THIS IS WHY GMAIL ROCKS

Because I am very careless when I email sometimes and tend to forget to attach files. Tell me I'm not the only one here.

Source: http://www.popgadget.net/
(Which is techno-gadget site aimed at women, full of quirky goodness. Not that I'm re-inforcing negative gender stereotypes. Women can be very serious about technology. But where's the fun in that! BRING ON THE SUSHI THUMBDRIVES)


Or other such weirdness:

(NOT THAT I AM EMO-ING OKAY)

But a recent conversation with a friend has gotten me thinking about love. And I figured, that love is tenderness. Its tenderness towards the other person, and its also the tenderness that comes from putting yourself at that point of vulnerability, and also the irrational way how your reaction to the person's actions are disproportionately amplified.

I am glad to have loved, anyhow.

Also, I don't quite understand uh, people who feel the need to keep their relationship a secret from other people. I get not-flaunting-it-about, but the secrecy? I find it strange, and slightly shady.

Also, I am STILL very disturbed by this couple I know who I had once thought to be pretty cool and chill, but then witnessed him being super-rude/dismissive to her. At least, intolerably rude according to my standards. Excuse me, I don't take that kind of attitude from anybody and I always thought she was kind of like me in that regard, AND in light of the whole chris brown/rihanna debacle, it just leaves me D:

LOL at me for living via other people's relationships since I am oh so alone/single now. How nosy.

In any case, so despite my rather rosy thoughts about love as mentioned earlier, I am starting to think that relationships (or at least the ones that surround me) are all pretty screwed up. Anisha was joking with me earlier tonight: pointing to the Fullerton Hotel, she said, "That's where I'm getting married in 6 years time."

"6 years?? But that would make us..."

"27."

"Yeah, 27 would be a good time to get married -

"That's the plan. Either that or you're going to find me at the bottom of the river."

"I'll join you."

Such fatalism! Which does not so much come from the cynicism/pessimism of not being able to find a person who you will love a lot-lot, but for me at least, the apprehension that I will be able to sustain (forever) the relationship through everything else that I'm passing through for the next few years. If the aim is Ultimate Long-Term relationship, I'm pretty sure I'm going to fail that one.

You would think that the fear is not being able to find somebody you want to live with forever (in the mortal sense) in the next few years, but its really that I don't think I will be ready in the next few years.

Then what?

 Desaturated

Old holga photos from when I was in India that were originally in colour. I realized that desaturating them brought out some details that I had not seen before, hurray for surprises!

My Very First Oil Painting

How exciting right! I'm taking an oil painting class this semester because I thought it would be good to beef up my (non-existing) painting skills. I'm primarily a drawing person, and I have painted in watercolours and acrylic before, but never with formal skills etc. Also, I'm making it a point to take one therapeutic class every semester, so this is it! It would be a good skill set to obtain too, illustration-wise.

My composition skills are a bit shite (note: this was already cropped in photoshop), and I don't have so much the loose option to alter or add on to adjust things as I would when I draw, since I'm not too comfortable with it yet.

The close-up shows the brush strokes, and close tonal scheme that I seem to incline towards. I'm on my third painting so far, and its becoming very apparent that I'm into subtle tonal differences and a kind of blockish brush stroke. I actually took this class hoping to learn how to do the hyper-realistic style of oil painting but urgh, blending! Maybe I don't have the patience for it, or rather the fact that amateurish realism looks so lame that I would rather leapfrog across the whole thing and not learn it at all!



Also, Euan Uglow is a present favourite:


More sketch-doodles. I'm stuck in the sense that I haven't a clue how to process them to make them look more polished - I have tons of these.





*Who's Hans Bacher? He used to be a production designer for Disney, working on major things like Mulan, Beauty and the Beast, Roger Rabbit etc. He came to our school today to present a lecture and it was really entertaining - apart from hearing the inside (positive and negative) scoop of what happens behind the storyboards at Disney, he presented a really cool analysis on colour and composition principles based on some classical paintings. Very nice.

I have massive gap time between posting up completed work. This was part of a book project for my 2D class at the end of my foundation year. It was crazy stressful, but you know, I do miss working with the print press, and being more crafty. Lament, lament!

Speaking of crazy stressful, that is one thing i REALLY should be right now but I'm not lol. I'm completely in a state of denial and negligence, and I've never cut my deadlines/progress this close before. Its a puzzling lack of urgency.

I hope you will be pleased with the cleaned-up blog layout, I spent the night pushing around html code without even fully understanding it ha, but I think it looks much more orderly now AND MOST IMPORTANTLY: huge space for pictures.

Like this one -



One of the nicer shots I got from the train ride back from malaysia. I took the railway with anisha and tash, and it was a series of almost-misadventures which made for interesting times ha. More on that later, am supposed to be studying astronomy. Among many other things that need to get done.