Maisarah bt Muhd Zamri (0335576)

FINAL PROJECT
11.11.2019
Week 12 - Cultural Relationship

For this project, I decided to "express" Malaysia's culture through it's traditional clothing. Malaysia is mostly populated with three main races - Malay, Chinese, and Indian. All these three races have their own traditional clothes, of course.

I want to try combining all three clothings - for both female and male - into one to depict that these three races is what makes Malaysia.

So I took the highlighted parts and just mash them up.

So it's basically a baju kurung and baju melayu with cheongsam and changshan designs, topped with saree's drape and dhoti's scarf.

These are things (stereotypically) essential in each three culture's festivals:

- Ketupat (Malays)

- Chinese Lantern

- Rangoli decorations (Indian)

(Final work)

I wanted to combine the three traditional clothings of the three main races in Malaysia - Malay, Chinese, and Indian - for both male and female to express “1 Malaysia.” I’ve taken the basic look of the baju kurung and baju melayu as the base of the design. I used red as the color of the clothes because it’s like the traditional color of Chinese culture (in their belief, it brings wealth). I just incorporated the most noticeable part of the dhoti and saree, which are the drapes, into my design. I chose some harmonious colors for my design, with the two hues of red and the orangish brown (the drapes). Its bright colors are also kind of a contrast to the background which is kind of fading. The background consists of ketupats, Chinese lanterns, and rangolis scattered everywhere to show a random rhythm.

PROJECT 2

28.10.2019

Week 10 - Self-Portrait

I've decided with his design. It shows me resting on my own tombstone. I'm not inclined on drawing my face, so I decided to use shadows as an excuse to hide it.

The phrase "Rest In Peace" slowly fades away because I don't believe I deserve to rest in peace after I die.

I shaded this using 2B and 6B pencils.

(Final result)

For the background, I used soft pastel black charcoal because it provides darker black than the pencils.

(Digital version that hopefully looks better)

My design prominently shows contrast, because it’s black and white (even though there isn’t much white). I chose to do it this way because I don’t like having colors when it comes to drawing myself because I have convinced myself that I don’t deserve the colors (and because I’m emo). I live my life in a boring black and white world. I’m also a negative person, and black just seems to suit me best. I luckily still have some charcoals from last semester that I can use to make the background as black as possible. I actually thought of doing collage, but I couldn’t quite figure out how to compose the self-portrait then. Plus, I am much more comfortable with drawing, be it traditionally or digitally. The reason behind the tombstone is because by now “I want to die” has become part of my personality. Self-hate runs in my blood.

ILHAM GALLERY VISIT ESSAY
24.10.2019 - Week 9

On 24^th of October, I went to Ilham Gallery with my classmates. It was the first time I’ve ever went to an art gallery, or any kind of gallery, really.

Even before we got to the gallery floor, there was already an art piece in front of the elevator. There was no description of what it was and who the creator was, but it was of a chair with an outline of a person sitting on it made from holes in the chair. At the backside of the chair, there was an outline of a person standing also made of holes. They weren’t so much of outlines, actually. They were more like shadows imprinted on the chair.

When we got to the fifth floor - the gallery floor - the first artwork we saw was an artwork from Thailand, made in 2009. The artwork is called “The Social Mandala and Other Mit-ologies” by Mit Jai Inn. The piece was of different coloured painted canvas pieces put together. I then found a similar artwork that was made by Kamin Lertchaiprasert, also from Thailand. It was named “Kamin Vatta Atta Uppatan.” Seeing those two art pieces, I assume it was the kind of art people in Thailand make; like their culture. These artworks kind of plays around with random rhythm, as the colours that were put together were completely random.

(“The Social Mandala and Other Mit-ologies” by Mit Jai Inn)

(“Kamin Vatta Atta Uppatan” by Kamin Lertchaiprasert)

There were also these two art pieces which were actually of the same thing, but were made differently. They were both named “Sitting 2004: 26-3-04. Pay Attention to the Details of Love’ and were made also by Kamin Lertchaiprasert in 2004. One of the pieces was a mere woodblock print on a handmade paper, while the other was straight up a carved wood. From what I can tell, the work resembles a man and woman holding a sort of plant in their hands. The printed work definitely has contrasting elements, as it was black and white.

(“Sitting 2004: 26-3-04. Pay Attention to the Details of Love” by Kamin Lertchaiprasert)

The second art piece I saw was a simple 160cm x 225cm carpet like piece with the phrase “TANAH & AIR” ‘printed’ on it. It was made by a Malaysian Borneo by the name of Yee I-Lann in 2018. The piece “TanahAirKu” was basically made by weaving split bamboo and creating the phrase “TANAH & AIR” with the dyed parts. There was a pretty clear contrast between the phrase and the background as the words were really big and the background’s colour was pretty dull compared to the black of the words.

(“TanahAirKu” by Yee I-Lann)

The next work was made by an art community that was established in 2010 named Pangrok Sulap. The title of the artwork is “Sabah Tanah Airku,” and was made in 2017. This work used the printing technique where they carved their design on wood and paint the surface of the design with ink, then proceed to press the inked side of the wood on a piece of canvas or whatever they preferred using to produce their work. It was honestly mind blowing seeing how detailed the design was, including the imitation of handwritten notes in the piece. I would say that the most prominent design principle in this particular art is the lines that were created when the artist(s) was/were carving their design on the wood.

(“Sabah Tanah Airku” by Pangrok Sulap)

“Hauled out” is a vitrine art piece made by Felix Bacolor in 2009. It was made by a number of plastic walrus toys put into a glass case, filled to the top on one side but reduces in number as they get to the other side of the case. It almost looked like the walruses were climbing on top of another to get to the top of the glass case, but eventually falling down to the other side. I don’t know, it makes sense in my head, but what I’m trying to say is that I can see movement in this piece.

(“Hauled out” by Felix Bacolor)

(What I see when i close my eyes at night)

Going to the other side of the gallery, I saw a very interesting artwork. It was a portrait of the artist herself when she was young (it isn’t confirmed, though). What was interesting was the fact that the portrait wasn’t a painting or a drawing, but was made by small folded papers on a canvas. As if that wasn’t cool enough, some of the papers had typewritten wisdoms on them. This piece was made by Thanathorn Suppakijjumnong from Thailand in 2017, and was titled “Secret of Love No.3.” The work emits big harmony energy with its subtle color tone change from the very soft-almost-white pink skin tone to the darker-almost-red pink background, and also contrast on how some part are just black.

(“Secret of Love No.3” by Thanathorn Suppakijjumnong)

I saw a lot of other artworks in the gallery, but since this essay only has to be a minimum of 750 words, I’ll stop here thank you very much.

EXERCISE 8
21.10.2019
Week 9 - Symbolism, Image, Words

I decided to go with Image - knolling, since it was the easiest and I'm a lazybum so. The theme for the knolling I'm going to do is my collections. there are a few things I enjoy collecting, meaning I have a number of them, therefor I can use them for this exercise. The first thing that came to mind is my 3D woodpuzzles.

After doing this, I see that it's not very exciting, so I decided to use the frames of the parts for the woodpuzzles instead (because I've see people do this with the woodpuzzle parts, but I've done my woodpuzzles so I only have the frames left).

I added some things on the empty spaces because knolling should be a full square of things. But then I realized there was another thing I can use for knolling:

MY CHILDREN.

LOOK AT THEM THEY'RE CUTE.

AND THEY GLOW IN THE DARK.

EXERCISE 7
14.10.2019
Week 8 - Rhythm, Movement, Harmony

It was my group's turn to present today :') it's a miracle I didn't pass out in front of class. Safe to say that a bit of my soul disintegrated though.
It may be my group's turn to present, but I did not understand much about this topic. So what did I do? Even I don't know.
Well, at first I thought of doing rhythm, since that was the part I presented, and the subtopic I understood a bit more than the rest. We had to do collage, so the most common material for collages is magazines. I brought a watch magazine, so I figured I could just cut up some images of the watches' face and arrange them in placements that would make up any type of rhythm.

It's not nice :( so I decided to try design something else with the watches I've cut up

I literally just placed the scrap papers I've trimmed from the watches on this paper randomly and try to create something with them because I was too lazy to get up and throw them away. Also, I felt like it would be a waste to throw them away, anyway.

This looks so much better with black background. Truth be told, I don't really know what this composition meant. But as I was arranging the circles on the left side, I was thinking of how the inside of a watch looks like (the gears). And I suppose this can be random rhythm and harmony (since the watches s are all blue)

EXERCISE 6
07.10.2019
Week 7 - Dot, Line, Scale, Size

Lines seem to be the obvious choice here, come on. I can literally do anything with lines. That said, I've decided to try and add volume to a drawing's hair using lines.

(First sketch)

Ms Sherry said it looks too Western and she wants to see something more Southeast Asian :(

(Second sketch)

(Are these sketched even visible)

(Progress of final work)

Got rid of her face yEET

(because I can't for the life of me draw her other eye and I don't want people asking me about it later)

Colouring her hair took me 7 hours because we couldn't use marker and the thickest pen I own is 0.5 (X_X) Also I left white spaces for the lines. I DIDN'T use white pen. My eyes are in worse condition now. I filled up like half the background with dots too because why not.

EXERCISE 5
30.09.2019
Week 6 - Alignment, Hierarchy, Direction, Perspective

I did perspective, since the rest seem too confusing for my smol brain :(

I used darker colours for the tree because that's what I want to focus on. And also since in perspective, things that are closer to us seem to have darker colours that what is in the background.

My work isn't 3D, because I never really had any intention of making it that way. I wanted to be able to keep my work in my file, so I kept it as 2D; meaning I mostly used papers for the recycled materials.

For the leaves, however, I used candy wrappers just so it doesn't look too boring.

I got this idea from the presentation my classmates did. They showed an example of perspective by colour using an image of a Japanese painting, where it seemed to be a scenery (kind of) where there are mountains and a sakura tree (branch?) protruding from the side of the mountain. And so I used that as inspiration.

(The picture I based my work on)

EXERCISE 4
23. 09.2019
Week 4 turned 5 - Pattern, Repetition, Texture, Surface

This was my first design. I actually gave up on it halfway, but I guess it could be seen as a complete work. The blue was made by dabbing sponge on the paper. Then I used leaves for the light green. The red and dark green were made with onions. I gave up on it because it looked too messy. Personally, I think it has the potential to look pretty, if only I worked harder to make it neater.

My second design was made only with onions. It is much simpler than my first design. It wasn't that I was inspired by anything to come up with this, I just thought I should have something better than my first design to be presented. Honestly, I just went with the flow. To me, this looked like what a kindergartner would come up with. I put no effort in it whatsoever.

But everyone who commented on my work was so nice!!! Some told me they liked the composition, a few said that they liked the pattern, and others said they liked the colours. There were some who commented about the contrast that was going on with the colours and pattern and to be honest, I didn't even realize that until I read the comments. The most memorable to me was the one who said "it must've took you a lot of efforts to cut the onions," like, no, my mom cut them up.

EXERCISE 3
10.09.2019
Week 3 - Symmetry, Asymmetry, Balance

We were given the choice to do either symmetry, asymmetry, or balance for this exercise. I decided to do symmetry.

My work is kind of a mirror image kind of thing. It is of a (badly designed) chair in the middle, and the sky (I tried) as the background. This scenery(?) is reflected in the (very still and clear) water surface below.

This was inspired by an opening scene of an animation I used to watched a few years ago where it's pretty much the same scenery as my work, but instead of a lonely chair, a boy is sitting in the middle of the landscape.

EXERCISE 2
03.09.2019
Week 2 - Gestalt

From my understanding, gestalt is seeing two things in one image. So my design is a rabbit's head that when flipped upside-down becomes the letter 'R'.
This was inspired by a series from 2010 that I love to this day, where they have initials of an object designed to look like said object. I chose R for Rabbit because from the same franchise of the series I will love to the day I die, there's a character that I like and he is associated with a rabbit.

this is a rabbit's head.

when flipped, it's an 'R', which stands for 'rabbit'.

There was also an assignment in which we have to write a short biography of some kind of a South East Asian Artist. This is what I've written:

Khalil Ibrahim

Khalil Ibrahim was a Malaysian artist known for his batik paintings, portraits, landscapes, and abstracts that deeply explored the authenticity of Malaysia.

He was born in 1934, in Kubang Kerian, Kelantan. Khalil started as a left-handed, self-taught artist. He regularly painted while doing his job as a teacher in Kelantan and Pahang in the 1950s, until he was awarded with a scholarship to study art in England.

In 1960, Khalil enrolled in St Martin's School of Art in London, where he received formal training and started to develop his artistic style. He returned to Malaysia six years after, in 1966, and taught art in a school in Temerloh, Pahang.

Two years later, in 1968, he moved to Kuala Lumpur and started an illustrious career that lasted for over 50 years. It was also the year he held his first few exhibitions at the National Art Gallery (also known as National Visual Arts Gallery). He also had some shows at Samat Art Gallery, which was owned by Frank Sullivan, the first director of the National Art Gallery.

In the late 60s, Khalil visited Bali, and that got him interested in the Indonesian arts and culture, thus prompting him to experiment on batik paintings.

In 2012, he suffered a stroke, making him unable to paint with his left hand. So he trained himself to paint with his right hand. He was wheelchair bound, but he kept going with his art.

Khalil unfortunately died of natural cause when he was 84, but he had lived a successful life as an artist.

Edit: so the assignment was actually to write a biography on South East Asian DESIGNERS. So I messed that one up :') hello bad grades

EXERCISE 1
26.8.2019
Week 1 - Contrast

I chose to make a design loosely based on the phrase "wolf in sheep's clothing" (because I was listening to a song titled "Wolf in Sheep's Clothing" and thought, "hm, that's something I can work with"). My design shows a group of fluffy white clouds (the sheep) and a black wolf hiding among them.

above are digitally designed
I decided to put the image(?) at the bottom right because I think putting them in the middle of the paper would make it look bland.

and below is the actual process of cutting papers and skin :')