Art Boot Camp

I made my second trip to Art Boot Camp today!!  Art Boot Camp is an art enrichment school, primarily for kids but also for adults.  We signed up for a crash course of sorts via Groupon, which included 2 two-hour lessons, one on charcoal, and one on acrylic painting.  The crash course is catered to working adults, so classes are held 7-9pm on Thur/Fri, or on Saturday.

If you've never really done art before, and you're a bit of a perfectionist, then this can be quite a nerve-wrecking experience!  Our first lesson 2 weeks ago was on charcoal drawing.  We started with a very dauntingly blank piece of paper and had to turn it into one of the provided images within the span of 2 hours. I smartly chose flowers in a vase, only to discover about halfway through that it was torturously hard, and had to give up on some of the details.  The bf was somewhat smarter and chose geometric shapes, which must have been much easier, but kinda boring.

The very blank start.

About 3/4 way through, but without the background.

Frantically trying to finish up the picture with about 10 minutes to spare.

Our finished products!!

Our instructors were really friendly and kept emphasizing that this was for fun and not to stress out over details or how well we were drawing.  Just learn some techniques of lighting, shading, shapes and perspective.  There was another pair next to us who were doing acrylic painting, and they sounded like they were having a blast, making fun of each others' paintings every few minutes hehe.  

Anyway.  I think charcoal is really tiring.  You can't rest your hand on the paper or everything will smudge, so you spend about 2 hours with your hand raised above the table, like when you're a kid and your mum tells you not to put your elbows on the table.  But harder.  Because drawing is a million times harder than shoveling food into your mouth.  Nevertheless, I think the picture turned out quite well!  Am pretty satisfied with the result, but had a shoulder ache for the rest of the weekend.

This week we did acrylic painting, which was a complete disaster!  I never realised how incapable I was of determining what color something was until I tried painting for the first time since P4.  So because I was so stressed about botching my colors the whole time, there's no halfway-point photo haha.

Before

After

Finished =D

If I were smart, I would have brought a picture of Mt Fuji to paint, and thoroughly studied it beforehand.  But I'm absent-minded like that.  Our instructors today were also really friendly and patient because we went about 25 minutes overtime, but they still helped us with mixing colours and figuring out how to blend different shades together.  My instructor was from LaSalle!  Which was kind of intimidating, and sometimes she looked like she was itching to take over haha, but mostly she helped me identify colours in the original picture then taught me how to get that colour using just a mixture of the primary colours + black and white.  Thank you muchly friendly instructors, I'm sorry I can't acknowledge you by name because I'm terrible with names!

In any case, whatever your skill level or motivation for art, you're guaranteed to bring back an artistically colourful piece of work to display in your room, or maybe offload to a family member ^_^.  I liked how classes are convenient for those of us who are working, and would definitely consider taking more classes with Art Boot Camp in future!

Singapore Night Festival 2012

Hello Singapore!  I'm finally back after spending 4 years in the US at college, so it's time to re-discover my hometown :).

I have nothing to do after work/on weekends, and my friends and I would just sit around and complain that Singapore is boring.  So we went to find some adventure.  Here goes:

First up:  NIGHT FESTIVAL 2012

Held on August 24, 25, 31 and September 1, the annual Night Festival organized by the National Heritage Board was a carnival of colours, lights, art and music.  The whole Bras Basah area was turned into a performance ground for acts such as Fuerzabruta and Home Made, while the Singapore Art Museum and National Museum of Singapore housed various interactive art installations.

We came geared up for the festive atmosphere with our own glowing necklaces called "Fairy Berries"!  Mine's not lighted up in the picture because they blink on and off, and getting everyone's on at the same time was quite a task (>_<)".

We first caught Fuerzabruta: Corredoras, where acrobats "ran" horizontally across a curtain of foil, to almost tribal music.  I'm not much of a music or performing arts person, but even if I didn't take away any deep message from this, it was visually stunning and entertaining.

This was supposed to have been followed by Fuerzabruta: Mylar, performed on a transparent platform suspended above the audience, where nymph-like dancers frolick in a pool of water on the platform, creating a shimmery and mesmerizing lighting effect.  However it was delayed by more than half an hour, during which a local band Shelves did a few numbers.  Not to diss local talent, but they were largely off-tune and off-pitch, and the audience heaved a great sigh of relief when they finally left the stage.  Not wanting to endure more loud, off-key blaring, we escaped to SAM and SAM 8Q to check out the various light displays:

 The gorgeous facade of SAM.  The light show was accompanied by low, humming, rather zen music, but because my digicam was not designed for such bass, I shall not post a video with the torturous sound quality.

Distorted Forest's sort-of shadow puppets!  It was one of the more eye-catching displays I've seen, without being flashy.  The lights move on tracks, giving the sculptures a swaying, organic feel.

Inside the chapel with yet another light installation, Temple of Hope: Forest of Eyes.  It was gorgeous, intricately-cut, and disturbingly philosophical, with images of people having their innards pulled out.  But much of the philosophy was lost on me due to (perhaps deliberately) very ungrammatical phrases.  Example below.

I found that most of them made more sense when spoken with a strong Singlish accent.

EYEBALLZ!!  The front of SAM 8Q, which housed the more interactive installations.

5QU1D was the highlight of my night.  No one could understand why I was so enthused by this hulk of plastic lighted up in psychedelic colours.  Apparently it's supposed to be more colorful when it has more friends, but the room was packed so maybe the issue was moot.

Grow a Garden in the Dark was crazy awesome, because black lights and glowing origami can be nothing but awesome.  There was a booth in the room next door where you could fold your own origami and add to the forest if you wanted!

Deanna puts her vocal chords to the test at the Reactive Wall, or the Scream-meter, as I shall hereby call it.  She was preceded and proceeded by little 4-year-olds with more lung capacity than a stadium of football fans, so suffice to say her results on the wall were mediocre.

We returned to the SMU Green just in time to catch the last performance of Mylar, which was initially a bit of a head-scratcher, but eventually morphed into a rather spectacular display of lights, water, and the human form.  Part of the dance featured scantily-dressed girls just sort of writhing around in the water in an almost erotic way... I know it's art, and I'm fine with any amount of nudity and sexual expression so long as there's a purpose/statement to it, but this one kind of didn't.  The rest was much more fun and whimsical, starting off with a girl walking around the large platform, and having the pool of water follow her around as she danced.  This was interspersed with fellow performers diving across the pool like dolphins to create a fast-paced and dynamic light show.

We ended off at the National Museum of Singapore which featured Scaling the Dome, a fun perspective chalk drawing that everyone lined up to take pictures on.  Someone looks a little too happy to be falling off the top of a building (^_^)".

Overall a very fun way to spend a Saturday night!  Especially when interspersed with lots of bubble tea, and ending with a prata supper at Serangoon Gardens.  The Night Festival has been going on since 2008, but that was the year I left for college, so this is my first time catching it.  Definitely worth a revisit in future years.

Next week:  A visit to the HortPark!