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Bomomo Randomness, Bomomo Art

2008-06-05T16:21:00Z

Like what you see? These works of art were produced via Bomomo, a computer drawing tool that creates interesting brush patterns utilising a variety of physics and mouse behavior. Choose from a variety of brush tools to produce your very own beautiful chaos!

Unfortunately, you cannot choose colours and the save function only works on Firefox and Safari browsers.

iGoogle Artist Themes

2008-06-05T15:38:00Z

iGoogle is a google homepage where individuals can personalize the page’s content with their choice of Google info from Gmail messages, bookmarks, through to Google News.

Now, Google has introduce iGoogle artist themes. Change the look of your page with specially designed google themes by artists such as Dolce & Gabbana, Nigo of Bathing Ape and Yves Behar of FuseProject.

Perhaps you have a passion for fashion. You may like to customise your igoogle with the theme by Oscar de la Renta or Akira Isogawa.

My current fav is the Jackie Chan theme.

Nadia PLesner's Simple Living T-Shirt design

2008-06-04T06:18:00Z

The news about Nadia Plesner and her on going battle with Louis Vuitton since February of this year first caught my attention about two weeks ago. My partner, David Balmain, mentioned in one of our conversations about the artist who designed a shirt to raise money for charity but is now being sued by Louis Vuitton. My interest was piquied and a few moments of googling lead me to details about the lawsuit.

This event raised strong emotions inside me. I was fuming at the idea of a collosal giant picking on someone whose main intention, was not of her own self interest, but the interest of the innocent affected by the genocide in Darfur

Such is the power of art…

Update June 4 2008: (read on Ms. Plesner’s website-) “I have agreed with LV’s lawyers to stop commenting on the case and to cease the sales of Simple Living products while we are working towards a solution. ”

Update June 17 2008: Ms Plesner has decided to remove the bag from her design. She’s chosen to keep Darfur her focus and not get side swept into a battle with LV. She will continue to try to raise money for the campaign by creating new designs to be released soon.

Life Drawing Week 12- Props continued

2008-06-04T04:25:00Z

This week, we continued with props in our composition. Our model for the day was a voluptuous woman who took to doing “things you do in the bathroom” poses (as you would given a towel and hair dryer as props).

I really enjoyed drawing her. Perhaps it was her generous curves that I really like capturing on paper. Else, it must have been her jovial personality which seem to break the seriousness that sometimes befall the room.

Like last week, I worked diligently on proportions. Stepping back, the resulting sketches seem to have a cartoon feel about them.

For our 3rd and final pose for the evening, I used an entire hour getting the proportions and detail with pencil only to go over it all with colour pastels. I guess I was inspired by the colourful work of my classmates that I viewed during our break and so when it came time to resume, I just went for it. At first, I was nervous and hesitant to break from my usual charcoal. I had to remind myself that part of Life drawing was experimenting and breaking free from the familiar and constraints…and so “Woman with hair wrapped in towel” came to be.

Flowers in Autumn for my mother's present

2008-06-04T03:08:00Z

A month before my ma’s birthday, I decided to try painting for her as I’d always promised to, for her to hang on her once bare walls. Because I had procrastinated for so long, wall hangings bought from the Philippines had instead occupied the space.

I had found that there was a huge jump from drawing to painting. One would assume that painting would come easy to a drawer. After all, an artist is an artist, right? Well, that was so not so for me. I found the slicker and softer application of paint so foreign compared to the hardness of lead on paper. It was surreal yet very therapeutic at the same time.

My mum is one those who’d decorate their home with fake flowers so I thought it would only be fitting to have this as my painting subject. Not the plastic, but flowers. That way, may her birthday memories last long after all the birthday cake had been polished off.

As for the painting’s title, I had gone with “Flowers in Autumn”. I did give my partner, David Balmain, the chance to take the naming rights. The best he could do at the time was “Flowers and Cream” which was close to my suggestion so I went with my original title. It’s straight forward. Birthday flowers painted for my mother during chilly Canberra’s Autumn season.

Update: She loved “Flowers in Autumn”

Rebellious Pixel Soldiers

2008-05-29T07:31:00Z

I’ve been meaning to do this for sometime now and that is to include in this site the wisdom of others. I think it would be too selfish of me not to share their lessons or body of work.

To start off, I thought I’d show the art that caught my attention today. It’s “Sea of Rectangles” by SL Power. I stumbled upon it in PopFuzz. Being a lover of colour, I was entranced by the play of colour in pixel like composition. It also reminded me of the paintinga I saw (during my Wk12 Life Drawing class break) in display at ANU’s “Structure” Exhibition. They were by Stephanie Haygarth.

Her work on display reminded me somehow of the bathroom tiles at my previous residence. Not that my old tiles were as pretty. In fact, they were brown with retro patterns. I think it was the size and shape of the square patterns. They seem to match my tiles. Yes. That must have been it.

My next thought was, how did she create such lovely pattern? With a square block dipped in water colour then stamped on canvas? I liked how some squares were unaligned. Like rebellious pixel soldiers or students refusing to stand in line…or proof of shoddy work by a poor tiler.

The exhibition Structure, displaying new work by recent graduates, is on now until the 7th of June 2008.

Life Drawing Week 11 - Props

2008-05-25T06:14:00Z

Weeks into the course, us students were suppose to be confident in drawing figures so to up the ante and add interest to our compositions, found objects such as stools and an ironing board were added to the mix.

I was still trying to recover from last week’s frustration of being unable to get proportions right so this addition caused me to momentarily panic. However, I made the decision to resist temptation of rushing to capture the added elements. Instead I slowed my breathing, steadied my hand, switched from willow charcoal to conte pencil and focused on each pose in getting my figure better than usual.

The results were much lighter and raw than previous weeks’. The drawings, as you can see, have a more unfinished look about them. They’re mainly just lines and almost devoid of any shading or tone yet, I couldn’t be more than happier.

Life Drawing Week 10- Life Size

2008-05-20T04:34:00Z

I went for a holiday to the Philippines for two weeks. In that time, I had missed 2 Life Drawing session so when Wednesday finally came around, I was excited. I also felt very ‘off’. It really seemed as if I was starting afresh and had to relearn a lot of the techniques and flow I had gained over the course. This, I believe, is reflected in my drawings. The proportions were off and I had to keep cheating by using sloppy smudges to create mass and tones. Needing to also draw life-size exaggerated my frustrations. True to the saying, “Use it or lose it”

Life Drawing Week 8 - Mass Drawing

2008-04-12T04:02:00Z

In this session, we were suppose to take from the clay modelling session the lessons we learnt about mass, weight and form and apply it to our sketches. The aim here was to try to move from just 2d flat drawing to something more 3D. I think that though the sketches I produced are pleasing, they fail in encompassing the point of the exercise.

Life Drawing Week 7 - Clay Modelling

2008-04-08T05:46:00Z

Reclined Nude - painting I

2008-04-07T10:29:00Z

This is my version of an illustration of Kay Gallwey’s reclining nude which I saw in the book Painting The Nude. I’m gaga over the vibrant colours and generous curves!!

This is actually the second time I redrew this nude (but my first go at painting it). My very first version was in pastel which I gave as a gift to my friend Briana for her 20-something B-day.

This piece now hangs merrily in our living room (to offset the overwhelming yang energy in our household).

Life Drawing Week 6 - Mix Media

2008-03-26T09:56:00Z

Life Drawing Week 5 - Negative Space

2008-03-19T09:14:00Z

Life Drawing Week 4 - Contour Drawing continued

2008-03-13T07:57:00Z

Week 4

Life Drawing Week 3 - Contour Drawing

2008-03-06T07:59:00Z