Archive for the ‘Journal’ Category
Snippet
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
I really love fresh banana milkshake.
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Kashmir
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
Mao Mao and I met Redhead at Little India. As usual with all gatherings involving Redhead, it was a last minute arrangement. We went shopping at Mustafa before going for dinner. Mustafa is so big that I felt a bit lost inside and we only went to the supermarket section. I was a bit disoriented when we exited the building and almost walked off in the wrong direction.
Redhead declared that she wanted to eat palak paneer so as long as the restaurant we are going to has palak paneer, all is fine. I brought Mao Mao and Redhead to Kashmir where I had eaten previously with LSW, KKH and Twin. I thought it would be an enjoyable dining experience for them. And the food’s not bad too.
After we sat down, a staff came with a copper pitcher and bowl for us to wash our hands. Then we dried our hands on the towels provided by the waiter. Redhead asked with a little apprehension, “Are we expected to eat with our hands?” I pointed out that there were spoons and forks on the table so we could use them to eat. After we washed our hands, a staff passed us the menu. We spent a long time choosing our food.
Tags: drinks, indian food
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Muthu’s Curry
Monday, February 15th, 2010
Bell came to visit me on the 2nd day of Chinese New Year. We tried out a cool game that was highly reviewed by the gaming community. Well, mostly I played and Bell watched because the game is mine and I had experience with the controls. Then we watched a dvd on my pc.
It was around 8pm when we finally went for dinner. We decided to go to Muthu’s Curry for dinner. It’s a festive season and we were in a mood to indulge ourselves so we ordered quite a few dishes.
The restaurant was filled with people and the waitress who took our orders was so busy that she forgot to key them in. So we waited for quite a long time and had to ask another waitress to check on our orders. That’s when they discovered that our orders weren’t keyed in yet. The staff was very apologetic about it and a few of them, including the waitress who forgot our orders, came to apologize and told us that they have asked the kitchen to cook our orders first. They also came around later to make sure that our orders arrived.
Apart from that hiccup, dinner was quite enjoyable.
Tags: desserts, drinks, indian food
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Green beetle
Monday, February 15th, 2010
This beetle can flying into my room and gave me quite a scare. A first I wasn’t able to see what it was as it buzzed noisily round the room. It was quite big, about 2.5 cm from head to tail and had a beautiful green shine. This is the first time such a big beetle flew into my room that I was at a loss about what to do with it. With smaller beetles I could just throw them out the window but this beetle was so big that I felt it would not be a good flier. So in the end I put it on the window sill and let it flew away by itself.
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IF: Adrift
Saturday, February 13th, 2010
Illustration Friday is a weekly creative outlet/participatory art exhibit for illustrators and artists of all skill levels. It was designed to challenge participants creatively. Illustration Friday just gives a no-pressure, fun excuse to use it. No clients looking for a particular thing. No one judging the outcome of the work. It’s a chance to experiment and explore and play with visual art.
My first thought when faced with this week’s theme “Adrift” is being adrift on a raft in the sea. I felt it was predictable so I tried to think out of the box and came up with being adrift on the wind. It was only after I finished my picture, that I found out the idea isn’t so unique after all, judging from all the entries on the Illustration Friday website.
I did a quick drawing of my idea in pencil. I wasn’t in the mood to ink or colour it so it is just a pencil sketch for now. I decided to keep the idea of having an inflatable raft and tied balloons to it so it can float in the sky. I had the passengers playing cards without a care in the world, as if floating away in a raft tied with lots of balloons is just an everyday occurrence. The passengers were originally intended to be manga-like characters but I decided to change them to Englishmen in top hats to give it added quirkiness. There is just something about an expressionless well-dressed Englishman in a top hat that pushes quirkiness to the next level.
Maybe I’ll colour this one day. I quite like the idea and hope to see it in colour. But that’s for the future and won’t be anytime soon. Because right now I working on something else.
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IF: Muddy
Sunday, February 7th, 2010
Illustration Friday is a weekly creative outlet/participatory art exhibit for illustrators and artists of all skill levels. It was designed to challenge participants creatively. Illustration Friday just gives a no-pressure, fun excuse to use it. No clients looking for a particular thing. No one judging the outcome of the work. It’s a chance to experiment and explore and play with visual art.
This is an old pencil drawing from a long time ago. It was meant to be part of series about some children and their pet pig called Peggy Sue. But I never got around to completing it and only this and another drawing exist. I planned to colour them but I never did. Guess I’m subconsciously afraid of spoiling the picture as colouring is not my strong point.
Then Illustration Friday came along and I thought this drawing fits the theme. So I took out the pencil drawing and inked and coloured it.
I’m satisfied with the colouring but I felt the coloured picture seemed to lose some of the charm of the pencil drawing. I also liked the expression on the pig more on the pencil drawing than on the coloured picture.
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Snippet
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
I have a friend who is a die-hard Apply fanboy. This person irritated me very much by going “Buy Apple!” each time I mentioned that I am thinking of buying a new computer. Just the mere mention of the word “pc” seemed to set this fanboy off. Today I once again got irritated when this fanboy immediately shouted “Buy Apple!” when we were admiring a friend’s new sleek non-Apple laptop. I’m beginning to feel that this friend is not only a parrot but a pretty brainless one too.
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IF: Focused
Saturday, January 30th, 2010
This picture was for the Illustration Friday theme – Focused. It is a cool site where a one word theme will be announced every week and people can create a picture based on the theme.
When I saw this week’s theme, I thought I had to skip it again. I had no idea what to draw. I played around with a few ideas in my mind but they seemed rather boring. Eventually I decided to do a light-hearted approached to the theme. Nothing earth-shattering but maybe a different interpretation of the theme.
This picture was done in 3 layers in photoshop; 1 for needle and thread, 1 for fingers and 1 for the face. I didn’t do a rough sketch like I did for What a big carrot! I roughly knew what I wanted and also didn’t want to spend too much time on the picture. So I just coloured in straight. I did the needle first, then the thread, fingers and finally the face. Then I blurred face so there would be some depth to the picture. I also darkened it a little so it won’t steal the spotlight from the needle and thread.
I feel that I am finally getting the hang of working with colours. I encountered less frustrations while working on this picture. This drawing style seems to suit me quite well and it is something that seems to come more naturally than other methods. What remains is to hone and perfect the craft.
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