A Rose and the broken-legged table.

Housekeeping day - I spent quite some good hours today, to perform a weekly-turned-biweekly pc housekeeping, after having to perform several ctrl-alt-delete force restarts. The lesson of ignoring the pc schedule reminder has never been learn, and as always, with intention.

( photo: taken from some angle below the sepal.)

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Cups of Tea - Poem

I am taking a break from crafting anything florals, and from fabric brooch making

As at July 5th

A Cup of Tea

When the world is all at odds
And the mind is all at sea
Then cease the useless tedium
And brew a cup of tea.

There is magic in its fragrance,
There is solace in its taste;
And the laden moments vanish
Somehow into space.

And the world becomes a lovely thing!
There's beauty as you'll see;
All because you briefly stopped
To brew a cup of tea.

Tea helps our head and heart.
Ted medicates most every part.
Tea rejuvenates the very old.
Tea warms the hands of those who're cold.

(J. Jonker, Amsterdam, c.1670)

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Cups of Tea

We had interesting updates since our last acrylic painting class. Some has advance with flying colors, some continue practicing in serious manner, some has done nothing, but a Nebula Rose ;)

Teacher said - skills can be polished. She feeds us "a pot of rice" and it is up to us to boil into plates of soft and aromatic baked-rice. Practice makes perfect she said, and there came shots of floral photos daily from her, for us to digest and practice to draw. Long lived teacher!

Some one did mentioned, this is not my cup of tea, hiding the fact that there is talent, but time to spare on painting. I virtually raised my hand, murmuring politely - me too.

While the rest test their skills with floral drawing, I only draw cups of tea ;) 

as at July 4th

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Acrylic Painting, Roses and A Nebula

After so many weeks in abandonment, acrylic painting and brushes are making a huge hand-clapping come back - mainly because I am scheduled to attend the basic color theory class yesterday.

I have collections of paint brushes in hand. 4 sizes of flat brush, round brushes of size 10 and 5, a filbert, and a fan brush. I rarely paint, but my round brushes are not well-cleansed, how ironic!  I take note to clean them more carefully next time.

The color theory is basically the art of mixing different colors in order to form different tone of colors according to painting theme. For example drawing the sky during sunrise and during sun set  will have different color effect. That is where the knowledge of maxing color will be become handy.

There re only 3 primary colors - yellow, red and blue. It is as simple as - mix one unit of a primary color with another primary color will produce X color, or mix 2 units of X color with another primary color will get Y color. Then the recipe continues. Last reminder from teacher - now no excuse not to paint because "there is no enough color options"!

It says - yellow+red =orange, the rest of the charts are purposely blurred for p&c purposes :)

Drawing technique came next, with a rose. Cikgu performs several live demos to us, the how to produce a lovely rose like this.(If not mistaken), she combined the acrylic with the water color technique. This is why, this class is so special ;)

Lovely flower: I suppose to draw a rose like this - by cikgu

 And this what I have produce after my 1st attempt- a Nebula! Who doesnt know what Nebula  is?

my 1st attempt, instead of a rose, I drew a "Nebula", then followed by 2nd Nebula with additional "zoom-in" effect ;)

After drawing 2 Nebulas, I gave up and drew something else.Then teacher take charge, and did live demo on how add more details to a petal, such as drawing the veins.

Giving up rose, I drew simpler "unknown flower"

I continue drawing once arrived home - a bit later at night, after finishing some orders for my satin ribbon brooch. I use acrylic with my cheap 100msg drawing paper, which I own for quite some time - among the odd thing that I have at home.

Arrived home and continue drawing, more disaster and another giving-up sketches (2 logs in red color)

this is what I produced before midnight

..and before going to sleep..what a night!

 and came the following morning, I kind of learn something now!

Followed by the following morning - more to "draw and fill-in" technique. (Not too sure if these terms are official. )

 And after lunch, I tried drawing each petals using strokes, instead of fine and fill-in technique

after lunch - more to stroke technique

 This is a completely using strokes technique

..the final one..

..erm..long way (to be able) to produce what teacher has produced..

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Fabric Flower: The making

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Late afternoon Sunday. I reclined lazily on my favorite chair, "lapping" my notebook and listing down all of the accomplishments for this week:

1. Fabric Flower making

I ve been doing nothing but researching and designing my new fabric satin brooch since last week, experimenting how to standardize the size and the look, apart from ensuring the durability and practicality of use.

 red-chilli brooch handsomely worn on shoulder

Then, I came to aware about the excess of fuming from the candle I use during the "edging" process, that at all time I am exhaling. I remember a scene for my all-time favourite sitcom  Seinfeld, when Susan died from licking cheap, toxic wedding invitation envelopes that George bought. I afraid if this fuming can be such harmful too. So I decided to wear a mask as part of my EHS practices. Wearing mask with all electric fans are switched off, you bet it's torturing hot!

kitty fabric mask i used to avoid access fuming from candle burning

2. Acrylic Painting Class at Kelopak Gallery

Another sequel from the previous ribbon embroidering classes. If last time we had batik canting as the background, this time we have acrylic painting, and ribbon embroidering  (with flower motive) should next follows, to make this whole canvas complete. I planned to continue this painting next week and to complete it just with acrylic painting (resolution 1), and will have another canvas for the atcual project - the combination of acylic+ribbon embroidering. (resolution 2!!..phew) I shall write and update more on this soon.

It ends here since last class session

3. Change from "summer" to "winter" room
It's been warm days for quite a while, and sleeping at night is getting restless. So I decided that it is time to switch rooms. The "summer" room, the warmest room in this unit, is a west-facing room where the warm afternoon sun will "bake" and set. The "winter" room, is facing the east - chiller, gloomy and poorly "lit" that makes little difference between morning, afternoon or at night - it is a room room where you can sleep all day long, wrapped in blanket!

4. Changed a door knob
When comes to changing a door knob, I always hope for a miracle to happen. I had one experience before, though it was successful, but really really really not fun (dont ask why).

old-sagging door : after removed the old lock set

reading the instruction from the new locking set, later I threw it away for I found it useless.

It's done! The door knob hole is somehow out of proportion, so I combine the new lock set, keeping some of the old parts. Moral : not all door knobs are manufactured with ISO (or is it the Malaysian's house developer?)

5. Changed light bulbs
The biggest accomplishment of all - changing light bulbs.

balcony - blowing out for more than a year. I love the "romantic "effect this lit gives when switching off other lamps/lights. 

entrance - blackout for I-cannot-remember-how-long. It took me a while to research how to open and unscrew this bird-nest lamp and pulled out the broken bulb.

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3rd class @ Kelopak Gallery

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Third class was held on May 1st at Kelopak Gallery. Today's syllabus is to "fill" our hand-drawn basket using batik chanting techniques, with our hand-sewn flowers using various techniques of ribbon embroidering, and using out hand-dyed ribbons.

our "empty" chanting basket

Homework is done and submitted to our teacher for comments

basket full of flowers

peony

"melur"

rose -side view

rose -front view

rose -with stamens

hydrangea

self-design flower

rose - with attractive beading

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2nd Class @ Kelopak Gallery: Dye ribbon and Batik

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Today
Had mouth-watering nasik ayam at one of my favourite restaurant, then only after 2 hours, stopped by another restaurant and enjoyed some teh ais with pengat ubi. Talking about unhealthy definition of happiness, yes today I am full and unusually happy. (good guess, sleep comes next)


Ribbon Dye and Batik Canting
Last Sunday, we hopped to another interesting chapter at Kelopak Gallery - Ribbon dye and batik canting. Before the class commenced, we had this short graduation ceremony for those who have completed their (48 or so hours) of the A-Z in ribbon embroidering and batik canting coursework. The acknowledgement came with the official certificate, with name engraved. For all the handwork and time spent this far, they must have been  feeling very proud and paid-off.  

Today, another close friend has joined us, and she came all the way from Senawang. Since the day we were in high school, I knew she loves art and is very good at it. So I reminded her few times that this place she is visiting, has more than ribbon embroidering art. Very true, when she first entered the gallery, I saw she stepped in with an aww-ed.

Lesson 1: Batik Canting
I discovered this good web link which visually described the step to step of how batik canting is being delivered traditionally. Fortunately, our teacher has come out with this new and revolutionized technique, using a modern canting pen, while the rest of the traditional canting processes were now, made easy, like the a-b-c.

Traditional canting tool (source: http://batikheaven.wordpress.com)

our canting pen

We started off the day with our canting project. Our teacher handed us all of the supplies, among them are  the canvas and matching wooden frame of size 16x 21" (apprx), 3 sizes of painting brushes, 8 bottles of paints and the modern "canting-pens". I can feel myself like a 10-years old - feel excited like getting a bunch of a brand new toys.

painting brush

We start with sketching a basket with a pencil, then re-draw it using the canting pen, then rest of other details came with free-hand. We are supposed to draw a basket and only a few tiny flowers, but instead, both of us end up drawing a basket with full of flowers - good instructions are fun when are not followed!

my canting frame

 
We put to a side for a little while to let the "candling" dried off, before we move to a more exciting exercise - the painting process.

half-way painted - trying my best luck!

Lesson 2: Ribbon dye.
Among 3 reasons why ribbon dye is so important.
1. Most of the on-the-shelf ribbons came in plain colors.
2. Dye ribbons are expensively sold and are rare to find.
3. Dye ribbon gives special effects; we have more options in delivering our creativity right!

The whole process is quite simple, and dyed- ribbon dried very fast.

drying the dyed-ribbon

For our next class, we shall start with the actual ribbon embroidering process, but this time using our own home-made dye ribbons and on our canting-ed canvas.

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