maureen's art diary

  Spring Day is my last assignment from art school where we needed to paint from a reference photo provided by my art teacher. I remembered the series of photos he gave us to choose from, and I chose the most colourful, and supposedly the most difficult photo in the selection. I really like colourful things which is really the only reason why I chose this particular one to paint.  I remembered how much I struggled to start this painting during class. I had sore eyes and was exhausted from work. I also couldn't mix the right purple which was frustrating. I ended up only painting a few strokes of the purple tulip before surrendering and going home.  Few days later I decided to start from the top left hand corner, and work on the blurry background instead. It went SO WELL. I clearly remembered how excited and happy I was with how it turned out and things just panned out rather smoothly from there onwards.  I spent almost every night working on this painting and it was a...

 I think one of the key many reasons why I love painting is that it easily puts me in a flow state. "The mind’s usual chatter begins to fade away, placing us in a non-distracted zone. The feelings that would consume you under normal circumstances (inhibition, hunger, fatigue, or aches and pains) melt away, and all that matters is your dedication to your craft. If the activity at hand happens to be something we enjoy and we’re good at, we achieve a flow mental state — and it can leave us feeling ecstatic, motivated and fulfilled.” -  Source It doesn’t always happen but I love it when it does because it just makes me feel peaceful and at ease. It was last month end I was starting to feel stress with work. So I deliberately chose to start this detailed painting knowing that it will keep my mind off work and thus the stress off me. I set an alarm for myself to get back to work and was able to concentrate and work better after. I managed to finish all my work on time. But if I didn...

Remembering how I was literally shaking with joy the night my art teacher and classmates praised me for my drapery. How proud I was when they said my artwork is perfect and even ‘crazy’ because it looks better than the my reference photo printout. How unbelievable it felt when the bus driver got off his bus to stop me because he wanted to buy my painting… And then realising that getting a good performance rating at work does not bring me as much joy. Nope, not even close. Although the type of joy feels different, or less, I am still exceptionally happy and proud of achieving my good performance rating at work because whilst doing well at work, I still managed to live my life.  My art teacher once mentioned that ‘striving for work life balance’ is bullshit, and I didn’t quite get what he meant at that point. But now I think I do. When you strive for something, it means you’re trying to achieve it. Work life balance shouldn’t be something we try to achieve but it should simply be the...

Completed my monochrome still life oil painting yesterday which is my first painting from my Western Painting class in NAFA. Here is a recap of what I've learned and my thoughts.  This is our still life setup. On social media, I always see art students gather around with their easel and drawing the subject from various angles. Being able to be in that situation itself was so fun for me.  We first learned how to mix our own black using burnt umber, alizarin crimson and prussian blue. Not to brag but I think I did really well and I managed to get a black quite quickly, but that's because I did quite a lot of colour theory self-study on my own before I started art school. Then we had to fill our canvas with 50% tone of black...  During this stage I got impatient because the canvas was so big and the brush you see in the photo was the biggest brush I had with me. We used a (small) cloth to achieve a smoother background and again I struggled with it. We were supposed...

Yesterday night, I went for my second class at NAFA (Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts) and left feeling extremely inspired and happy. I posted a story on my Instagram talking about how happy and proud I felt last night, after receiving countless amounts of praises from my art teacher and classmates on my drapery painting. It felt almost surreal when my teacher said he wanted to take a photo of my painting, having everyone gathering around, praising and applauding my artwork.     Me being an overthinker, I started wondering why this could make me that happy and I think it's because with art, I've always felt like I'm not good enough. In fact when I received my first praise of the night, my first response was, ' really? '. #selfdoubt  To be honest that wasn't the first time I'm painting drapery. The first time I attempted drapery was the background of my first oil painting, and as you can see, it's not very good. I really didn't know how to go about painti...

Mandatory, maybe kinda boring, background story of how my art journey begun. Ever since I was young I have always enjoyed doing art. Drawing, painting, any sort of arts & crafts… I had files filled with drawings of cartoon characters, my favourite TV show was Art Attack, and I was forever drawing on my textbooks and school desks. My dad recently asked me, ‘when did my daughter become an artist, a painter?’. I replied, ‘don’t know’. In which he responded, ‘isn’t it since young?’. After I graduated from secondary school, I completed stopped doing any kinds of art apart from drawing on my lecture slides. Until a couple of years back, I read ‘A Return To Love’ by Marianna Williamson. “I think the reason people don’t have hobbies today as much as they did in the past generations, is because we can’t bear to do anything we’re not fabulous at”. – Marianna Williamson. Bro this quote hit me, HARD. I literally can’t find this quote anywhere on the internet so I guess it didn’t impact anyone ...