Portrait Drawing

Portrait drawing was one of the most difficult job, because it involved lots human factors; sometime not because how good your skill are, it’s depend on how good of the person’s artistic level that being drawn.

After you take so many afford to draw it, the person being drawn might not like it yet they said your drawing totally does not looks like at all; I believes any portrait artists will face this problem at all unless you are an artist that really famous in the world.

Basically, I realized that what you see is what you get, but what you see may not easily draw thru your hand unless you are real genius. I took many years to achieve this level although I still not that good yet.

Tracing is a method to correct your mistake on the scaling during portrait drawing, but that was not encouraging to use this method all the way, because you will steak to this drawing method and you will end up totally cannot draw at all without tracing, in another angle, if you keep doing this way, your are cheating as what my portrait master keep mentioned that: “You are mentality handicap, your are healthy and able to walk and run but wanted to travel with wheel chair, that’s no shame!” That's the words always in my memory.

These are my level in 1991.ANd my level in 1994

New Apartments at Handy Road

Passing by Handy road, next to Cathay Cinema Shopping Ctr, the space between Cathay building and Plaza Singapura is having a new building. Didn’t know the place looks like that just I never come to this place ever, haahaa!

As a photographer’s experience

I had been asked to relatives and friends to take photos for their wedding, birthdays and various functions included my younger sister’s wedding. Being a photographer, you have to be act smart, always see thing differently and avoid take unrelated or rubbish photos, else you will be wasted your time and film (last time film and film development was very expensive)

Besides the basic camera setting like the aperture (F1, F2, etc) the speed (1/50, 1/500, 1/1000 etc) the film ASA (film speed like ASA 400m for night scene etc.) you need to have the artistic senses like take the photo in a right angle at the right time, who to take, what scene and what background should be included etc.

Nowadays, all SLR cameras provided fully auto mode that was great that less pressure for photographers while doing their job; and no need to worry about not enough film problem, as long as you having more and enough gigabyte memory cards.

The most important to take a photograph was:
- If you were doing for event, your photos must be able to tell the story
- Never take any photos like a person walking on the street yet don’t know what is it (my photography master will scold anyone who taken such photo)

Photography is an art; you must form it nicely with the right composition, right angle, right lighting and right concepts and right time.How good of you photograph depend on what level your artistic knowledge and talent belonging to; because the photographs shown directly how you view the world thru your artistic sense to the audience.

My ‘Guru’ also highlighted: its no because how good of your camera, it’s depend how intelligent and how artistic/talented you are.

School Photographer

I had become one of my school’s official camera men while studying in my secondary school. I still remember the good and bad experiences during that period. The good experiences was I always allow to go the restrict area to do my shooting as an ‘official photographer’; lot people also treat my differently like more friendly to me.

The bad experiences or tedious thing was always need to manually sort the photographs, take orders and send the photos to the related classes, it was really time consuming and tedious.

Photos taken at 1986

My Photography Hobby

I just tidy up my cupboard today and rearranged my photo albums. I had thrown away many old photos and old films; it took up too much space of my cupboard.

I love photography and ever thinking about became a photographer, so I had borrow camera to do lot shooting until I afforded to buy a camera. My first camera was SLR camera Nikon401x, and then second one was Nikon601.

Before the digital camera launch to the market, the world was using film to shoot the photos; hence it was a quiet expensive hobby. I had spent lots moneys to do the shootings, sometimes wasted lots film to shoot for experimental purposes. I had tried various ASA standard films from ASA100 to ASA800; that ASA 800 – ASA 6400 was used by professional photographers for special purposes as I know.Due to digital camera launched to the world, the world having a big changes. Those film based camera was seldom using be the public except certain specialist; my Nikon 601 had given to one of my friend and I just bought a Olympus 3.2 mega pixels compact camera 4 years ago.I was planning to buy a new Nikon SLR camera when I have time to do more serious photo shooting in future. I still keep my Nikon SB-22 Flash! Heehee!

Caricature session at Singapore Flyer

Did a caricature session at Singapore Flyer. That was great to meet the happy and friendly guests there although the weather was real hot, the group of the guests I drawn was mostly having strong and obvious face types that was very easy to draw; because sometimes it could be came across certain type of faces which was too common or too perfect like those portrait drawing books references model or sculpture, it add more difficulties to highlight their features.They also having 'Kich and Win' game for the guest, interesting games.

Another day in the market

The Ang Mo Kio Market busy and crowded as usual, but some food had been increased their priced to 20 cents to 50cents due to inflation.
Past by the ‘salted-pointed-biscuit’ stall, bought this ‘you tiao’ (not ‘youtube’, haahaa!), 70 cents! No wonder no longer having long queue customers anymore.
One hawker told me that 7 July onwards will be some renovation on the floor on the hawker center, it takes 3 weeks to complete, so I need to think about where to have ne breakfast, lunch and dinner.