Ideas needed!

As I've previously said, I am focusing on childhood memories for my coursework. At this moment, I need some ideas which I can work on so I will just ask a question:

What do you used to do as a kid?

it can be touching the mimosa plant and watch it close, climbing all over the playground etc etc.

you can still be doing these stuff haha.

please please comment :D THANKS :D

Past works

Below are some of my artworks that I did last year as assignments:

Acrylic painting

This painting was done with acrylic paint. For this assignment, we were told to choose a portrait painting and try to imitate it. Sadly I can't remember the name of the painting or the artist at the moment :( I was pleasantly surprised by how the artwork turned out at the end, because it was my first acrylic work and I wasn't very good at painting. Of the entire painting, I am most proud of the man's shield because I think the colours blended well and it looks very much like reflecting metal. I remember spending one entire lesson (3 hours) on it :D On the other hand, I thought the man's face was too orange. I also thought I could have painted the background better because the blending wasn't well done. It was the first part that I painted, and I didn't have time to improve on it later on. What intrigued me the most about my painting is that the man looked much younger in mine as compared to the original painting. Maybe it is because of the way I drew the man, it looks less realistic as compared to the original.

Abstract Art

For this assignment, we were supposed to choose a picture and draw abstract pieces based on the original picture. Our teacher gave us a quota on the number of abstract art works we had to do so that we can make full use of our creativity. My first few pieces were mostly similar to the original, I only used different materials to copy out the picture. However, as I went on, I felt that I became more daring because there simply wasn't that many different materials to try on. I began to break the picture up into different parts and even imagine the subject of the picture in different scenarios. Overall, I think I learnt more about thinking out of the box through this assignment. On a side note, the picture on the left (<---) is my original picture. I took this picture myself sometime last year. I think I get an advantage in this exercise by using my own photo instead of using one found on the Internet because I can recall the time I took this picture. I can imagine myself taking photos of the same subject from different angles and from there create some of my abstract pieces.

Below are the abstract pieces that I did:

This piece was done with oil pastels. I like this piece a lot because the flower has more vibrant colours (the pink) while the water reflection are mostly coloured with pastel colours. This makes the subject of the picture stand out more.

This piece was the product of me imagining the subject of the photo (the flower) in another scenario -- in this case, the middle of a highway. I felt that this piece is meaningful because the original picture was taken in Botanical

Gardens. This piece kind of makes me wonder what will happen to all those flora and fauna if the area was developed into infrastructure for humans.

This was done with felt-tip markers and crayons. I feel that the background could be improved on because there are quite a lot of white spaces that weren't coloured. I think the crayons that I used were for toddlers and young kids (because I found them somewhere in my closet), so the colouring didn't turn out as well as it would had if I used crayons meant for art.

This was done on black paper with white colour pencils. I drew the flower in an imaginary lake/pond.

This was drawn entirely with colour pencils. Personally, I liked how the picture turned out because the colours blended well with each other.

After that, we had to form pairs and try to combine our two pictures together into one abstract piece. We also had to make use of the style of a particular abstract artist and use one of his/her works as reference. My partner was Hannah, whose picture was also of a plant. I couldn't remember the artist whose works Hannah and I referred to though...

This is our final artwork, done with markers (for the detailed parts) and ink (for the background). The artist that we chose distinctly uses "batik style" in her works, and we imitated her by having very detailed patterns and vibrant colours in our work. I also used ink for the first time when doing this assignment. We had to wet the paper with a wet brush before dropping ink on the paper. The wet parts were supposed to be paths for the ink to flow evenly, like in batik painting. It was tougher than it sounds because we were really afraid that the paper would tear after it gets wet. Our final artwork's background had a furry texture because we kept wetting it over and over again after it dried :D

(sorry that the formatting of the post is pretty screwed up :/)

Taiwan Memories

As part of my school's GCP program, I went to Taiwan at the end of last year. During the 18-day program, we visited schools and various tourist attractions. I can only say that Taiwan is really really beautiful :) Below are some photos that I took in Taiwan:

It's a long story. To put it short: strong wind.

The umbrella belonged to my roommate by the way. She didn't get it back :(

Can you tell that this is taken from inside a bus? :D

The sun was setting when we were on the way to dinner (I think) and I caught sight of the amazing sunset view outside the window. I like how the sky is contrastingly orange and grey :)

Pretty clouds :)

I took this picture because the tree that these pink flowers were growing on was completely branches with no leaves. It seems so magical that a bunch of small, bright pink flowers can grow on such a tree :D

This picture of flowers is taken during our visit to the Taiwan Floral Expo 2010. There were many different species of flowers in the expo, and I enjoyed being able to crouch down and take so many macro shots. The following 4 photos are also taken in the Floral Expo.

This photo is pretty grainy because I zoomed too much to take the squirrel :/

The top levels of Taipei 101 building that was not accessible to visitors.

The sky was really pretty that day :)

Notice the bright thing in the middle of the orange sky. I THINK IT'S A METEOR :D

Artist's Statement

My coursework is inspired by the theme "Childhood". To me, my childhood was when I was the happiest as my life was very carefree then. Till now, I still miss my childhood a lot and thus I hope to incorporate it into my artwork.
My primary idea for my coursework was to showcase certain aspects of childhood through photography. However, taking into account that everyone's childhood is personal and very different from one another's, I want to do a scrapbook. This allows explanations for the photographs and also gives space for a story which might link the photographs better.

You can suggest any idea that you might have on how I can further develop my idea or tell me something memorable from your childhood, whether they are what you did, saw or heard.

Feel free to comment on this post :)

Categories

So we have to have certain categories in our blog. I don't do a wide variety of art, so I won't have artworks for some of the categories. But who knows maybe I will do those kinds of artworks in the future :)

Categories

- Coursework everything and anything to do with my sec4 coursework

- 2D Art paintings, sketches etc

- 2D Design designs on paper? (eg. fashion design), graphic design (using computer)

- 3D Art sculptures etc

- 3D Design 3D forms of 2D design

- Others anything that doesn't fit into the above categories

- Others - photography this is not one of the required categories, but I thought it would be good to list photography as one category on its own because I tend to do more of it (technically it's under others :D)

A Proper Introduction

Chocolate Cauldrons are boxed chocolates that are filled with Firewhiskey and presumably shaped like cauldrons.

First mentioned in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as the chocolate that Ron Weasley ate, and an indirect cause of him getting poisoned later on. But no, Chocolate Cauldrons are not poisonous :)

I thought I would explain my blog URL, because it doesn't really make a lot of sense if you don't read Harry Potter. The Harry Potter series played an important part in my childhood and enriched my imagination greatly, which helped a lot in my art as I could let my creativity flow wildly.

This blog is created primarily because it was compulsory to, but this is a platform for me to showcase my art pieces that I have done. Through these posts I hope to learn from my past mistakes so that I can improve in my work. I'm more interested in photography (mainly because I can't really paint D:), thus I also hope that through posting some photos that I took I can improve my techniques and take better photographs in the future :)