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This is my 1st ever portrait. PHEW!!! It’s tough, everything about it, the skin tone, the expression etc..

This is a portrait of my nephew, Gabriel, from my 2nd youngest brother, Julian and Nicole, who are residing in Shanghai currently. Gabby is now almost 6 years old. I came about this photo of his on Facebook, posted by his mom. It immediately caught my attention. The composition of the whole image is just too good to not paint it, especially with the franggipanni flowers on each ear, too cute!

This is how I started on the sketch. I used the grid system. I used a tracing paper and draw out a 1″x 1″ grid and put it against the reference photo, which I enlarged it to A4 size. Then proceed to draw the grind very lightly with a ‘H’ graphite pencil on the drawing paper, the grind size on

This is a tedious painting because it’s painted on drafting linen,

a type of paper that architects use to print out plans. I got this from my husband, who is an architect (lucky me!)

Why linen paper? Well, I’m being ambitious, wanna try coloured pencil on canvas, how about that? So dear hubby said, why not practice on linen paper first? (So sweet of him) So here goes my “experimental” piece. Not too bad, I say!

Instead of using Derwent cp, this time I used solely Faber-Castell polychromos. Their cp colours are super vibrant and are oil based. The texture is creamier and  have a slight gloss finish look. And another thing that I like about FC is that they don’t easily break.

I used measuring cups to draw the circle, yup! the measuring cup for baking (another hobby of mine) as they have different sizes.

 Ms. Pearly, what a befitting name for this horse.

I took the picture of her in her stable before she was groomed.  What captured my fancy is her playful character, she looks so adorable in a mess.

This is how I start my work.

It will usually takes me around 2 days to sit in front of a chosen blank drawing paper. Why 2 days? That is because I am at lost as to where to begin. I will just sit in front of my work desk and stare at the reference picture and imagine the sketches in my head. Once I got tired of staring, I start sketching the outline, always a lot of erasing, re-sketch and so forth.

Now, for cp painting on black paper, I have to use the negative effect. Means that I have to layer the whites before I actually use the intended colours. So you see, I have

Finally, my teddy bear is complete! I thought  drawing the main subject (teddy-bear, cushion and the rattan) is tough, but it’s the background that stumped me!Why this background? Looks pretty sad, isn’t it? Well, the subject is ‘Forgotten’. This bear belongs to my daughter who is now 17. So you guess it, it’s no longer her cuddly toy. ‘He’ was chuck away, left on the sofa in her room, which she hardly gives a glance. I have given away most of her toys, barbies for example. Except for this, me, the mom, just could not bear to give ‘him’ away.  To me, it’s sentimental value is too great. It holds lots of sweet memories of my daughter when she was a sweet innocent child. It also reminds me of how time flies.

I will keep it, perhaps, one day, pass it down to her kids. She may

What define an artist?

I really can’t give a definite answer. I believe every artist sees things/objects differently.

My ultimate dream is to have my very own exhibition. Especially colour pencils media, since I’ve never seen a  art, solely on cp, in Malaysia. I want to show that this media is at par with those of the norm such as water colour, acrylic etc. I’ve seen deviant art using cp, on a very huge scale, of course, it is done by a professional artist. So it’s not impossible to do deviant, abstract, modern art using cp, but one definitely needs tonnes of cp!!

We had an artist friend, who is also a freelance curator, who came over for a drink one night and I asked his opinion on me holding a exhibition. He said I need at least 15- 20 pieces of complete work and better still

I love how my paintings look in print,

was afraid the print will show all my defects or mistakes but it turned out good. All thanks to hubby and his associate who scanned it on high resolutions.

Hope to one day combine it all and turn it into my own personal collection in print.

What made me want to paint rock pebbles?

Funny, when you see it at a glance, they just look so dull and grey, but soak them in water, you see their real colours.
It’s a challenge for me to get the right colour using colour pencils as they are not like water or oil paint where you can blend them before you paint it.

You see, on  a black paper it’s hard to use black. In order to make the black popped out, I’ve used ‘ink blue’ as base then only I use the black or the green.

It was fun watching the colour comes to life. I’m very very satisfied with this painting as this is my 1st on this subject. More to come, on pebbles, with more varieties of colours.

My collections.

Looks a lot but for me, it’s still not enough. Each pencil has it’s own distinguish character.

But to get my ‘dream’ set is way over my budget at the moment. One day…..

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This IS difficult!!

This idea was thrown to me by Wendy from the quaint little bookshop where I rent all my reads. When I told her that I’ve started to paint, she suggested why not do something beneficial with my work, with purpose.

She was reading this book by a guy in USA who started this ‘Wine to Water’ project, where this organisation provides free filters for households & wells in war-torn country such as Afghanistan, Africa etc. Obviously by doing so, they need people to donate $ in order to churn out & distributes the filters. She suggested that I paint something relating to that & put it for sale, the $ is up to me to decide how much I would like to contribute to this purpose.

So I surfed their website and found some pictures for references. The original picture was of 2 kids

Now, this is an interesting painting because ‘Spike’ is my baby.

He’s an English bulldog that we got from Bangkok, Thailand 4 yrs ago. Hubby was pestering me for painting of his favourite ‘son’.

That’s a tough subject, to paint a dog? at my level? not really confident but heck, why not, the most I could just tear it off if it doesn’t look like a dog.

Took me 5 days to complete, at every stage I was, ahem!.., amazed that I could do it. The colouring was ok but the worse part was the individual hair details that got me all tensed up. I’ve learned a lot of this technique through You Tube cp tutorials, it helps! Needless to say, I was & still very proud that I achieved the likeness of dear Spike.