museum and took a picture from there. With the iceberg, I took out a white glass sheet and cut it according to the shape of the iceberg. This shape was hard to cut as the sheet was thicker than the translucent one. Eventually I broke the glass which made me so annoyed but I kept going. I added different shades of blue frits to the cut out glass. I used glass glue to glue the broken bits back to the main bit and put it in the kil hoping it would stick.

16 July: I wanted to try oil painting as I’ve never done it before. Since Maggi Hambling uses oil painting to create waves, I wanted to do it too. Recently, I went to Barcelona for a holiday and went to the cliffs as I saw the vast ocean. I recorded a video and even took pictures. With the sounds of the waves, I could imagine how the waves crashed against each other without even looking. I did try to look at the video and picture because i did not want to mess it up as it was my first oil painting.

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I did not buy oil paints. Instead of doing that, I mixed my own pigments in relation to my topic as I have stated in the proposal that I wanted to incorporate more natural materials. With the pigments, I used Linseed oil and mixed them together. I painted it on the canvas. What surprised me was that the oil allowed a smoother painting. I applied a corner of the canvas with lots of paint and let it trickle down slowly to the canvas as I rotated it. In well time, the painting looked like actual waves. I was quite shocked however, I suddenly had a newfound love for oil painting. I painted 4 of them using the same technique. I did NOT however, liked the process of letting the paint dry. It took me approximately 2 and a half weeks to dry which was astonishing because my peers around me have stated some oil paintings take months to dry. Some of their paintings from a year ago still aren’t dry! While it dried on the drying rack, the shine on the canvas vanished. I wanted to restore the shine back on it so I ordered resin and applied it. It did not turn in my favour though. The painting did have shine on it but, in adding resin, my paintings turned yellow from the linseed oil as I checked on it the next morning. When I looked carefully into one of my paintings, one of my eyelashes was even stuck in the resin. I didn’t like it and wanted to throw it away however, for the first time in a very long time, I didn’t. I kept it. Little did I know it would be so useful later on in the project.

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I wanted to paint another but didn’t want to wait forever for it to dry so I used Gum Arabic instead. The gum arabic dried very fast in comparison to the linseed oil. It dried so fast until it was getting harder to have movement on the canvas of the waves. Nonetheless, it came out pretty well as it dried for 30 minutes. There was a slight problem to the painting though. When it was dry, the I picked up the canvas and touched it to see if it was fully dry and it cracked but I didn’t hate it. I rather liked the texture on it. It gives off a feeling of the once great ocean being fragile because of human greed and activity.

5th August: I researched resin filled popsicles. In the popsicles were polluted waters from 100 waterways in China. A group of students, Guo Yi-Hui, Hung I-Chen and Cheng Yu Ti collected the polluted waters and turned them into appetising popsicles. In reality, they actually taste horrid. The whole point of this was to raise awareness for climate change and the pollution filling up their waters. With this, people will think twice before throwing their rubbish away. Eat it and you get sick to your stomach.If they don’t want to eat it, fix the problem. I used my canvas and related it to their work as I use resit too. The once blue water turned yellow signifies pollution as well. In the end it worked out pretty well.

Overall, I’m glad I didn’t throw my failure away. Instead, I turned it into a success. I hope to continue riding this high without stopping.

14th July: Maggi Hambling was an artist I was researching on. One of her favourite works to create is a series called ‘Waves’. Waves is something she was very keen on. Every morning before the sun rises, she would go to the seaside to paint the sounds of the seas until the sun rose and she could see the violent waves crashing into each other.

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Intending to create a response to waves, I thought of water marbling as they resemble the water with the swirling effect. I scoured the studio for some inks and I did find some but there weren’t a lot of inks so I had to make due with what I had. I filled a tray with water and waited for it to still. I carefully dipped ink into the water but the ink just went down. I thought I was doing it wrong so I kept adding ink until the water turned a certain colour. I tried dipping printing paper on it but nothing appeared. So then I thought I had to do it quickly and with a thinner paper. I applied the ink quickly and used newsprint to collect the ink. It worked but it looked a bit off. I didn’t know this so I kept doing this. I then dried the paper using more newsprint and let it dry on the drying rack.

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The studio ran out of ink and I had to go out to buy some. I thought any ink would do so I just bought some random drawing ink from Windsor and Newton. When I came back to the studio, I started doing it again. I knew there was something off but I didn’t pay it any attention. After drying, I scanned it in because I was not very satisfied with it and wanted to do some tweaking. I scanned it in and photoshopped some trash on it and made the trash of a similar colour to the marbling. I did this 4 times.

When a tutor came to check my work, I realised I has used the wrong inks to marble with. I took this as a lesson to trust my gut feeling whenever something is wrong and doesn’t feel right.

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24th July: Marbling inks were brought in the studio and I decided I wanted to right the wrong so I did it with an entirely different concept to the first marbling I did. With this marbling, I wanted the colours to strike a difference. After setting up the tray with room temperature water, I added blue marbling ink to the water to signify cleaner waters on the Earth. Compared to the last time, I immediately saw a difference between marbling inks and normal drawing inks. Marbling inks stay at the top because of the oil-base in it. With that, I took the stick and swirled the water along with the inks gently so that I don’t cover the surface of the oil with water, harming the effect of the marbling. I dipped it with cartridge paper and I see an IMMEDIATE colour appear CLEARLY. I dried it with newsprint and put it on the drying rack to dry. I did this a few times for the blue and even tried it on screen printing paper. It looked glossier on the screen printing paper which I loved. I washed the tray a couple of times because of the amount of oil on the tray. When I was a bit lazy to wash it, I would dip in dishwasher soap to the water and the oil with spread out. With the new marbling ink I dipped, I gently blew it to spread the colour out. It worked out great. I learnt of this when there was a splotchy pink and blue inked one that didn’t look like marbling at all. The dishwasher soap created interesting patterns as well as I could see some white bits showing in contrast to the blue bits. Once I was done with the blue, I started playing with colour.

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I added all the colours found in the studio, which created a cool effect. I did this a couple of times. The reason I added colours is because I wanted to signify dirty polluted waters. We all know plastic is colourful. Not only that, the chemicals dumped into rivers are mostly black in colour however, once it dries down, it has a rainbow sheen to it, like when a bubble pops and gets into the water.

Overall, I’m glad I got to understand the difference between real water marbling and a fake one. This greatly helped me in my project as I now have 3 responses to Maggi Hambling when I just expected to have 2. It is a great outcome filled with many mistakes. I’m glad I got to learn and benefit from it.

When I did, Peter Kennard’s responses to his work, I thought I was complete. I thought I just had to respond to his work once for each work I did of him. However, that wasn’t the case. I realised that I could do so much more and take it one step further.

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I realised that my previous drawing of the bleeding earth was not creative enough. The zip that I half-heartedly drew was quite disappointing. I went on to photoshop to add the zip in using my lasso tool. A sudden thought occurred to me; why stop there? Why does my creativity stop there? I began thinking and found a solution. Primary colours make up a black earth. So, again I went to photoshop to change the colours of the earths. Below, I added the three colours mixing together and eventually turning everything black. What was once colourful has mixed and turned into darkness. That was what I was trying to portray. Not all colours go well together.

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Using the same concept as the other response to @earth, I switched the photo of the trees and put them in the phone. I took these pictures at the Strawberry Fair. With this I made the picture on the phone look blurry to indicate the dissipating Earth what we, humans are causing for our own greed. This is to show that all articles, documentaries and activism programs are trying to tell us something. That something is that humans will die without these and that if we take a look around, the clear reality is not a hoax. People want change to happen but will not change for the better of ourselves. PLastic production is still going on. Imagine all the rubbish/plastic being filled up in landfills, seas and forests still there because plastic cannot decompose. This work that I’ve made may seem like nothing but I feel very emotional while looking at it. I want people to really open their eyes and ears with this. Reality is black and white. We either change with it or we will meet our demise.

As stated in the sketchbook, lots of students study math in school and when their studies are over and they can finally have break after countless hours of revising and practicing, they start to throw their work away.I used my old math equation paper back from secondary school and drew on it. To elaborate more on what I said in the sketchbook, foolscap paper is has lines on it. Those lines are printed using printer ink. Not to mention, the paper is bleached to get the white colour. Paper can be composted as well, but the fibres are usually bleached, which already introduces some chemicals into the paper. Most inks also contain harmful chemicals, so composting might not be the best idea. In a sense, composting paper could also be seen to be a waste. It takes a lot to get trees into paper form. Ending the life-cycle of the fibres by composting reduces the availability of recycled paper, and is at least partly responsible for chopping down more trees. I used charcoal and pencil to draw the eyes of students who experience doing math. It can also be interpreted as annoyance and sadness from people who are angry at the fact students throw their hard work right into the bin.

In conclusion, doing these responses to Peter Kennard really opened my eyes to the ignorance of people and the people with power: government and businessmen. I will further investigate, understand and hopefully change as a better human being for the sake of the planet. After all, one person at a time can help change the world. This concept won’t be applicable if we waste too much time as the countdown starts at T-12 years.

6th June: The Scott Polar Museum was one of the museums I was the most excited to visit because their website said that they had exhibitions based on global warming and climate change which they did but it was so very limited. All the information was contained in a booth with a tablet. The tablet contained information based on climate change and it was all very short. It was quite a disappointment walking into the Scott Polar museum. It was mostly based on expeditions people made to the Arctic and Antarctic. I did however get some pictures of information as well as useful pictures that I could draw.

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8th June: I went down to London to get some primary research after researching about it extensively on the internet. The museums I visited were the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum which were right next to each other, making it really convenient for me. I first visited the Natural History Museum. I’ve been there so many times but I never realised the museum was so huge. Before going to the museums, I always kept in mind that humans were the main factor and cause of global warming/climate change. Humans are the one causing damage to what has been here for centuries. Causing a major chain reaction, the damage we are causing are harming animals who are living in their natural habitat as well as increasing the irreversible damage already well on its way. Because of these thoughts, I was so focused on exposing the human race and blaming the human race including myself for the destruction that I forgot climate change has been happening since the beginning of time. I realised this when I visited the Natural History Museum in London.

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The Natural History Museum in London opened my eyes to so much more. I had forgotten that due to the years of forgetting my Geographic knowledge. Earth was born out of remnants of dead stars. Eventually, the gas cloud became denser at its center and formed an accretion disk. Small particles then started clumping together eventually forming what we call Planets today. This process takes a long time to complete (approx 10-20 million years). During the time where the solar system was still relatively new, young and chaotic like a teenager undergoing puberty, a giant object almost as big as Mars, crashed into Earth which created a violent impact. This impact eventually formed the Moon as the moon collected the remaining debris from the impact around the Earth. Earth was extremely hot and uninhabitable, often getting hit by seas of lava and a toxic atmosphere. Earth eventually cooled down. Water from the inside of the Earth made its way up to the surface. Due to the heat, evaporation happened, forming clouds which resulted in rain. Our main source of water didn’t come from just the Earth but also from the millions of asteroids containing water that entered the planet. The surface of the Earth is cool while underneath remained hot. The crust is what has cooled down. The mantle is a semi-solid which is a solid that is able to move about. The mantle (lithosphere) is what causes earthquakes, trenches and mountains. This is just a part of what I learnt in the Natural History Museum about climate change. Humans not only pose a threat to the irreversible; nature too is bad for the environment such as volcanoes as they emit harmful gasses like Sulphur Dioxide (SO2). I learnt that due to the extreme climate changes, the earth has formed rocks and precious stones from it. Animals play a huge part in restoring balance into the environment. For example, plankton like trees produce oxygen. Nearly more than 50% of the Earth’s oxygen comes from the ocean which is where the phytoplankton live. They produce oxygen through photosynthesis (the capturing of light to to turn carbon dioxide into oxygen).I spent a total of 3.5 hour in there relearning and immersing myself into the research. It broadened my perspectives on global warming and climate change; it wasn’t just us humans who were causing it but also by natural phenomenons.

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Later on that day, I went to the Science Museum in hopes of having the same experience I had when I went to the Natural History Museum but I was easily disappointed when I got there. The exhibitions based on global warming and climate change was closed. I didn’t let this get to me too badly as I wandered off into the space area. I had a thought; what happens after our destruction is inevitable? Will we die? Will we have the technology and the resource to live in space? Will we inhabit another planet? I started to photograph the entire area and took down information from the boards. It was very interactive and fun. In the end, it wasn’t a total lost. By the end of the day, my legs ached from all the walking I hd to do with my camera but it was all worth it.

At the end of the trips to different museums, I’ve gained some optimism about how to go about my project which was a huge help. I realised having an open mind and a big heart heart helps me enter my project. I shouldn’t be narrow-minded which I was when I entered the project. The museums I went to helped me realised that. I will draw the photos I took using mixed media and different techniques. I will also further develop my drawings and photos so that I can expand what I can do creatively.

5th June: Before today, I planned too much for myself. I thought I could finish everything in time with all I had but it turns out it was too much. I was adding fuel when the fire wasn’t there.

I did everything too slowly. I guess this was also because of the fact that I lost my motivation to do work due to the previous units. I kept going on and on, working without a break everyday until now I felt as if I’ve crashed however, I was then reminded that Unit 8 was the most important unit so I gained some motivation from that. I planned out what I was doing which worked out fine for me previously however, my previous work wasn’t very visually appealing although the research and artwork I put into it was good. The main factor for my lack of speed is due to planning from the colour of the background, to where the pictures go, to how I should write it and finally how I should draw and present it.

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Peter Kennard was the artist I was researching on. He did a lot of work that intrigued and fascinated me. I didn’t want to just do one of his work; I wanted to do a few. Kennard is well-known for photomontanging and being a very political artist. I picked out the works that he has done that were relevant to my topic. @earth was one of his topics that I chose because it represented my topic of interest. What surprised me was that he used government based decisions to harm the earth by bombing it and etc. In another part of @earth, he made the earth writhe away and turn into nothing but a coal factory while we humans do nothing. To pay homage to his work, I focused more on the gory parts of the earth and make it bloody. I also made it digital version of @earth with the cursor to give it a modern twist. I wanted to show the irony in humans when we rant on the internet about saving the earth but are doing absolutely nothing to help it. The hand on the phone represents humans who are looking at other humans who are ignoring factors of global warming at their own convenience yet are doing nothing about it. They prefer to surround themselves with the clean environment. Finally, I chose Kennard’s newspaper work with hands on them and responded to it by using a foolscap paper with math equations on them. I drew eyes on it using pencil and charcoal like him. I thought of doing hands as well but I didn’t want to copy him so I drew eyes which showed more emotions. I wanted to portray student’s who are having a rough time. I drew 2 different eyes. The one on the left shows annoyance being unable to solve an equation and the other showing sadness however the person accepts that he/she needs to work harder and grind.

Overall, I learnt that I cannot do so many things at once or else I would go mad. I need to pace myself to keep on going in this project. Not only that, I learnt to give myself time to plan the layout of my work to make it more presentable. I will take this mistake of mine and reflect on it. I cannot say that I will always stay on top of my schedule and plan because I am very ambitious but I will try my hardest to limit the (overambitious) goals I have set for myself.

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Unit 9 Portfolio.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1CZ4K2Ha8jrRGQBOMh-5IoqfyYwaTfhu3Tw_Ab9xyfnA/edit?usp=sharing

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May 25: Before this day, I had no clue as to what I should do. Everything was an extreme blur to me as what I wanted to clashed with what I felt like doing.

I had to make 4 mind maps of what intrigued me the most. I first wrote them all down in my notebook as I wanted to get as much as I could. With my notebook, I could scribble down my thoughts and finesse it later on with the sketchbook. After doing 4 mind maps,I still had no clue what to do. So, I wrote all my crumpled thoughts down.

Once I wrote all my thoughts down, I realised I could combine the two because I am the most passionate about these things. I also had to draw out another mind map which was quite a pain but it was worth it because I finally came to a conclusion as to what I wanted to do. I wanted to combine space and place as well as conflict for my topics because I want to be an interior designer in the future and also address issues surrounding the world right now.

I thought of the most crucial thing happening now and that was Global Warming and Climate Change. I want to create a space where I could somehow incorporate this. So in the next week, I want to be able to extensively research on both spaces created by architects, engineers and interior designers. Not only that, I want to research artists who does recycled art and research on businesses who are actively challenging climate change by making products that are eco friendly and are biodegradable. With this research, I want to create visual responses and experiment with different types od media. I would also like to use paints that are eco friendly such as egg tempera which I learnt in Contextual Studies.

Once I had this down, I made my mind map. I wanted the mind map to look good so I designed them all differently using watercolours, inks and pens.

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I planned out what I was supposed to do in a weekly plan but I failed to keep up with it as I got distracted with the many brands that appealed to me. I didn’t think research would take me this long as I’ve done lots of research before but then again, I like to delve in deeper to where the research takes me so I suppose it’s a good and bad thing. Hopefully, I can balance out the plan next week. I shouldn’t expect too much of myself and give myself an even harder time for not completing. I will learn from my mistake and cater the weekly plan to what I am able to do.

Unit 7 was an interesting unit unlike the others. I felt that although the topic was the same, I did 2 separate things. I explored the cultures of the 2 countries and also provided the pros and cons to both my booklet as well as the short video.

For Photography, I took many pictures all around the UK and Malaysia which I included in my booklet. The unused pictures in my booklet were pasted on my sketchbook. I liked that I made 2 editions; UK and Malaysia. There were some ups and downs to it. The booklet I had was printed wrongly however the process of editing and putting the images in went smoothly. At that point, I was so done and had no time to reprint everything because hand in was an hour away so I didn’t care and stapled the booklet together and shoved it in the sketchbook. I realised it was wrong of me simply to just put the booklet out. I felt really guilty about because the cutting on the booklet was sloppy as well. I then decided to take a look into my print settings and I found an error. I did not print it back and forwards. There was also no guide lines for me to follow and cut. Finally I printed it again.

This time, the printing was good. Everything was in place, exactly as I wanted it to be and also, the cut on the booklet was pretty neat. I handed in both bad and good booklets. This was a reminder for me to simply not put things out cause of the deadlines but to put it out when I’m proud of it. The weeks that went by for this unit was certainly tough. Blogs had to be written, multiple artist research had to be done and on top of that, I had more work to produce for the other units. I did procrastinate I’m not going to lie but I believe in working smart than working hard. I always enjoy taking pictures so the process of it was great. Editing the pictures made it therapeutic for me too. I wanted to give Malaysia a colourful, old vibe and the UK a slightly colder place witch cold tones and grey skies which I think I did a pretty good job in. The cover page for the booklet is a picture I took myself. I edited them to look graphic and not at all real which was what I wanted. It turned out pretty nice however, I didn’t like the shadows that casted on the picture.I couldn’t do much about this because of I increased the alpha correction in exposure, the flags will change colours. It still turned out pretty decent.

For Moving Images, there was something bothering me when I first started this project. Malaysia is a homophobic country and the culture there isn’t really accepting towards LGBTQ+ people. What made me choose child marriage for the title of my moving images project is that Malaysians are okay with child marriages instead of LGBTQ+ people for being themselves. I kind of wanted to bring out the common sense in people. Children are being mistreated and stripped of their education and youth. Instead girls are being exploited into making babies and marrying into rich families to put their families debts away. I had a clear image of my project. I wanted to expose the good and bad about the cultures. Kind of like Yin and Yang.

The process of this was hard and exhausting. I always felt mentally drained and tired but I knew I needed to do this justice. The process is as important as the outcome. I felt like I wasn’t procuring enough; wasn’t creative enough but after 1 week of thinking hard about what I should do, I finally felt content with it. Drawing at first was really hard because I’m not the best at drawing however, Procreate allowed me to copy and paste my character and also change their facial expressions and what not. It was an easy way for me to do things. With all the backgrounds I drew and characters, I feel my drawing getting slightly better. Of course, with time, I could have drawn better however, I sadly procrastinated while doing this and as a result of my lack of productivity, I rushed through my work. However, I was really content with my final outcome. I didn’t expect it to be pretty good. The story that played in my mind was relayed pretty well. The transitions were also really smooth. The only regret I have for this is that I wished I hadn’t procrastinated so much.

It really bothers me that I could have done better but I was just lazy to do it. I guess it was me being tired from the projects. I blame this on my negative mind. I learnt that with a positive mind and attitude, I can accomplish more things. This project TRULY taught me how to manage my time and I need to take from this and learn how to better my time management.

Overall, I had a push and pull situation with this whole unit. But I’m glad with how everything turned out. Of course there are things where I wish I could have done things better and that’s on me. I should have put out my final outcomes when I was the proudest instead of just rushing things. The artist research helped me a lot with coming up with inspiration. It taught me the importance of both aesthetics, meaning and practicality to a picture and to my short film.