oils!

oil painting assignment in sec 3! ^^ seeing this just reminds me of the europe trip since we were doing this before and after it :D we were asked to pick an art movement and use techniques from that movement to paint something related to nanyang. i chose post-impressionism, and was inspired by georges seurat's painting style of pointillism to complete this painting ^^

If you can tell, I painted a scene that you would see if you stood at the midpoint of the 2nd floor classroom block corridor, looking out past the flags, to the admin block. i think the thing that stood out the most for me was the presence of the flags. The combination of a school flag and a national flag is like a trigger that immediately tells you its a school. Also, the first thing that has always caught my eye about ny's appearance was the light red bricks that make it. Also, this is a view from the classroom block, a view that most students will see of nanyang. I wanted to show that this scene was from a student's point of view instead of just another glamourous shot to advertise nanyang or something. Another thing I added to reinforce this point was a girl sitting on the floor, sketching. Since sketching or observational drawing usually requires some form of peacefulness, I added her in to create a sense of tranquility in the picture, and to show how she feels right at home in nanyang, as it would not have been possible to be so peaceful in uncomfortable surroundings. A human presence also seems to make the picture seem more "real", as opposed to just a shot of a building. It humanises the picture and shows that nanyang is not just a building, it is a home with living breathing people inside it.

For me, this work is important because I have never really been confident in my artistic skills and this assignment showed me that if i put my mind to it, something like an oil on canvas painting is actually possible of me. Through this painting, I realised that i really like painting, or more precisely, the tranquil feeling you get just sitting there and dabbing blots of paint on a canvas. As far as this painting is concerned I feel that I could have done a lot better with regards to the painting technique. Pointillism was supposed to be dots of pure colour placed next to each other such that the eye blends them together from afar. But i sort of mushed up the colours together instead of neatly dotting them next to each other thus not really capturing the point of pointillism.