art activities upcoming

link to MIA website  http://www.mia.edu.my

portraiture of the love of my life~ SONS

My first project of family watercolor portraiture will be a triptych of Jon, Julian, Justin when they were all individually 3-4 yrs old.

The initial drafts and first layers of backgrounds have been laid last night …

Today I chose to finish Julian first because his pose was in bare skin , thus I thought easier for me to complete.

I get so nostalgic just looking at the baby photos of my darlings….they were so photogenic and adorable , now looking back I realized that even then their characteristics were so apparent in the way that they posed.

Jon, my Mr Charmer,

Julian, my Sportman ,

Justin, my Mr StrongMan

Anyway, I had thought to put the first drafts aside to slowly work at them over the weekend but today I was in an artistic mood.

Even in class, I stayed back to finish my art piece till 3pm …

End June, it will be 4 months since I started art classes at MIA centre….how time flies.

I have very quickly learnt that in art, when the mood to create comes along….to go with the flow and let the feelings guide me along.

And so it was that I actually finished Julian's portrait in one sitting…..WOW, from someone who tends to overcook my watercolors, I have become very efficient indeed!

In the old ways , it would take me an estimated 3 - 4 days but I have learnt to curb my propensity to edit and over correct the shades.

Nowadays, I just give in to the spontaneity and I guess it helps that I quickly got Julian's skin color right from the first dab . There's hope for me to become an artist? Hahaha.

Painting Julian radiates such warm pleasure and joy ….

11.5" x 15.5" on 200 gms cold press

Title: JULIAN, 4 yr old MR SPORTY

© michellechoong_khoo

I think I managed to capture his essense, his little confident muscular pose and I like enlarging Julian's eyes just a wee bit to better reflect his sparkling cheekiness~

I cant wait to complete my portraits of little Jon and little Justin next~~~~

to see all 3 panels together, link 1st triptych

lesson 12~ attempting close up shots of Flowers

Today was an exercise to do close ups of flowers and we were told to bring photos of our subjects for referencing~

When Andrea told me the night before that she will be bringing 3 prepared sketches of lotus (hahaha, she chose some of my EOS debut shots of the lotus blooms around my house…which I had also thought was a good option because of the detailed light and dark shadings)….I said I will bring my camera to snap Ms Shia's facial reactions to Andrea's super efficiency!!

This morning, true enough Ms Shia's look was worthy to be featured onto "candid camera" la but alas I forgot to pack my camera….tsk tsk ;(

Anyhow, seeing how we are so well prepared…we plunged into our work very quickly…

It was an exercise of super wet glazing and we had to be rather quick to make dabs of contrast on alternate petals while the paper was still damp….

aaaargh definitely ~ given the 2 hours we were there….it was not easy to paint a rose!

I came home very dissatisfied with my rose attempt~

And today being Vesak Day and a public holiday, I decided to give it another go since Andrea was so kind to give me a piece of her pre-traced lotus outline for practise , bless her …our Ms Super Efficient Ms Boult ;)))

Aiya, I dont think I will likely pursue flora and fauna ….. not my forte and certainly not my passion.

But it's an exercise to train one's eye to look closely for the light vs dark spots so as to create a map when painting watercolors~

I am happier with my background but I think I overcooked my lotus colors….err, not a work that I will hang on my walls!

Yup, have to work on more flowers again soon~

Fascination eyes ~

The Delsey ad with its model in dramatic black against a bold red background inspired me to try this composition:

a huge ad in lightedbox with admirers looking on~

The concept was for the model to be in black and white and his eyes to be the focal point ~ preferably in amber like those of a leopard's!

The initial was nice but wasnt arrestingly bold….so I added more burnt sienna with a tad of lemon yellow but it clashed with the model's skin tone~

In the end, I had to wash off the eyebrows and tone down the brown shades to stay more true to shades of payne's grey.

And I find that it helps to emphasize the iris by drawing lines with 4H or F graphites…likewise for the eyebrows!

My model's face was finally done after 4 days of tweaking and re-tweaking…..which as my art teacher Ms Shia notes is my main problem, I tend to over cook my watercolors…..

But actually I'm happy with the effect of my main subject being very very dramatic for this piece! I dont think I would do it any differently if I have to do it again.

In fact, I want to make the back drop even more dynamic bold but I will take Ms Shia's advise to let my foreground audience be very muted by attempting faint vague outlines. ;D

Lesson 7: more wet on dry, wet on wet

"Water colour is a medium that takes great skill to control, yet appears to be free of control. Painting in watercolor requires a disciplined approach that at the same time does not stiffen the results. The course offers participants the basic techniques, to how they can be used to paint wide variety of subject."
The above description on MIA brochure couldnt be more true.


Handling the brushes, learning how to control the water, the amount of color, understanding about pigments and the flow of the watercolors onto the different textures of paper is not as easy as it looks….for me at least with that many years of never holding any brushes in my hands, that is!
Inspired by my uw photos of my best dive buddy~aka as Eddie my hubby…I attempted to do some monochromatic flat washes of the blue ocean and a dash of contrasting graded washes…..hahaha, goodness me….my efforts were blotchy and messy is the key operative word of the day !!!

Though armed with many new supplies e.g easel, mounting board, more brushes… I nevertheless had an enthusiastic afternoon as I tried tackling more exercises on wet on dry, wet on wet and even some stroke practises (ooooh, this is even harder than the the attempts on flat and graded washes….hahahah, it makes me laugh to see my ghastly trials ~
But hey laughter is after all the best medicine to replace all the other awful happenings around the world….earthquakes, volcano eruptions, airflights in chaos…what on earth is happening to our blue planet~ sigh.
I'd rather be doing blotchy art than reading the news.

So yess, ART cheers me up plenty ….I'm having so much fun with my adult lessons and I'm so glad I found

Ms Shia at MIA ART CENTRE.

Plus it was even more exciting when I finally got around to organize my own private art space at home.

Life is simple, Life is Good