21 January

Just came back from AEP.

I went to the zoo on Saturday. Spent almost the whole day there. Left at 8 and came back at 5. I was trying to sketch some animals there, but it wasn’t really too great for me. It wasn’t so much because of the animals moving (though that’s one of the point), but it was really quite crowded and I was trying to sketch with my right hand and my left hand holding the book up. Tiring. Haha. I couldn’t even concentrate after awhile. Also, there’s the stupid animals that don’t want to move like I want them to. They keep hiding at some obscure places that render me unable to do a proper sketch for I can’t tell where the head starts and the tail ends. You know what they said about animals and their camouflage abilities? Don’t doubt it. It’s true.

Or maybe it’s just my lousy eyes. Cause I stood there for a long time before I finally spotted the stupid leopard. And don’t even mention the lions. I loved the rhinos though. They were being very nice to me. So in the end, I came back with sketches that resemble gesture drawings. And I left it at that. Seeing that I had to do other homework as well.

Anyway, for now, I’ll be working on the thing I talked about… The centaur and the baby thing. I can’t help but think of ‘The Tyger’ by William Blake every time I think of the centaur thing. It’s strange, seeing as there’s no real link.

I’ll be drawing the anatomy of some creatures for some time.

It’s only January, but I’m feeling tired enough already. Who was the crazy duck who wanted school to start sooner? I believe her initials are AJY. Anyhow, after much thought, I surmise that sleep is the most useless thing. It is a absolute waste of time. Therefore, LWN, please stop wasting time on sleep. You could spend the time on better things. Like studying.

Anyway, the thing about creating creatures from inside out seems interesting enough. I just wonder if I have the time. Ah well, I’ll just have to make it or something. Actually, the more I think about it, the more fun it seems to be. But I have a feeling this is going to be a process I’ll whine about later on. Well. We’ll see.

On a side note. It’s rather sad, how my 10 pages are filled with nonsensical, unfinished-looking sketches while others have already drawn full pictures, shaded nicely or coloured nicely. It makes me feel like shouting a word that starts with an ‘S’, but I’m practicing restraint. I’ll settle on being happy that at least I’m doing something. I should draw something finished-looking soon.

A response

Here is a response to Sam and Jia, which were relavent to my coursework, so I decided to reply as a post.

 Sam:

Yea, I’ve identified the recurring animals they use in the creatures, like horses, WINGS, snakes etc. I think they’re there to represent something, for example, medusas have snakes as hair, and they’re supposed to be this sort of evil, cunning, ‘hissing’ women.

The evolution of the mind thing you were talking about intrigues me. I might delve a little into that.

I thought of a reason for using graffiti as my medium. I actually thought of graffiti (the style that I want to do), is like a ‘newer’ kind of art if you compare it to those in the greek days. I think there was graffiti way back then too, but I think graffiti only started to become more recognized and popular recently. So I thought of using graffiti, a more ‘modern’ medium to do a subject matter that is ‘old’. In that way, it’s also a hybrid.

Thanks for the suggestion on the evolution of the mind. I will think about that as well. Maybe you can elaborate more? My interpretation of what you mean might be different.

 Jia:

Yea, you’re right. Disney seems like a nice start for its popularity and all. With the younger kids that is. I shall tell you a truth, which is, I like Lilo & Stitch’s character designs. It’s weird I know. And unlike me. But I do like the charcter design. Of Stitch anyway. Not so much Lilo. Shucks, now you’ve got Stitch’s image stuck in my head….

Coursework:

Mr Gan told me metamorphosis meant changing into something else. As in, like you weren’t born that way, but changed into something else. So I think I mistook the meaning of the word, and therefore, am going back to my hybrid thing. And I’m probably sticking with the hybrid idea.

 The thing is, hybrid seems to mean every thing. I mean, there are many things in this world that are a mix between two other things. I’m probably going to do something based on creatures, since that’s what I’m rather interested in. I was thinking of making my final piece a graffiti with both 3D images and flat 2D images mixed in.

If you guys don’t know where the hybrid idea came from, it actually stemmed from evolution. When I was thinking of evolution, I also thought of evolution of humans, and then went on to think about what the future world would be like, I mean, with evolution and everything, what would humans be like, and what would the world be like.

Instead of a high-tech world, I had an image of a desert with scattered pieces of technology. Then I started thinking of it as a graph. Like from the start of Gaia, to the peak of human civilization, and from there, it’ll start degenerating back to the end. So it’ll be a quadratic ‘n’ shape graph if you get what I mean. So. At this ‘peak’, it will be the stuff with the high technology and stuff, but after that, things will start declining again back to basics. And if you draw a timeline of creatures that follows the trend of the graft, I wonder what will spring up after the ‘peak’. I’m not sure if you get what I mean, but I do, so I’ll just record this as an idea.

The other idea I had stems from this piece of reading I found.

“To invent from nothing an animal that can exist (I mean to say that can physiologically grow, nourish itself, resist the environment and predators, and reproduce itself) is an almost impossible feat…………………….In other words, evolution has always proven itself to be enormously more intelligent than the best evolutionists…………………………..Nevertheless, the experience of three thousand years of storytelling, painting and sculpture shows us that even inventing at whim an animal from nothing, an animal whose ability to exist we do not consider important but whose image somehow stimulates our sensibility, is not an easy task. All the animals invented by mythology in all countries and all epochs are pastiches, rhapsodies of features and limbs taken from known animals. The most famous and most composite was the chinera, a hybrid of goat, snake, and lion, so impossible that today its name is equivalent to ‘a vain hope’; but it has also been adopted by biologists to indicate the monsters they create, or would like to create, in their laboratories thanks to transplants among different animals.

The centaurs are fascinating creatures, the repository of multiple and archaic sumbols, but Lucretius has already realised their physical impossibility and tried to demonstrate it with a curious argument: at the age of three the horse is at the peak of its strength while man is stilll an infant and ‘will often seek in his dreams for the nipple’ from which he has just been weaned; how could two natures live together which do not ‘fluorescunt pariter’ (bloom apace) and in any case are not inflamed by the same love?”

Primo Levi, ‘Inventing an Animal’, Other People’s Trades, 1985 (tr. Raymond Rosenthal, 1989)

Yup. I found the centaur thing very interesting. Very. I’m thinking of doing something like that too, with a toddler’s torso and an adult horse’s body and stuff.

—

I thought I could talk a little about why I chose evolution, and more importantly, greek creatures to start off with. I guess it started from this computer game, which I’m not sure if you guys have heard of. It’s called ‘Might & Magic, Heroes (1, 2, 3)’

When I was young, it was the only game I played, and there were a lot of such creatures in it. Like, you were supposed to choose a castle, in which, there are specific creatures you can ‘buy’, and the goal of the game is to use these creatures to conquer the rest of the ‘world’. I played it for the sake of the creatures. I never did win the game. Just buy lots and lots and lots of those creatures. It was fun.

 And I guess another thing would be that I started copying my brother. Like he liked mythological stuff, so I followed, and I think I probably convinced myself that I liked it too. Ah well. I’m damn lucky my brother can’t draw for nuts, or I’ll die if he draws better than me.

Anyway, that reminds me. I have tons of books on mythological creatures in my house. I just have to dig them out. I can’t believe I forgot about them until today! Shows how meddled my mind is.

9th January

I finally started working on my coursework. It was quite interesting – reading and researching that is. I went on from growth, evolution and methamorphosis (I can never spell that word right) to hybrids. So I spent an hour on the computer reading about hybrids and looking for photos. It was seriously interesting – I never knew there was such a thing as a zorse. Wait. Actually, I think I read about it before, but I’ve never actually seen it until today. At first glance, it was kind of cool, but after scrutinizing, I realised it was quite… weird. You should have seen Anning’s reaction.

Mr Gan came around and suggested I looked into Greek myth, which is also one of my intentions. But I think for this week and maybe next, I will be focusing on real hybrids. Like the Zorse and the Liger. Cool names by the way. I’m also planning to use graffiti for my final product, as in, spray paint kind of graffiti. Cartoon-ish style.

So anyway, I haven’t really come up with a solid workplan for coursework, but I’m working on it. Well, I just know that after July onwards, I’ll start working on my final work.

For those who didn’t know, excluding this week, there are 20 more weeks to June. So, work hard guys!

I just realised this is good to keep progress for coursework as well.

I wonder how long I’ll keep this up before losing interest.

Hopefully a long time.

Fickle.

Yup. I’m being fickle again. How unlike me.

Anyway, I’m changing my mind about the coursework thing. I seriously don’t know what to do. But the other idea I had in mind that seems easier to do is ‘growth’/'change’/'evolution’/'metamorphosis’.

There seems to be a lot more to do towards that direction.

Huh.

Huh. I’m not the most IT-savvy person around. Probably one of the worst actually (well, aside from AJY I guess).

Yay to the new AEP SIA, and yay for the fact that it actually seems Interesting and Useful unlike some SIAs we’re supposed to be doing this year. Those just seem like a waste of time.   Well, any how, I’m going to try and make this fun for me. Work should be fun. Yes. Fun. I actually said that. You can quote me. I’m great aren’t I?

See? The thing about computer and technology is like what AJY said, it’s all phony like that. I’m saying stuff I won’t normally say cause I’m behind this crazily bright screen that’s hurting my eyes. But I don’t care, I know I’m great. Hah. If you believe I actually mean that of course. Shucks, I’m digressing again. You know, I wonder if this is considered poor English. I mean, it’s kind of like a monologue isn’t it? Ack, who cares. Don’t the teachers know how hard it is to blog without using words like ‘haha’ or ’shucks’ or ’sheeshness’? Okay, the last word doesn’t exist. But still.

Anyway, we got our new sketchbooks today! You should have seen the look on AJY’s face when she recieved it. And the constipated look she gave when I made fun of her excitement. Well, I don’t blame her. It’s a cool book. So, thanks to Mr Gan. Haha. I am no longer an ingrate.

The thing I absolutely hate about new sketchbooks – or new books for that matter, is how they are well… New. I mean, just looking at those nice cool blank pages totally flips me off from wanting to make a mark on it. Like, I’m afraid I’ll ruin it’s nice clean-ness. I think I’ll just scribble on the first page where we’re supposed to write our artist statement thing. So that I can see that it’s already all messed up so I might as well go ahead and mess up the whole thing.

That reminds me. Artist statement. Ah, how in the world am I going to know what I want to do?! I have only vague ideas that jump around randomly. Brownian motion. I’m trying to think of something tha will interest me for a long time.

 I first thought of art and basketball. But I was afraid I might be a little sick of that, especially since nowadays basketball is starting to get boring with not enough people playing and stuff. I don’t want to do anything to further threaten my basketball life. I love it perfectly as it is right now, of course it could get better, but that’s besides the point.

So I thought of art and psychology. Which seems quite cool, only I think it’s too general, and I don’t really know what to focus on. Like, every thing about psychology seems cool. Stages of sleep, personality, sociopaths etc.

Hmm. Sociopaths. I know it’s just me and my screwed up sense of morality (which my brother seems to hate), but I think they’re quite cool and all. I should stop using that word. Cool, that is.

Huh. Oh, how about the different? Like different and unaccepted. Ack, that just reminds me of LA. Which then reminds me to get pissed. How sad. Hah.

But that seems quite cool too. I mean, if there’s me and that whole screwed up morality thing. Cause seriously, maybe I could use this opportunity to help myself along the way. With the whole monologue-in-head-that-kills-me thing. So. Unaccepted in art? Hah. I can already imagine the kind of things I can come up with.

Teachers would hate that though. Hm. At that, I think my mum would hate it too. Well. Too bad!

So, is that it?

Think so.

And I can drag the whole Dexter, blood splatter thing in too! And the whole serial killer madness I love so much! And the weeds! And drugs! And…. !!

Hah. I’m starting to love this thing already.

I know I’ll hate it soon though. Well. Who cares. I’ll love it while I can, hate it later.

Oh, we had some lecture on Greek Art as well. Reminded me about the whole reason why I used to love Greek stuff. Yup, so I’m looking forward to the whole trip down to see the exhibition. Yup.

On a side note. I know my alias here as aknut. Nostalgic! Who cares. Jaye is good too. I don’t care what you guys say. I love Jaye, I really do. Which makes me wonder why you people laugh. Hm. Who cares. I love Jaye, just like how I love Weining and aknut. I don’t really care anymore. Yup, so I’m not going to care either, and for once, I’m going to say to my classmates, you can call me Weining or Jaye. Who cares. I respond to both. Huh. Finally got that off my chest. I feel great. Really. I love Jaye! (Yes, you can interpret that is me being egoistic.)