This little bird found a ring

Watercolour. 7" x 5".

For the Birdhouse installation organised by OIC, 2 Nov 2012.

Colour lines

In colour pencil - the type with multiple colours in one lead. There's a randomness and freedom that comes when you build the picture. Unexpected results - some good, some so-so, but all good fun :)

Origami Yoda

May the force be with you!

While I do love Star Wars, my friend April loves it even more :) She's been working on making an origami Yoda. I surfed the web only to find quite a few complex versions. So I thought I'd try my hand at creating a less complex one, just for the fun of it. After 20 failed prototypes, this is the version that was 'repeatable' and 'instructable' if you know what I mean :P

It's my first attempt at creating a new origami object, and first time drawing instructions for it. Hope you like it and find it enjoyable to make. May the force be with you!

My brown paper portraits...from 2008

Thanks to OIC, I had the opportunity to practice my portrait drawing for several years. For almost a year and a half, I was at Red Dot one Sunday a month drawing people who posed for us. I drew and sold the portraits, or left the unsold ones in a drawer, never really looking out for them :P

So it came as such a wonderful surprise when a lady contacted me by email last month, and sent me a photo of a portrait I had drawn of her and her husband, back in 2008! Today the picture has travelled to Germany and they have kept it! That really made my day and week and month :)

She wrote: "We met once at RedDot Design Museum, Singapore, because the best portray of my hubby and myself was yours! So, we happened to buy it and put it as a decoration in our bedroom... And since we came back to Berlin, we still have it with us."

Thank you! What a wonderful gift, and wonderful reminder to keep on drawing!!!! :)

Hungry Caterpillar pin (with tutorial)

I love pins and brooches! Here's one I just made, plus instructions on how to make one yourself! :)

Instructions:
1. You'll need some POM-POMs - about 6 GREEN and ONE RED. I chose to use the length of the BROOCH BACKING backing so as to simplify the process. It fits about 6 green poms for the body. Any shorter and the body might not look crawly, if too long, it starts to look like a string, unless you make some curves into it. You'll also need a short length of BROWN YARN for the feelers, and some CARD or PLASTIC for the eyes. I found a shiny SEQUIN laying around, so I trimmed it into the eyes. It worked out quite nicely cos it's a little reflective. I let the eye shapes be odd shaped as I thought it made the caterpillar look cute.  Also since it was so small, it was really tough to get the shape round!

TOOLS: Hot glue gun, white glue, scissors (for the eyes and feelers) and a permanent black or brown marker pen.

2. Get a dab of glue on one end of the brooch, and place the yarn in a U or V shape.
3. Another dab of glue for the head.
4. Add dabs of glue and add one green pom-pom at a time. Arrange them in a slight curve.
5. When done with the body, let it cool for a little while. Add white glue to the feelers and dab the positions for the eyes. I added glue to the feelers because I wanted to prevent fraying of the ends, and also to add some stiffness to the feelers.
6. Stick on the eyes.
7. Draw in the eyes. It's better to wait till the glue has dried.

Ta-da! There you go, your very own hungry caterpillar brooch! :)

Flowers and a tin can

The oil painting's completed. You can see the two progressive below. I can't say it's my best work, but I learnt a lot during the stages of the painting. 

I like this part of the painting the most - here's a close up of the flowers near the top. The way the orange and pink hues blend - I like! Orange (and vermillion) is still my favorite colour, it seems to be in most of what I paint.

When these kids grow up...

This was a fun project :) A few illustrators from the Organisation of Illustrators Council, or OIC for short were asked to draw some children from photos taken of them, but not as they were now. We were to draw them in their dream job :) I took on two portraits. The first one, was of a little lady wanted to be a policewoman.

 And this little lady wanted to be a baker.

Both were done in pencil and poster colours.