Wall street: Money Never Sleeps September 24, 2010

So, to celebrate my finishing of my AEP sia, i went out to watch Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.  I am not going to talk about the plot of the movie but rather some of the imagery, which i think ties to the movie well.

One of the imagery used is the idea of bubbles. Bubbles, as we know, is a beautiful illusion that can be easily broken. In the movie, it is linked to the false security and the fraud within Wall Street. The internet was a bubble of illusion, which burst resulting in one of the past economic crisis. As of now, the trend of investment is on green technology such as solar power, wind power etc, and people all around the world are injecting more and more money into this bubble, until one day the fraud cannot continue and the bubble will burst. I have explained this to the best of my abilities however I think i am not coherent and I tried to search for the particular quotes as mentioned in the movie everytime they want to make a philosophical point about bubbles, yet I could not find any ):

The second one is a painting by Spanish artist, Francisco Goya. It struck me as I used Goya as my inspiration for my coursework, as he turned deaf halfway in his life and his whole style of art shifted, resulting in him producing darker art such as the one shown in the movie, Saturn Devouring his Child. This painting is to depict the greek myth of Titan Kronos, who feared that his children will overthrow him and ate everyone of them, except for Zeus of course. In the context of the movie, it is to show family ties and relationships between mentor and prodigy. The painting is first introduced in the antagonist’s office, the antagonist being the one who indirectly caused jake’s mentor to commit suicide, offering Jake a position at his firm. There are a lot of messed up family issues in the movie, Jake being unable to resist his mother’s requests leading her money over and over again, Winnie Gekko and her father who seeked to reconcile with her but ended up cheating her of one hundred million dollars as he felt “betrayed” by her. Goya’s painting would often be interlinked with these issues to emphasise on family ties. The resolution of the movie is also related to the family, Winnie Gekko being pregnant with a son, causing Gordon gekko to want to be a better person. And with this, the antagonist is exposed for his crimes and Goya’s paintings was torn up, which symbolises resolution in the family problems.

There’s quite a lot more of themes and things but that’s the main point.

My chinese SIA September 24, 2010

Poster design for my final product, a movie review poster. I quite like the poster design, simple set, with the main character( the girl) and the director both dressed in red. The photo quality is quite bad as i literally took a picture of my computer screen as this is a word document and i really dont know how else to put it on wordpress.

September 24, 2010

Some design for my Biology Sia, which is all rushed out within a night, kind of like AEP actually except I gave aep a week?

Powerpoint slide design

Clearer view of cockroach

This SIA is on dissection of a cockroach and looks rather disgusting so I made mine more aesthetically appealing by adding this cute cockroach everywhere. I think this is so cute that I do not even find my cockroach dissection disgusting anymore.

September 24, 2010

Firstly, thank you lisahe and shaole for helping me take photos of my prep boards while i am plastering my hands.

My first word is on the development of ideas, of deafness ( inspired from my Cip at Singapore Association for the Deaf) and how deafness/ deaf art links to the subject of hands. Also, I feel that hands are very important, particularly for artists as we usually use our hands to draw, make sculptures, take photographs and create all sorts of art.

Second board on exploration and development of hands. Did some sketches and took photos of different types of hands, young and old etc. Experimented with mediums such as clay before settling on to plaster as plaster is a fast and accurate way to create realistic sculptures and also as I would like to experiment with this medium again after first trying it back in 2007.

Third prep board shows a step by step process of casting.

My fourth board is on the exploration of mirrors and reflections and of my phrase to cast. My choice to use mirrors is to draw the viewer into the work to increase interaction, inspired by M.C Escher. For my phrase choice, I chose Speak to be Heard as I feel that it is formal, yet inspirational and mostly because it stands/ speaks out as compared to more colloquail phrases such as Hear hear! and Listen up!

6th board on failed casts to show progress and improvement. This board also serves to explain why I ended by doing negative casts instead of positive casts as planned. This is because positive casts are extremely fragile and failed every single try.

This is my 7th board and is experimentation with composition, in terms of colour choices. I explained by reasoning for blue, yellow and red mirrors, as they were primary colours, and also why I chose plain white hand sculptures instead of multi coloured ones. I wanted white for purity and also as the mirrors are brightly colour already, i did not want more colours in my installation for fear of it looking too bright and messy.

Composition to show how my words are arranged, whether it is:

SPEAK TO BE HEARD

SPEAK TO

BE HEARD

SPEAK

TO

BE

HEARD

I finally settled on

SPEAK

TO BE

HEARD

as it shows best form of balance of words and is the intonation of how you would pronounce this phrase.

Comments September 24, 2010

http://artificialbynature.wordpress.com/2010/09/23/collages/#comment-55

http://greencloudsplash.wordpress.com/2010/09/21/lino-cut/#comment-44

http://thisisforart.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/oh/#comment-5

http://wuhusahe.wordpress.com/2010/09/21/sec-3-eoy-drawing-painting-paper/#comment-13

http://chicapod.wordpress.com/2010/09/19/pictures-from-a-pinhole/#comment-16

Sketch #4 September 24, 2010

Pencil sketch, 2008, A3.

Along with the last one, this is one of my better sketches. Technique-wise, this one is better than the last one but it has a more common and boring subject matter and thus, does not stand out as much as the last. I think i rendered the tomatoes well, I even like sketching round objects know to try out my “shade to make round objects look round” technique. I like the Spring Onion too though I was quite worried about it when I started sketching due to its root. i realise that just bringing out the root on the whole looks better and it turned out better than expected.

Sketch #3 September 24, 2010

Pencil sketch, 2008, A3

The scanner’s not really good at bringing out the contrast of this sketch as this is quite a light toned piece. However, I think this is one of the best i have done. I think the shading for the pot is well done as after much practice as shown earlier on, i have a better grasp of shading so as to make objects look “round” and 3-dimensional. I also like the pie/puff/big cookie-like thing with the fork. Overall, I think that my art teacher placed this composition well as it reminds me of a afternoon’s tea for a lazy Sunday afternoon. Maybe this is my motivation to do a good job.

sketch #2 September 24, 2010

Pencil sketch, A3, late 2007.

I think the colours are contrasting as the pot is black while the glass is transparent. I think I have done the shading for both quite well. For the pot, I am trying to show its smooth texture and the glossyness of it while for the two bottles, I am trying to portray the transparency of the bottles. Though i think both are quite well done, I think in a way they do not belong well together due to the too harsh a contrast, which became even greater thanks to the scanner.

sketch September 24, 2010

Pencil sketch, A3 done in 2007.

Sketch of a jar and a random ornamental item. First one up in my next series of pencil sketches this was done rather early and thus, lacks maturity. I also think the rendering and shading is not particularly well done  but then again, practice makes perfect.

Sketch of shoe September 24, 2010

Sketch of Shoe

Medium: Pencil

Done in 2007.

This is a sketch done during my art lesson and depicts a sketch of my teacher’s boot. For still life sketches, I am more used to drawing fruits and vegetables so it is quite a new experience to draw something new. The hardest part about this is to show the creases of the shoe for a more natural look, and to use light and shadow to portray this. I think shows quite good effort and is one of my best among a collection of shoe drawings and I think i did well on the shading and rendering of this sketch, making it look very realistic.