OLIJ STUDIO - Blog

April Free Water-colour and Ink Class - Travel Series

5/4/2021

Hello Sketchers,

Thank you for signing up for my free April Sketch-A-Long Water-colour and Ink class the Travel series

In April and May, I thought we would go travel virtually to Europe and the Americas, to whet our appetite when we finally could travel for real again. So I decided we will start here, in the Rock of Gibraltar. This is in my travel bucket list because I had a friend from Gibraltar, back when I was still in University, and I've never known of such a place before I met her.

I've always like coast lines and light houses, there's a lot of possibilities with this kind of scenery to learn how to use our materials and explore it in depth.

The lesson will cover how to make multiple kinds of textures using ink, pencil and watercolour brushes, And I will share my secret to how to let yourself go if you're a perfectionist.

Below is a quick sketch of the Light house we will work on tomorrow.

And finally down below it, is the image reference for you to use during class. I recommend downloading it for easy access.

See you tomorrow!

Susan

EUROPA POINT- THE ROCK OF GIBRALTAR

Pay Per Video - January 2020 Project review.

29/1/2021

So this week, I want to reflect on the past 5 weeks of producing lesson video after each weekly class of the topic we covered in class.

I've done 4 videos so far that are now hosted in Youtube but are private access, and only students who wants it, can purchase access to it.

The whole process is quite laborious and manual, but I have learned some new tricks and also what not to do.

The first video about how to use basic watercolour, while drawing the coffee plant, took me 2.5 hours to make, from start to finish. The second video which is about drawing a profile portrait, took 10 times longer because I was doing a voice over that I had to redo over and over. The third one which is also in the series of beginner portrait lessons, took a whole week, because half way through it, I needed a few days to sit with some low energy that week brought with it. I am glad I did not beat myself up about taking so long, and I just let the flow of my creative energy lead the way.

Week 3 I got back in gear and produced a basic portrait lesson using a Masai woman's face as a reference, This was also done with lots of voice overs and took a long time to do. I was quite happy with the edit, but the sound was yet again not the best because I didn't have a specific microphone. I am beginning to look at buying a specific microphone this week.

Week 4, I was teaching negative painting and I had one of the class in person in my dining room and that was super fun. The video took a few days to start but it was pretty smooth. Negative painting is super fun. I really like it.

Week 5, I planned to do a landscape class, and I needed to refresh the approach I taught before, and make it more interesting for me too. So I decided to back to the basics of drawing, using pencil and pen, and teach the basic use of pencil, and liners. This became beautiful landscapes that looks a bit like wood cut prints. I am so inspired by this technique that I started to plan for week 6 landscape theme, focusing on nature elements such as water, skies, trees and mountains.

Serendipitiously, Tom received a birthday card from his parents, and it was an art print by a British printmaker John Brundson who I've never heard of. It had very beautiful landscape and effect that is very similar but yet more specifically visible layers of the different tones. This spins more experiments to teach the look of wood block prints but does by line drawing and wash.

Week 5 video lesson was done without a voice over as I felt my voice over is always so stiff and wooden, while when I draw and speak at once, I come across more natural and candid, even with mistakes or pauses, they're natural. I ordered a headset microphone which I hope will arrive by the time week 6 rolls by.

The videos are hosted in Youtube as private videos and I roll them out to students via their email address. This process is manual and kinda painful, but it was manageable since I only had to send to around 20 students at the most. I thought I start to charge a little for them as an exchange for the effort I made to produce them, and overtime as I get better, I will figure out a more automated way to do it.

This was the plan in 2020, and now I am finally doing it, a year later.

Thanks to all my enrolled students for their support for this new project.

A Proud moment- Ren Min Beer Labels in Watercolour

7/1/2021

A proud moment indeed.

A nice culmination of my lockdown watercolour practice, learning from different artists, my urban sketching practice, and learning perspective, as well as learning procreate, all of 2020 came to this point.

This commission for beer labels came to me via my graphic designer friend David, who had to design their logo.

I progressed quite fast from initial introduction to final work, the turn around was tight. We had one group phone call, one zoom call to finalise, and a bunch of texts exchange and within 48 hours, I produced all three of these water-colour artwork in 200% the size.

Thank you me for being so systematic, and organised. I don't think I've ever been this organised before. I knew immediately which iconic buildings to sketch, did the sketches, colour and technical tests to colour swatching, then I sketched the finished buildings pretty fast. What's funny is that the Jinrikisha building image reference that I used for Progression, was from a vintage postcard hanging in our bedroom wall. I did all the people in procreate, so they can all be resized and repositioned easily.

I also returned to my love of abstract painting with the sprays in the background, or I call them splotches using a metal straw. I did a lot of this in 2010 when I was in an art residency in Vietnam using Chinese ink on rice paper. I really remember that vividly because I recall some participants of the workshop really having fun playing with the straw blowing method. There are two really nice rice paper abstract artworks from that residency that are still hanging proudly at Ali and Xaver's place.

On 29th of December, 3rd Culture Brewery re-launched their new brand called Ren Min Beer Company. These three new beers were introduced at their two locations inside hawker centers. I went to the Maxwell Food Centre launch and did a quick sketch of the crowd before I had to leave for dinner.

The atmosphere was a buzz, and that was also when I meet Brian and Manbeer in person, Brian took care of the branding, and Manbeer owns the company. I thought with a first name like that, he was destined for this!

Such a great way to usher in a new year, and say goodbye to a year everybody will remember for generations as the year it all went ugly. But I won't be talking about that.

Here's to keeping it light, and trucking on with the good vibes.

You can find Ren Min Brewery on Facebook, and Instagram

ONLINE ART CLASSES - THE HOLIDAY EDITION

3/11/2020

Hello All,

November is upon us, and I've started to collect ideas for a whole new set of zoom classes around holiday, end year and greeting cards production. I will be teaching 5 paid classes and one free class which is the last one in December before Christmas.

The classes are all sketch-a-long to a production of fun holiday watercolour paintings, themed around winter, Christmas, season greetings and all that kind of stuff. Thematically, I will be suggesting ways to be efficient, how to produce more than one home-made cards that by the end of the first class they could already start mailing out those cards internationally, and they will hopefully arrive around Christmas and New Years.

As usual, if you've a regular or have been in my classes before, in my classes there is a lot of freedom to how you'll make your cards, and what the cards looks is totally up to you.

The techniques will be a combination of basic watercolour techniques of wash and sketch, and a new one with resist wax/oil pastel which will be really fun to do, and with metallic paints on black paper.

Here's the plan

13 Nov: Wet on wet winter landscape layering
20 Nov: Wax resist Christmas ornaments
27 Nov: Negative painting Snow people’s
4 Dec : Galaxy painting cold nightscapes
11 Dec: Metallic Wreath on black paper (design applicable to normal watercolour and paper)
18 Dec: Student Suggestions of topic ( Decided to be funny Gnomes) + a holiday party

The result afterwards are a series of really fun drawings, in some quantity, because the way I work means there's no wasted time waiting for the watercolour to dry, so each sessions I will be doing a demonstration of more than one drawings, and I go rotate working on them as if they're in an rotating assembly line.

In one session, students can be producing one to five different artworks that they can finish at their own time.

The final class where we decided to do funny gnomes, I invited friends to join the online session and it was a really special time. There was about 15 -18 people, there was quiet times as well as really useful conversations and it all seem to flow so naturally. I really enjoyed myself and really grateful that I have this community, especially in a pandemic times like this.

OCTOBER 2020 SOLO SKETCHWALK in the year of a PANDEMIC

1/11/2020

I decided to take the whole month of October off teaching and focus on all urban sketching. While I was doing quite a lot of urban sketching in August and September already, I was also teaching a lot and there was very few whole day sketching or long stretches of being on location that I could not do. I would like to see how not having classes changes my rhythm, and productivity if I could go on longer stretch of sketching on location.

Here's where I rant about the weather in equatorial Singapore. October is no different to previous months in terms of weather. Its either very hot and humid, with rare occasions of cooler and less humid days, or it's rainy, and gloomy and unpredictable. Sometimes the rain can come quickly and heavily, and clouds lingers for most of the day or its a thunder and lightning kind of rain, that is short and sweet, and brings with it such humidity I could not tolerate for long.

On full day sketching days, my body's readiness and my artist mind's ambition does not always work in parallel and I find the morning a slow time to get going. With morning rituals and routines taking up most of the slow waking hours, household chores comes next, and then the body needs to move through its full morning cycle before I am ready to leave the house. It's quite interesting to observe all the emotional and movements of this body as I prepare it for a full day of being outdoors.

Below's a selection of sketches I did on location in October. The goal was to improve my resilience to being on location, to learn about myself when I am drawing buildings instead of mostly people. The other goal of the month is to loosen my need for perfection and to just start. It is not just about quantity but also about quality. It is about attention. Giving a lot of attention to specific things. Improving my distracted brain into quieter less noisy brain. I want to see how and what changes, and if there’s a new style emerging from it.

It is showing that I don't always succeed in making a good sketch that reads beautifully. Sometimes I can sense it very early in the moment that its a struggle, and in other days, a good day, the sketches are wonderful, hoping with expression and depth and I am really pleased with the outcome.

No matter what sketchbook I use, whatever size and quality, I find that each sitting, when I decided to settle takes about 45 minutes to 90 minutes, and I would do multiple sketches of the same subjects or areas, so I could work on them interchangeably.

Most of all, I've been able to visit a lot of locations with such depth, and such quiet contemplation, that even if they're places I frequently go to, I see them with new eyes, and it is something I can highly recommend if you're an artist looking for new subjects. A new sketching energy seems to come even in familiar places if you have time to examine, focus on them through your drawings. And a great way to feel you've explored somewhere new while still unable to travel. This pandemic year just feels so exhausting and the familiarity breeds some contempt which I am sure is a shared emotion globally. We live in such a small island, and we have taken the ability to travel around regionally and internationally for granted until now, and I feel the restrictions achy in my bones 9 months on.

How I planned:

Starting early and getting a lot of quick sketches, some of them without thought.
Not posting all my process on IG story every day, just focusing on doing the work. Less focus on recording the process.
Quick sketches helps me reduce the need for perfections. Sometimes a whole sketch book without planning can show a lot of things.
It is a good idea to keep the sketchbook filled, with and without quality work.
I will not look for perfection.
I will not judge myself harshly, but only constructively whenever necessary.
I will allow the flow of work to be there without trying to change it
On October 31, I will do a big review and see what happened but not before.

Here's the day by day actions- locations I went to in October:

Thur 1 Oct Whole day Tiong Bahru
Fri 2 Oct Dhoby ghaut- whole day marina south pier, Armenian Street
Sat 3 Oct - no sketching
Sun 4 Oct - no sketching
Mon 5 Oct - Fort Canning Park, Fort Gate (half day)
Tues 6 Oct- Half Day Kampong bugis water way.
Wed 7 Oct - Whole Day Sentosa
Thur 8 Oct - Arab street
Fri 9 Oct - Half Day Robertson quay, chijmes
Sat 10 Oct - life drawings
Sun 11 oct - no sketching
Mon 12 oct - whole day queen Elizabeth Walk, empress place, victoria theater.
Tues 13 Oct - studio day
Wed 14 Oct - Studio day
Thur 15 oct - Whole day - Bishan park, kebun baru birdsinging club
Friday 16 - Half Day tanglin, loewen Road
Sat 17 - life drawing
Sun 18 oct- no sketching
Mon 19 oct - Whole day Joo Chiat Road. Shophouse
Tues 20 oct - Kallang River, golden mile complex
Wed 21 oct - telok ayer Thian hock Keng temple
Thur 22 oct - Whole day Geylang, Joo Chiat, Katong.
Fri 23 oct - no sketching
Sat 24 oct - Waterloo st & Life drawings.
Sun 25 oct - hampstead wetlands park. Little india MRT.
Monday - Punggol
Tuesday 27 October - Blair Road.
Wednesday 28 oct - studio day
Thursday 29 oct - whole day Hong lim park, Telok Ayer, Yueh Hai Ching Temple
Friday 30 Oct - No sketching
Saturday 31 Oct - USK Singapore sketchwalk Little India, Life Drawing.

What I also learned this month is that the morning sketches are generally always better than the afternoon ones, in energy level, in attention and focus. I had a few sketch walks with other friends some of these days and the work does seem to look a bit distracted, even if we don't talk much. Solo sketching gives a lot more focused energy into the work, despite other external distractions like noise and people and nature.

I got used to being crawled on by different insects as I sketch. I let them continue as long as it doesn't distract or impede on my work.
I got used to the gawking passerby, and they don't tend to bother me much.
I understand how to find the focus of my sketch a bit faster than in earlier months.
I find this month to be a time to release all the precious energy around productivity, around quality of work and to give myself some space to be more intentional in the future with my sketch walks.

It was a great end to the month with joining Urban Sketcher Singapore official October sketch walk in Little India where I did one good sketch and a very loose two page spread.

Just for data fun, in October I did 108 pages of sketches across 4 different sketchbooks. While in September, I did about 86 pages (or 43 double pages) across three sketchbooks. An increase of about 20%.

I learned that a very good 100% cotton paper sketchbook is unbeatable for sketching on location. Moleskine watercolour journal's doesn't really have good paper, it buckles and the colours tend to become somewhat muddier. The moleskin sketchbook with red cover becomes my workhorse sketchbook where all kinds of learning and experiments happens in it, as well as some excellent drawings.

My travel kit is slowly tightening up, I no longer carry any grey tombow markers I learned from urban sketchers such as Ian Fennelly and Liz Steel, I strictly use the fude pen, palomino pencils, and my generally all Daniel Smith palette, with the occasional Schmincke paints here and there. I got used to the larger travel brushes now and sometimes only use them exclusively.

I should have brought a square sketchbook if I want to post beautifully on Instagram. A note to Self. The landscape orientation sketchbook is very difficult to capture in a square frame for social media.

Finally, one- two hour sketch walk can be plenty if you choose the right time of day, and in the right mood and state of mind. A full day sketchwalk is tiring but can be so fulfilling if I can find exciting subjects, and on days where it's just meh all the way, I have to learn to let go faster, and just call it quits while I was still fresh.

What I would do differently knowing all these things? I would adjust my expectations on producing a large quantity of work, I would slow everything down and be more in the present. I would remind myself a lot more often that this is a process driven outcome, not an outcome driven process.

Now I feel I've gotten most of the need to do full day of sketching on location out of my system, I am focusing on other things in November, back to teaching classes on Zoom, and in person. Back to some portrait sketching and weekly life drawings. And learning from a new teacher.

More to come in November. Stay tuned.

Artist Interview for In-Visible Space

19/7/2020

Story time...

A couple of months ago, a new friend I met while working at Mox, the Co-Creative space Charmaine Wong from Chark Chalk Architect ask if I would talk about my travel sketchbook and be interviewed in my studio about how I use my space in my art practice and be filmed for a passion project for In-Visible Space by Benny Loh, a videographer and photographer from a production company called Food And Shelter.

A few weeks after lockdown was relaxed, Benny and Charmaine came fully equipped including a box of delicious cake that arrived even before they did. I was curious about how one do these kind of short films, so saying yes was easy because I actually wanted to see Benny's creative process, and I couldn't find any reason to say no to talking about my art on film even if it's a bit nerve wrecking. It fits so perfectly to my own challenge this year of just trying new things, including talking to a camera, filming process videos, and showing my face more, not just my hands and my sketches.

Benny's a professional, so there's a kind of ease in his way of working, a glide almost. He and Charmaine took some initial studies of the space, looking at corners and lights, and plotted their visual plans. I was then given a mic that coiled inside my jumpsuit, small enough to clip to my neckline.

Charmaine then assured me that being relaxed and myself is the best way to be, and not to be nervous. There were a few times I talked too much, I didn't say the words simple enough that I had to repeat it and be simpler. Haha. I think I talked quite unedited and thankfully I didn't use any profanity, which is usually a natural part of my speech, as an expression of emphasis.

Benny took videos of parts of the studio, we opened the window to show the spaciousness that it can be. And he also took videos of things that matched what I talked about in the interview, so that it all can be edited coherently together. It's such a smooth process, and a professional knows how to make the awkward times really smooth. Thank you so much Benny and Charmaine for putting up with some of my quirks. Also I really really appreciated how much was shared about the passion for how people use space and that amazing origin story of this in-visiblespace project was so inspiring. I won't tell it here, I think Benny needs to tell you about it.

Benny Loh can be found at www.foodandshelter.co

Charmaine Wong can be found at www.chalkarchitects.com

And the Instagram is @in-visiblespace

So here is the final edit and I am so thankful to both of them. It's an honour and privilege to be in this series and project. Thank you guys!

And Thank you for watching,

Susan

The Ink Pens Chronicles

6/7/2020

What I like

I like using pen, and have been using only strictly but nothing else except pen and ink, and saying goodbye for now to pencils because it is the bold, the beautiful, the irreversible way is the way I preferred to go in my drawing practice. The irreversibility gives opportunity for mistakes to occur, and without mistakes, we don’t learn. I am not deliberately trying to make mistakes, but I give space for it to occur, and it strengthen my confidence, so perfectionism doesn’t ruin all the fun I could be having.

Why I don’t have a preference

I drew these two pages chronicling all the pens I own, in the hopes of a deeper analysis of my preference only resulting in reminding me what a maximalist I am.
At the end of drawing all these pens, I realise that I actually don’t mind whichever one I use, depending on what the drawing i am trying to make. Even the most bleeding kinds I rather like. In this selection, that award goes to MUJI brush pen. What I like is still a finer tipped ink pen, but it must also have the flexibility to produce slightly thicker lines if needed. All in all, most of the ink pens here can do that, so the degree of preference becomes flattened.
The MUJI brush pen came with me on my year off traveling and this one I kept until it died had one hair sticking out of the brush, and that allowed me to make very precise details, such as a face even if its very small. I loved that pen. And this brings me nicely to the next point.

Why I always look for the best brush pens

There is no such thing as the perfect brush pen, but there is that perfect brush pen for now. I go through stages with ink pens where I want fluidity to come before accuracy and even if the lines I made is wrong, i did it my way, which these days is confident inaccurate.
I used to like the accuracy of a graphic fine liner, and the sizes I used to teach fashion illustrations was a range from 0,03 to 0.3, and 0.5 is just slightly too big.
These days, with travel sketching, I no longer use the smaller liners, even tho in countries limited in stationery, I manage to use the same ink liners months on end. And use the MUJI brush pen sparingly because it bleeds too much, and make my watercolour muddy when there’s too little details.
The best brush pens is one that has a nice fine tip, but when pressed down, can pull a lovely thick brush line and shape a nice leaf like stroke. The best brush pen is not one with actual brushes, but of a soft felt tipped kind mimicking a brush. The downside of the felt tipped kind is it gets tired really fast, and the tip will fray and be less pointy after a few use.

UNIBALL Air by MITSUBISHI, with the L-Broad tip is the one I end up using most in the latest travel sketchbooks because it has the sensitivity and line variety of a fountain pen, it has good feedback on paper, and it can be controlled to create thin and thick lines. In the end, a brush pen is not my favorite liner, this one is.

The Urban sketcher’s favorite ink pens seems to be the FUDE fountain pen, and after a long time, after a lot of hating, and a lot of grumpiness, I started to use FUDE in a way that feels how it should be appreciated. I still cannot understand this crazy looking nip, but i see the benefit of the flat broken-looking tip for broad strokes, and then twisted the other way round, it gives thin and precision if that’s what you need.

The two FUDE pen I now use is not drawn in the big pen page but I drew them seperately. They are the inexpensive Sailor fude pens, the 55 degree nib and the 40 degree nib. And I find myself gravitating towards the 40 degrees more as the weeks go by, it feels like more control can be hand, the thickness of the 40 degrees is more suitable in how I expect my pens to work.

So finally, here’s my preference,squeezed out of me by deliberate pressure.

Favorite liner : UNIBALL AIR by MITSUBISHI, L-Broad

Favorite brush pen: PIGMA BB, by SAKURA.

When in limited stationery places, for travel, I will always default to the PIGMA MICRON by SAKURA.

And the ones I used a lot without realising it is ZIG MANGAKA by KURETAKE. Do I like it, I don’t think this way. It is effective, it is reliable, but it’s not something I LIKE or LOVE using.

There’s little correlation to what I like using and what is effective. What is effective does the job, while the ink pen I love gives me a deeper satisfaction even if the drawing isn’t produced in it’s most highest standards, and the 40 degree Fude pens are currently still under review to fill this space.

August News flash: My Trishaw Uncle sketch hang in Singapore streets this month.

6/7/2020

Early in June, I submitted a re-drawing of one of my travel sketches from the Sabbatical travel sketchbook to National Arts Council Streets of Hope open call exhibition, where the selected artists work will be printed on banners and displayed all around the Civic district of Singapore. And the digital work displayed on the NAC facebook and Gillman Baracks website. I am STOKED to be one of the selected artists, and this is the second installment of their Streets of Hope exhibitions that already had 153 singapore-based artists picked early in June.

This trishaw uncle was fast asleep one hot afternoon when I passed by, his trishaw was parked just across the street from Raffles Hotel, where I would imagine he normally hustle tourists to ride with him. In the new iteration for the open call, I unconsciously end up giving him more hair :) and i think the work is improved in its shadow values. The work represented the relaxed time before CORONA pandemic, where we all could hangout without a mask. The good old days is no more.

The original drawing was when I first came back to Singapore from the year away Travel Sketching, and i wrote ‘Hokay Singapore, once again with feeling’, as my way of marking a new beginning for me and Tom, being back to live in Singapore.

Here you can see the original sketch and what I did to turn it into the original artwork and what the final banner looks like.

Sketchbook #4, Original sketch in my sketchbook

The original sketch retouched and resized from my sketchbook done in 2019

Final watercolour sketch in A3 size Watercolour paper.

The banner on Saiboo Road, Singapore

The banners with other artists banners

The exact location of my banner and other artists listed here.

Thank you NAC for organising this massive initiative to support local artists.

See if you can spot the banner when you're around Robertson Quay and Mohammed Sultan area. I am not sure how long it'll be up for, but catch it while it's hanging up the next month or so!

PLAY LEARNING SERIES- Wet on Wet technique

12/6/2020

Wet on Wet watercolour technique tested on varieties of paper.

f you’re here, you must either be a watercolour student or an enthusiastic artist and learner.

Here are all the results of the wet on wet test on the different papers that I did on this video

I purposely choose paper from inexpensive paper to medium grade watercolour paper that is very affordable.

Here’s the materials I use:

PAPER FROM LEFT TO RIGHT
POP ARTZ, Minimalism Non-Watercolour sketchbook A5 (from Popular stationery) SGD$3.20
Cartridge Exercise Book Non- Watercolour sketchbook A5 (black soft cover, also from Popular stationery) SGD$1.95
Watercolour paper by ClaireFontaine Etival 300 gsm/140lbs
Signature Non-watercolour sketchbook by Mont Marte 150 gsm (https://www.montmarte.net/product/view/signature-sketching-journal-croc-finish-150gsm-a5-landscape-100-page
Non-watercolour ring bound sketchbook A5 (from Popular) with a plastic cover. SGD$1.25
Watercolour paper, 300 GSM from OVJ (Overjoyed.xyz. own brand) about A5 size but a bit smaller $12 for 100 pcs.

Daniel Smith paints:
Fired Gold Orche
Bloodstone Genuine
Quinacridone Purple
Raw Umber Violet
Shadow Violet
Moonglow

PWC Extra fine artist watercolour - Naples Yellow

Sakura Mat Water Colours - Prussian Blue (not Indigo as I said in the video)

Brush: Silver Black Velvet round size 8

If you examine these 6 paper closely. You can easily see that the Mont-marte sketchbook, (2nd row far left) is the worse for watercolour. It is not meant for wet medium, while it could be worse, it doesn’t retain water long enough to spread paint beautiful, and the colours on the surface is the least vibrant when it dries. Especially the yellow swirl on the dark background.

In terms of spreadability and water travel. The one that travels the most aggressively is the Etival watercolour paper, the purple slashes is shown least distinct there and is blurry. And the soft cover sketchbook shows the purple slashes eventually not spreading at all, because the water has evaporated fastest compared to the other papers.

And we can not quite conclude anything distinctively but it is easy to see where you’d put your preferences towards if you like some of the effects. Depending on what you’re painting, some fast spreading is very good, and sometimes you dont want that if you’re painting something more detailed and small and you want the definitions to be sharp.

In terms of vibrancy, the two watercolour paper differ a lot, the OVJ paper seems to keep the vibrancy more. And the “sketch” one too. While the rest are much more muted.

What are your thoughts about it?

Will you be doing your own tests on your supplies?

See you next time.

Susan

Weekly Art class on Zoom in an era of Corona Virus Pandemic.

4/6/2020

I've written about how I moved my teaching of the short course titled Travel Sketching, online from the end of March, 2020 when a week later, Singapore goes into "circuit breaker' which is synonymous with pandemic lockdown in other countries.

So here's the next stage where I reflect on what I learned and how the weekly classes came about. When Covid 19 started to reek havoc in Singapore around Mid March 2020, I was half way through my short course, so the school says, we had to move online, The transition was smooth, because I was already prepared, and already have screens set up in my studio for projecting my studio work table onto an online platform. I was already playing and producing process videos at the time so the system was easily transferable to project to Zoom..

Three hours of class in a classroom and then outside in a public space goes very fast, and I discovered it is very different when we all moved online, the work that goes into preparing for the class is pretty much the same, but the effort and feedback is very much different, and it felt more draining for me as the one who's job is to show and explain all the theories and techniques limited by a screen.

I learned after about 2 weeks of online teaching, that I need to be more aware of my energy output and that I don't have to speak all the time. I could give the silence of work some space, and let the students work without constantly adding information because they won't absorb it anyway.

I also have wrote how I quickly learned that I needed more physical expression as feedback from the students if what I am doing is good, clear or if they are confused. Micro expressions does not translate through Zoom, and one can end up feeling very unsure if the students are on the same page. The instructions now for zoom classes is a thumbs up, or thumbs down, when asked if they're clear or not, and to ask questions more bravely.

It is still really daunting than in physical classroom to ask questions on Zoom in a room full of virtual blank faces, and only a few would dare to ask the questions that I know everyone really appreciate to know too. I know because I too have taken classes online and know what it feels like to be the students on Zoom and how scary it can be to be heard speaking in a virtual room full of strangers. But if you persevere, the fear transforms into warmth and the nice feeling of being heard is something you can look forward to.

I learned the use of Zoom, and how to manage a virtual room, it's very awkward, even after months of using it weekly. Feedback is crucial when I am doing something and the participants don't see it. On the virtual class room, you cannot compensate not seeing or hearing something clearly like you do in a physical classroom by asking your fellow participants or classmates. When my work space is on spotlight, everybody equally see it very clearly, unlike in a classroom where some students might not have the best view or vantage point.

The Ipad used as a camera to project for demonstrations

This is a slide page that I've take from a friend's zoom meeting. I thought it's very good to start every course with this, just in case someone has not yet used Zoom. Simple arrows pointing at the use of each icons.

My students also had to resort to displaying their work and their reference like this, so I can see what they're using to sketch

I am glad that the classes are small, which means I have the time to give each students some personal attention because it takes a lot more effort to demonstrate feedback of their work, the above is one example where I drew the image reference they use to draw and suggested improvements in this way.

I try to use procreate to digitally draw on their drawing but it appeared not so useful because the method might be right, but the material was not watercolour so they couldn't see the result with the effects of watercolour. So I've stopped doing that, and returned to demonstrating directly on paper.

Soon after the short course ended, my students had an abrupt stop, and was looking to continue their practice. The one hour weekly class was born so they have somewhere to go regularly and maintain the sketching practice they've already started. So that was how my weekly online zoom class started. One hour, once a week, and a month later, it turns into a 90 minute weekly class with the students suggesting the topics they want to learn. It has been 5 months now, I have about 20 students in my class list, with half of them returning weekly.

I designed the class so it's always fun, always challenging but not so hard they'd loose the motivation. Anybody from beginners to expert can benefit from it. Designing a weekly curriculum on the fly is something I realise I like a lot, and while it is a challenge to find the right balance between challenge and ease, I find that preparing for the class is not always necessary apart from deciding the topic or image reference and some of the time, based on one question thrown into the room, I could build a whole class around that on the fly.

So I learned that there's enough technique in me to teach on the fly, as long as there's a starting point to focus the class on. These short weekly class are one complete session per class, so students can join at any point without missing anything from the week before. Students can come and go on weekly basis whenever they want. As long as I have 4 confirmed, I will start the class, and I've always gotten at least 5 and at the most 15 of them, which was always a great feeling.

So far we've covered a number of techniques, from landscape, people, urban scenes, flowers, brush techniques to still life objects, skies and sunsets.

Feedback time.

I would love it if you came to my weekly class the past few months to hear a little bit about your opinion of it. Please leave a comment below. Tell me what you want more of, what you like and what you wish to see in the future classes. Does the WhatsApp group work for you, what you've learned. This helps me improve these weekly classes so it can be better going forward.

Thank you so very much to all my students. I truly enjoyed teaching online, and in a time of non-travel and social distancing, the connection made through these weekly classes has given me hope, and joy and growth beyond what I could imagine.

June 2020 class

August 2020 class

You can find details about my weekly zoom class here.