Okay dear reader, have you ever written up this fantastically long rambling blog post at about 3:44 in the morning only to have your computer die? Imagine then you wake up, as you do, and open your computer up only to find your blog post disappear before your eyes because Firefox decides to crash.
Well, this happened to me not one hour ago. So I think I'm finally ready to re-write this blog post after one minute of mourning and some 20 minutes of drinking tea and eating a bowl of very soupy lontong.
Back to the art. If you were to look at my art and time travel backwards, it's pretty clear that my modus operandi used to include a lot of black pens and white paper. That was it. I was obsessed with texture, patterns and lovely clean lines when put together would make striking pieces.
I'm now on the cusp of turning 26 and I realise, hey, I need to be more well rounded. I need to understand more about making art! So I step into the murky waters of watercolour painting. Watercolours are pretty much the antithesis of what i used to do. It's unpredictable, splotchy and colourful. Not to mention all the paraphernalia that's involved like a palette and the crappy cup with water and the brushes, etc. You get the idea.
Damn you chicken thigh!! Curse your delicious crispy covering!
Yesterday I was feeling pretty bummed so I decide to start on something that makes me happy, painting a deconstructed nasi lemak. Easy peasy lemon squeezy right? Actually, no.
Who knew painting fried chicken would be SO HARD? A delicious piece of fried chicken thigh has so much texture I never even thought about in terms of light and colour. How much brown to red do I mix? And where do I put the highlights??
At this point I'm pretty annoyed because I'm like, really? Me? Lover of all chickens fried, unable to paint a single thigh piece?
So I go on to more familiar ground - a nice face!
As I'm plodding along with this painting, I realise I'm making choices that Naj from one year ago wouldn't have made. I'm mixing a little bit of blue and purple into browns for shadows! I'm putting highlights here and there! It probably sounds like a silly thing to be happy about but believe me, it's pretty cool to acknowledge that you are in fact progressing.
All in all, I'm not 100% happy with the stuff I made but hey, they're experiments and I've got to start somewhere! Think I'll do some more painting soon.