No biggie! I have been doodling in the name of Inktober 2020, despite the dispute, the copyright infringement, the arguments, the fight on Youtube and the division among the artists community. These are small little illustrations in ink using brush pens, fountain pens and copic markers. Here are my results:

 

The box set was acquired from a China online shopping website for about SGD11, or est. USD8 or slightly lesser, not including the shipping charges. Pebeo is a French company that has been producing and manufacturing art materials and tools since 1919, according to their website. I have used their gouache and watercolour in the past and most recently, the mentioned watercolour box set that contains 12 hues, namely: Primary Lemon Yellow, Cadmium Yellow Pale, Primary Red Cadmium, Alizarin Crimson, Primary Phthalo Blue, Cobalt Blue, Permanent Green, Earth Green, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, and Ivory Black. As you can see from the scanned colour chart, the pigments are quite light and dry chalky, whilst some pigments are slightly more opaque than others.



The lack of colour saturation in the pigments is an indication that these watercolours are student grade and they are not going to do your painting any good if you are looking for colour saturation, light fastness and better colour transitions.

However, the aluminium box is quite well made and if you do not like the pigments, you can swap out the half pans to be replaced by better pigments. You may also purchase empty half or full pans so you could squeeze fresh paints from tubes and bring out for your plein air session.



But I am not going to dismiss these pigments totally. I think it would still be useful to apply these watercolours on practice sketches or roughs. So I chose 2 pages from my sketchbook to try out these paints. Here are the results.



In general, my experience with these pigments is satisfactory. It took a while to coax the pigments and it also took a few glazed layers to add to the saturation level desired. Just be wary that too many glazed layers would hide your inked lines partially. Adding a light wash over your inked lines is not a problem since the pigments are relatively light. Unless you mind your inked lines being covered by the somewhat chalky and opaque pigments, these Pebeo paints still work. If you are the sort who paints with greys mostly, these give relatively nice greys too.

 

These pigments are not pricey so you cannot expect too much from them. Because these are not pricey, you can use them for sketches, adding a general basic wash over your pencil drawings or roughs and etc. I don't see how they are as bad as described by some reviews.



From these sketches, you can find the different greys I have mixed with the basic 12 half pans. I can vary their temperatures easily and getting them to complement each other. Quality pigments does play an important part in the drawing and painting process, but cheaper student grade paints works the same if you can work around the problems.

 

I have only printed my business cards a few times in my entire career as an artist, there was a period of more than 10 years I went about doing my business with one. However, in preparation for the USK Symposium 2016 in Manchester, and in anticipation of meeting up with very cool sketcher friends, I have decided to print something to give away this time, especially for those participants who signed up for my workshop. I want everyone to walk away happy. :D So for the first time, I printed postcards with my drawings, sketches and paintings. A total of 5 designs. I also reprinted my name cards as well. I will be waiting for my mini-cards from MOO, these would be arriving end of June, hopefully not later because I will be heading to UK in the second week of July. How exciting.

The print quality is not so bad. In fact I really like the one of the shophouses in sepia tone. I printed these at Bras Basah, at a shop named Misterprint. Comparatively the price is slightly higher than some other printing shops elsewhere, but I quite like their service and print quality. Until I find another better I would probably stick to this one for the time being, for the convenience of its locale and how the shop was run by nice ladies, I'm just kidding. Well, the lady who served me with my print job even went all out to redo my artwork for my rubber stamp design. I suck in preparing stuff for production since this was my first in making a rubber stamp. I knew some places that will simply reject your stuff if it doesn't work for printing.

Everyone whom I know has went to Bali not once but a couple of times, and came back to tell me the tales. In 2002, a bomb went off in the tourist district of Kuta, Bali, killing at least 200 people. However this event has not deterred many going back to the exotic island which is located between Java to the west and Lombok to the east. I have wanted to visit Bali for a long time ever since I saw beautiful paintings of Bali done by many local artists and painters. My opportunity came when a friend's friend wanted to bring us around. So we packed for the weekends and headed out for the island.

[caption id="attachment_2218" align="alignnone" width="584"] Temple structure in Ubud downtown[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_2219" align="alignnone" width="584"] A probable shrine located outside a smaller temple near Ubud's downtown market place.[/caption]

In the short span of 2 days, we visited Ubud, Kuta, Sanur,and Island Lembonga. A driver brought us around and introduced us to many local delights and Traditional Balinese Dance performances. We managed to catch 2 shows, a Barong and a Kecak dance. Most importantly we tasted the infamous roasted pork and crispy duck.


[caption id="attachment_2220" align="alignnone" width="584"] Temple structure - a roofed doorway leading to the inner court[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_2221" align="alignnone" width="584"] Hotel lobby for breakfast and watching a Barong dance performance[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_2222" align="alignnone" width="584"] On board Bali Hai II and visiting Monkey Forest in Ubud.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_2223" align="alignnone" width="584"] Up on Lembongan Island.[/caption]

From Wikipedia: "Balinese culture was strongly influenced by Indian, Chinese, and particularly Hindu culture, beginning around the 1st century AD. The name Bali dwipa ("Bali island") has been discovered from various inscriptions, including the Blanjong pillar inscription written by Sri Kesari Warmadewa in 914 AD and mentioning "Walidwipa". It was during this time that the complex irrigation system subak was developed to grow rice. Some religious and cultural traditions still in existence today can be traced back to this period. The Hindu Majapahit Empire (1293–1520 AD) on eastern Java founded a Balinese colony in 1343. When the empire declined, there was an exodus of intellectuals, artists, priests, and musicians from Java to Bali in the 15th century."

We would return for more.

It has been 2 months since I got my iPad, that has been a new addition to my sketching tools. However it doesn't replace my pens and inks and watercolors and sketchbooks. Its only when I want to carry as little as possible, I would use my iPad as my sketchpad.

These are sketches done while chilling in DOME Cafe at Parkway Parade (a neighborhood shopping mall), while waiting for my wife to complete her nails routine. Each gestural sketch took roughly 30s to complete. When I finished a 'sheet' i would paint it. Then I started another sheet. Since it is quite hard to get details in, sketching with the stylus is a joy as I would focus on just the gestures and the general shapes of the figures.

iPad & Stylus with Procreate.

Did some sketches and cartoons from the trip we made to Paris. Here are some cartoons I did when we were resting in the hotel room, while reflecting on our visits to the various touristic locations in the city.

Our first bad experience in Paris was while we were trying to buy sausages and fries from a hot dog stand under the Eiffel Tower. I have a feeling they were taking advantage of tourists. Their attitudes left a bad taste in our visit to this "romantic" city.

[caption id="attachment_2102" align="alignnone" width="561" caption="Hot Dog Stand"][/caption]



The available channels in English are so limited in the hotel we ended up watching the Japanese NHK World Channel every night. It was funny because we also ended up learning to speak Japanese from the programs.



The above was the latest exhibit at the Louvre. It was a restored painting by Leonardo da Vinci named Saint Mary Anne. I have to pay a little more apart from paying the entrance fee to see this exhibit. It was amazing to see the original sketches made by Leonardo before he painted the final painting, which was left uncompleted.



The highlight of my visit to Paris was to visit Crumb's show at the Museum of Modern Art which was just 8 mins walk from the hotel where I stayed. Looking at the original drawings and published work, and the documentary allowed me to take a closer glimpse to Crumb's life and his obsession for cross hatchings.


In another museum, Petit Musee, I got to see Monet's setup while he was painting outdoors, or Plein Air.

Always feels nostalgic about this location, where I grew up. I used to walk this streets to my school which was only 15 minutes away by walking. I would choose a different route to walk everyday, and this was one of them. I love the shophouses until they were refurbished and leased to pubs and offices. Now that these refurbished buildings are getting "old", I came back to sketch them again.

Breakfast - I consider the most important meal for a regular Singaporean - me too and I would go for Chinese whenever I could. If I could get hold of dim sum I would go for it all the time. My favorites - lotus leaf glutinous rice (shown in the sketch), and siew mai, washed down with coffee. Normally I would have 2 soft boiled eggs or once in a while, Macdonalds breakfast - I would order Sausage McGriddle with Eggs. :D — at Food Republic At Vivo City.

[caption id="attachment_2020" align="alignnone" width="1514" caption="Dim Sum Breakfast"][/caption]

I was with Marvin, Woon Lam and Zhu Hong at Blair Road for some painting. I painted with acrylic on location for the first time. Was a little nervous at first but I worked a little faster later when the sun appeared over head. Even so I stayed in the sun for about half an hour bf I decided to pack up and moved into the shade. I joined the rest of them on the other side in the shade and sketched 4 other drawings. In the evening when we parted I hung out in Funan where I would wait for my wife to finish her meeting in the parliament house. I settled in TCC for a Frappe and sketched a couple of drawings of the cafe and customers. Really loved the ambience.

[caption id="attachment_1989" align="alignnone" width="1400" caption="TCC @ Funan Center"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1990" align="alignnone" width="584" caption="TCC @ Funan Center"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1991" align="alignnone" width="927" caption="TCC @ Funan Center"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1992" align="alignnone" width="650" caption="Blair Road WIP in Acrylic paint"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1993" align="alignnone" width="584" caption="Blair Road with Hero Pen"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1994" align="alignnone" width="598" caption="Blair Road - 5 Foot Corridor"][/caption]