Spring Day

 

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 always enjoyable. 

I am bragging. But I really think I'm good at colour mixing (not like superb good but good haha). It might be because I did do my own colour study via Youtube tutorials and also because I have been painting for awhile now. I don't know but every time I colour mix, it gives me a confidence boost haha. Because of that, I received numerous praises from my fellow classmates and teacher on how similar my painting is to my reference photo! 

me at my last art class

Everything was going really well until the part where the orange flower blends into the stems. Long story short... Because I painted the orange tulip and the stems separately, they couldn't blend. I ended up gesso-ing that entire portion and repainting it. It was a nightmare, but a lesson well learnt. 

Fast forward to few weeks after my last art class, I finally completed the painting and I'm so proud! My art teacher featured my artwork on his website which was already considered a huge accomplishment for me. Little did I know that he would remember me few months later, and invite me to have my artwork displayed at the NAFA Gallery! 


So here she is, at the NAFA Gallery :') 

It has been over 2 weeks since Spring Day has been there but I still find it unbelievable. I started practicing art more consistently at the end of 2021 because I wanted to stop whining about how bad I am in art. Decided to sign up for art classes to help me with my practice, like honestly I wasn't expecting anything much, but now my artwork is being displayed in a gallery at Singapore's first art institution. 

It's crazy how small decisions and actions can lead to big achievements. 

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