A Peek Inside

My concentration is focused on Malaysian culture. Before I even chose my concentration, I knew I wanted to depict a concept/idea/event/thing that impacted my life. When I moved to Malaysia in fourth grade, I was exposed to a completely different environment from what I was used to in Oregon. Not only did it open my eyes to a whole new side the world, but it also made me appreciate diversity and the new perspectives it gave me. 

I've been trying to draw/paint all aspects of Malaysian culture, but it's really difficult because there is so much to cover! I have created about 10 pieces as of now, and hopefully all of them accurately portray what I'm trying to convey with my concentration! Like many countries, Malaysia has a lot of Western influence as well, but instead of focusing on that, I tried to represent more of the local flavor. My piece with chickens and green shows an image of an open house surrounded by rubble. Many of the houses owned by the local folks were like that because it's hot out, and none of them seemed to mind that they looked run down. The black and white painting I'm working on right now is going to be a temple. A broad range of religions were represented their, because people from all over the world live there including expats like myself. The boats I painted were what I saw every day, when fishermen went out to go fishing at sea. I even got to go fishing myself! The man with the ropes coming out of his back is a ritual they have every year, where they purposefully endure pain. The dog I painted was a normal sight on the streets, and many animals without homes wandered around day and night. 

March Update

Now that we're done with all of the stressful (but fun!) scholastic stuff, it's kind of getting harder to focus on my art pieces. I couldn't get a picture of the two pieces I had for critique, but this is a new one I'm working on! I've stopped using the plastic grid thing and started to draw my pieces free hand, but it's a lot harder to get the composition right. I always forget to make things that are far away smaller, and things that are closer larger.

I went in a different direction for one of my critique pieces. I painted the watercolor paper all black, and drew on it with white ink. I liked the idea of it, but it looked kind of messy. I am definitely going to add to it, and put in more detail in the background because all I had were those lanterns everywhere. I will probably add the building, and then go from there.