Prapim's Inspirations: Robert Fawcett

Apparently one of the things the tutors want me to do is to start to veer towards a consistent illustration style, so I'm planning to blog artists that influence me in the hopes this might help me somehow. Also, you can get to see what my influences are (since my work is all over the place this might prove interesting...or not. Haha.) and hopefully you might like them too!

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Robert Fawcett is an English-born artist I discovered recently whilst on the prowl for Sherlock Holmes illustrations (yes, I know...sad right). I didn't know true love at first sight could exist, but it does. Head over heels was I as I clicked through scans of his illustrations. I found myself swooning, holding imaginary handkerchiefs to dab at wet, awestruck eyes, feeling faint at their beauty.

Apparently he was partially colour-blind, which makes his full-colour illustrations even more impressive. But I remember reading about how this actually made it easier for him, since he could put emphasis on strong form and lineart as well as detail. It's easy to see that his sense of composition and lighting, coupled with a limited colour palette created extremely expressive, detailed illustrations.

Venus of Urbino, my take

Back to blogging! Heavily based off Titian's Venus of Urbino, except lacking all the details (because I'm lazy). For my poster, I had typography before, but it didn't go so well. Need to rethink my slogan...

Anyway I feel really accomplished with this piece since this is the first time I tried proper 'painting' with Photoshop :D

Slavery Is A Hokey Concept

Haha, that reminds me of this one time in high school when a guy blurted out during class 'Only Third World countries like Indonesia and Thailand have animal abuse!' I wonder why I didn't sock him at the time. Huh.

Impromptu solutions for everyday dilemmas: the bathroom!

Haha, the title is totally misleading. When I mean an everyday dilemma for the bathroom dilemma, there is no toilet humour nor TMI involved. Heave a sigh of relief!

An idea for a point-and-click game for a school project. Basically, we have to show how we have used an object in a way that wasn't originally intended for it (improvisation etc.)...I was originally doing a card game similar to 'Memory'...but it seemed the tutors didn't really like it that much. Huh.

I tend to use a toothpaste tube as a paperweight so I can read while brushing without having to hold the book. Hopefully...other people won't find this too weird?

Had some other ideas (such as using a hat to keep the lunchbox warm), but this actually requires more drawings and animation. And I can no longer be bothered. It's interactive design. Who cares (that much)?

XD

Also I am a total n00b at pixel art, but I love it anyway. (Who knew it took so long?) SO. FRIKKIN. CUTE! Will learn how to do it better! It's like virtual candy! I really love this girl's stuff. She's amazing!

Objects of Undesire.

'Objects of Undesire': My Four Annoyances (Ranging from the Utterly Trivial to Extremely Profound)

Hmm, how do I explain this one without sounding like a total whiny emo tortured sensitive artist type? Sometimes I feel like I feel and care too much. Throughout my life, I find that I become very affected, upset, angered, or hurt by things that most other people simply don't care as much about. It's resulted in a lot of resentment, hurt and disappointment on my part.

I thought: how I would love those people to understand how I feel; yet, I know I can sometimes be extremely irrational in my feelings. This paradoxical rut usually ends with me concluding: if I could be more like these people and somehow just not care or feel as much, then I wouldn't hurt so much, either.

I absolutely abhor baby buggies on buses during rush hour. Sure, there is an alliterative appeal in that phrase, but believe me, when you are on a packed bus, your face squashed next to some guy's armpit, the last thing you want to see is a huge baby buggy (complete with bawling baby) being heaved onto the bus by a parent - who, forgive the unfortunate implications of eugenics and racial breeding and whatnot, probably shouldn't be reproducing in the first place - with an infuriating sense of self-entitlement. There are other hours on which you can ride the bus, why pick the busiest ones?

Good-looking people who whine about how they're ugly (and therefore unloved, worthless, not of value, so on and so forth) (you know who you are) as a ploy to receive heaps of praise, reassurances and compliments. I understand there are genuinely some good-looking people who have self-esteem issues or don't really believe they're good-looking, but believe me, if they didn't believe it, they wouldn't whine about it all the time, either.

It's like, dude. Everyone gets insecure, whether it's about their looks or anything else. If someone as good-looking as you whines about how 'ugly' you are, what hope do any of us normal people have? The fact most of these people I've met seem to equate lack of looks with lack of worth also profoundly disturbs me. Have most of them grown up so long living on nothing else except their physical appearance it somehow became true for them?

Need I go into detail about this one? Creepy men.

All girls (and guys, shudder), come here. Give me a group hug, and we'll go and have a pigging-out-on-ice-cream session together.

Love your experiments!

Drawn for that manifesto given to us in Illustration, of which I can't recall a single word, except three: "Love your experiments."

My summer, three months after it ended

I finish my first year of Graphic Design (and second year in London).

To see family and friends in the sunny cosmopolitan Singapore.

Taking a tour into the frenetic India on a short holiday.

All in all, pretty good.

Ah-Mah's Journey

Well, that took three days. Three whole days (although Saturday hardly counted, as I spent most of that time eating cake and YouTubing.). Although I went to Polina's party on Friday so that wasn't too bad. Nevertheless. I have had enough leg-ache from this project to last me a while.

I'm kind of posting this up now, because I'm still floundering on how to present this tomorrow. Should I print it out? Lugging my laptop to school to show this totally isn't worth it. But trying to fit all that into a bunch of A4 pages will be annoying time-consuming. Grrr.

Anyway, rant over, and on to the actual story:

For the strangest reason, when Ah-Mah first told me the story of her trek from southern China to Bangkok as a child, I always imagined her to be this hardy, resilient little thing, determined at all costs to reach the other side. Even if it meant literally swimming across the gulf all the way there. Obviously, I was a child with an overactive imagination and little concept of time management.

Of course, as I grew up, I eventually realised how ludicrous the whole thing really was, but that didn't stop me from wondering how cool (not for her, of course) it would have been if it were actually true. Us Chutaprutikorns are made of strong stuff! Ho-ho!

Thus, part-truth-part-child's-fantasy: the journey of my dear grandmother.

Hidden Histories.

I've decided to do our 'Hidden Histories' project on my grandmother's migration from China to Thailand. The above photo was taken when she just arrived by boat; apparently, as soon as she arrived, like all other immigrants she was shoved in front of a camera to record her arrival.

I find it quite amusing how she looks so unsuspecting, but I think as an 8-year-old stepping into a new land and not really knowing the language, it must have been very scary for her as well.

Her past is something I wish she'd discuss more to me, since I find it quite fascinating. It makes her seem more vulnerable and gives her more depth than the reverential grandmother figure she always seems to portray to me. Even to learn just a little bit about her past greatly elates me.

Her story, of how her family in China were so poor they had to boil rocks in salt to season their rice, of a long boat journey to Thailand (on which she proceeded to be seasick for several days) and of her dreams for a better life evokes such vivid imagery - I dream of an exotic, beautiful yet hard Orient, full of hardship and struggle, yet also of hope, of dreams, and opportunities...resulting in the grandmother I know and love today.

I did a few practice drawings; my grandmother is the cute-as-a-button girl in blue. I really want to do an animation, but I don't think I'll have the time; thus, a comic would probably be just as good.

You know, for some reason I don't understand the image has the thumbnail but no link to the actual picture. Because my internet is being slightly dodgy, I am too lazy to correct this. Ta-ta!

WIP - "He never meant to hurt you. But he did, all the same."

A personal work, in progress. Unfortunately, it seems my drawing/colouring style has taken a turn for the 'taking-forever-to-do-a-simple-drawing' category. Consider this: I started this in July, and this is all I have managed to do so far (no, I mean I've done more frames, but this is how much colour I've put into them). I've tried to simplify my style, but it seems quite impossible.

Some background information: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, wishing to be rid of the character that made him famous but also confined him to the same stories over and over, decided to 'kill off' Sherlock Holmes by having him die in the chasms of the Reichenbach Falls.

However, due to public backlash (not to mention ailing funds), he was forced to resurrect Holmes. Holmes returns after a three-year hiatus from the dead - the excuse being that he was forced to pretend he was dead in order to escape the clutches of Moriarty's henchmen - in 1894. All is well again.

My point is that I could have hardly imagined what Watson must have been feeling at the time; not only had he lost a best friend, but the reader may also know that only a few months afterwards, his wife will also die. To have to lose the two people you love most in so short a period of time is heart-breaking; to have it happen to someone with so big a heart as Watson's, the pain must have been more than he could bear. It seems that life is determined to make the best people suffer the most.

What irks me even more is that Holmes cannot contact Watson to let him know he is indeed alive and spare him the grief, for fear his attempts to contact Watson might expose him to Moriarty's henchmen, bent on revenge. However, he does still contact his brother Mycroft to ask for funds as he travels. Mycroft, knowing that Holmes is alive but Watson believes him dead, bears the burden of knowing he cannot do anything to help ease the pain.

In this scene, Mycroft approaches a visibly pained Watson, attempting to offer Watson some kind of condolence; however, Watson is having none of it. He brusquely brushes off Mycroft. Mycroft, knowing his brother is still alive, can only wonder if Sherlock fully understands the consequences of his actions.

Yes, melodramatic, I know. I would have been a good soap opera writer.