[Assignment 1] 'What's Your Square?' - Cutting3

Before this, I did the easier version of the cutout because Ms. Lisa wants to have a look at one of them first :P

I could not escape from the fact that I need to do the difficult version too. So, armed with my precision knife and my maxed willpower, I started cutting the really tiny pieces out. I feel like a surgeon.

Let the surgery... I mean, cutout begin!

I had to hold the knife closer to its blade.

I stuck the small pieces right after I finish cutting it, so that it would not go missing afterwards.

A close up shot of the delicate pieces.

It's almost done...

It's done!

If the previous cutout was a slap in the face, then this one was a nuclear explosion in your brain. The pieces was so small that I could not really hold it with two fingers. Sometimes I had to stab it with my knife, spread the glue all over it with a ruler. The end result was quite messy when viewed closely, but from afar, it still looked pretty decent :)

[Assignment 1] 'What's Your Square?' - Cutting2

I started tracing the cutout from my sketchbook to the blue paper, which was not exactly as accurate as I expected. The gaps and lines between were wider, so I had to erase certain parts and make corrections. It would not be as nice if the pylon wires were too thick.

Tracing on blue paper, which was going fine so far.

It'll be a miracle if I could really manage this.

So I started the cutting after the tracing were done. It was around 7 pm then. The difficult part was that I made some parts so small that I had to handle it very delicately, turn my fan speed to 1 so that the pieces were not blown away. They were just slightly larger than the point of a needle, and I had to be very careful and patient.

I did not apply glue on them yet as I needed to confirm the position of each piece.

This is the remaining portion, which I would be using too.

The thin wires were very fragile. If I broke it by accident, I would have to redo it again. Using a precision knife was not as easy as I thought. It was great that it was sharper than a penknife, but I still had to pinpoint where I wanted to cut.

At this time, it was already 12.30 am and I was still cutting. I probably looked like this:

I wanted to stop, but I could not do so, because the pieces are so small. If I mixed them together, I could not tell them apart. If I left it on my work table, it would disappear the next morning, blown away by the wind or kidnapped by some insect.

And so I continued working...

And working...

And working....

And work... ing...

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THE FINAL WORK! YAY!

By this time, I had no energy left in me, so I...

[Assignment 1] 'What's Your Square'? - Cutting1

I actually spent more than 5 hours planning out the designs for two electric pylons, especially the second one, which nearly made me cross eye for the rest of the day.

The color choice for this design is white and light blue. With these two colors, it would give a sense of serendipity and calmness on the overall result.

The problem now was to redraw the whole thing on blue paper, which would really be a hassle since size and proportion took me too much time to do. So I thought of a really good idea.

The sketches above were drawn in a sketchbook, and I resorted to cutting them out directly and trace them out on blue paper.

This one started out quite okay, until one part of the 'wire' snapped off by accident.

This stole 4 hours of my golden life.

My trusty precision knife - which was super expensive, but totally worth it!

[Assignment 1] 'What's Your Square?' - Sketch2

It took quite a while to finish the sketches for the selected themes as I needed to plan how I should cut it and whether it was possible to cut out such shapes. However, the planning stage came to fruition.

It was quite challenging to do the villages sketches as I needed to take the perspective into consideration. And the design for the fowls took some time to think about. After some researching, I finally managed to draw these.

Village Cutout - Symmetrical

Village Cutout - Asymmetrical

If the village sketches were difficult, the electric pylons were worse. There were so many triangles and squares inside that structure that it took me more than two hours to do the first sketch.

Pylon Cutout - Asymmetrical

Pylon Cutout - Symmetrical

At last, Ms. Lisa liked the pylon idea better and she suggested it to be my final theme. She asked us to source for materials and try out different paper colors to suit the selected theme best. I would probably need a precision knife to cut out all the intricate details. And it is going to take a very long time to produce the best quality out of the square.

[Assignment 1] 'What's Your Square?' - Sketch1

'What's Your Square?' was our first major assignment this semester. We were asked to cut paper squares with sides 4.5 inches and cut out patterns inside it. One should be symmetrical and the other was asymmetrical.

A square is a shape limited by four sides of the same length. We were to design the square in such a way that its patterns can be expanded, and thus ceasing becoming a square again. We came up with several sketches about the things we liked and looked good inside a square.

I thought of the things I like, and 'cats' popped into my head.

And then I thought that car engines looked nice too, so I sketched a model engine of a classic Volkswagen Beetle and a speedometer.

I was brought up in a rather rural area, so sketched a village scenery to remind myself about my hometown.

Telephone poles and electric pylons are going to be a challenge to cut, so I sketched that as well.

I showed my sketches to my lecturer, Ms. Lisa, and she shortlisted the Electric Pylon and Village theme. I needed to make a more detailed drawing of these two themes and present it again next week to finalize one last theme.

A Self Portrait with a Depth

We had the privilege of having our very first class of 2-Dimensional Drawing with Ms. Lisa again. She taught us Principles of Design (POD) last semester. You can read about the ups and downs we had during that class in this blog ---> www.venomal8.blogspot.com

It was quite surprising that she told us to come out with another self portrait yet again. We did it during the first class of POD and it was not exactly a pleasant experience. It was the first time doing a presentation for most of us. There were plenty of sweaty palms, trembling legs and stuttering.

However, the self portrait this time need not require our face on it. It could be anything that represented ourselves - whether a rock, a scrunched up piece of paper or a leaf. There were no limits to what object we could choose to describe ourselves, and we were then given two hours to think about it and present it in class (again).

Before we could choose an object, we spent a lot of time thinking what best represented us. For myself, I thought of toilet paper.

Bringing just toilet paper for presentation seemed like a really plain idea, so I thought of something great to go with it. I thought of doing a very simple paper cut out of myself, stick it onto a colored surface (in this case, my trustworthy file) and then cover it with toilet paper.

So this was how it went:

Two pieces of seemingly innocent toilet paper.

Then a couple of water drops fell.

Wait, there is a shape...

There might be something underneath the toilet paper.

A vague image is forming...

It is getting clearer...

It's a face!

There was a reason why I chose something as weird as toilet paper. If no one ever mentioned about it, not many people actually thought of its actual worth and value. But most of us could not stop ourselves from using it in the toilet. By using toilet paper as my object, I was implying that no one should ever judge me at first impression, for the longer they knew me, they would know who I really was and what I am capable of.

It was a very enjoyable first lesson, and was way beyond my expectations. I could see a big difference in my classmates compared to last year. They were previously very quiet and reserved, and very nervous when they were asked to present their self portrait. However, this year, almost everyone felt comfortable standing in front of class and presenting to the rest. Their representations were also very nicely thought of. It was really amazing how much we had grown, matured and learnt in a matter of six months.

I was very, very impressed with everyone's overall performance. But saying this sort of made me sound like I was the lecturer instead :P