Breathe

 Two days worth of sky pictures. 

Photo C: Vivien Tan Shi Hui

Up and coming photographer don't play play. Love her so much. She's such an amazing person. Can't tell you how proud I am to be her friend. Show her off like a proud mama. 

Met up with the matrep yesterday. 

And finally met this director today. Nyeh. 

Happy days. 

Short post today because I want to blog but I'm hard pressed for time. 

I'm so busy I feel like dying. Deadlines all kicking in. *screams and runs in circles* 

Trust. Trust in Him I shall. And breathe. For tomorrow will worry about it's own things. 

Stuck like stuck

Stuck stuck stuck. 

Halllp. My brochure grid halllp. 

Haha ok stop procrastinating. Kbye. 

I'm a Happy illustrator

Some process work above. 

Dum de dumm, did an illustration for a teeny meeny card for Godma as a get well soon / birthday card and it turned out really well ! Very happy with it. 

Loving the nip. So glad Han's bacher introduced it to us. 

But I think I could still have had a better choice of colours somehow. 

Probably gonna paint more of these to sell as stickers along with my sky postcards. 

On a side note- 

I also need to fund myself to buy a :

- paper cutter 

- more nips 

- a better quality set of watercolor paints, because I'm using both a cheap one and expensive one at the same one and the quality of the cheap one is really upsetting me. 

- paper corner cutters 

- Wacom tablet pad :( 

Yup ! About 3 hundred and 50 dollars maybe :/ 

The Fridays I used to know.

When we were kids, visiting Amah's house was a weekly or even daily affair for us- especially on Fridays. I remember always being excited for Fridays to come, not simply because it meant the weekends were here, but also because it meant our weekly visit to Amah's. 

The home cooked food, the cousins, the whole house so noisy and bustling, but the noise didn't matter, the whole family was under one roof, maybe doing their own thing, but it felt nice being together. 

I remember how all 10 of us - ( the little one not included, and the eldest missing in the picture below ) would squeeze onto our uncle's tiny single bed, going. through our phases together, whether it was Pokemon, or tamiya, super yo yo or beyblade. Those were the days. They really were.

Every single birthday celebrated together, always at Amah's house. The decorations, the cakes, the presents are things I won't forget. 

We all share a special thing where we attended the same kindergarten, and for the rest of them excluding my bro and I all went to Nan Hua primary. ( this of course excludes the little one once again because we are all at least 10 years apart from her ). 

It is also amazing how all of us have always lived close to each other, Amah's house being the centre, the heart 

Sadly, we grew older, and busier, everyone had their own things to do, people to meet, and our weekly Fridays slowly faded away. 

Today was an exception, and it felt just like the past, it was a Friday and everyone was here. 

It was our beloved aunt/ sister/ godmum's birthday. We gathered together to shower her with love because she broke her knee cap just 5 days ago and after surgery she was discharged today. - I think that was what brought us back together again. 

Godma has always been the pillar of the family- and I love her with all my heart. She is a woman of grace, always giving without expecting to receive, always giving but never taking. Her love has no limits, even for a random stranger In distress she meets in public. If anything, I would aspire to be a woman like her.

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."

 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

This verse reminds me of Godma. 

Today was a beautiful day, we all rushed back to our roots, to our heart. Today was even better than our usual first day Chinese new year for the past 5 years. 

Siblings 

Parents. Family. 

Dad and uncle don playing hockey with an orange and godma's crutches. 

Amah's got sweg. Haters gonna hate. 

And so for the first time in forever, Friday was the Friday I knew again.  

 

今天呢，总觉得好累好累。

Death of Traditions, Traditions of death.

I sat in the void deck -an environment so familiar, a place I walked through all the time for the past twenty years of my life to get to gran’s house- and yet it was so unfamiliar. I was lost, amidst the blankets, the wreaths, the makeshift tables covered with white plastic sheets, peanuts and red paper on plastic plates and the excess lighting in the usually dim void deck.

Relatives clothed in white,

people chanting,

people kneeling,

practices I didn’t understand.

Traditions completely lost in my generation, slowly lost in my parents’, and strongly enforced with my grandparents’.

Blindly following the undertaker’s instructions, disconnected form “tradition”. None of us really knew what we were doing, what it meant and what it was for.

I wonder if one day, when it comes to the day of my own death, if all traces of such traditions of death would be lost.

This February, it would be exactly a year since gran has left. It is strange, but her death felt surreal, and part of me has not quite digested the idea that she is no longer here.

Gran will always be fondly remembered as a beautiful strong lady who raised eleven children on her own. She was one who never forgot any of our birthdays. She had the cupboard in the kitchen she would fill with goodies. She knew what each and every one of her 19 grandchildren loved, and going to her house always meant good home cooked food taking home our favourite candy. I remember Christmas, no one was left out, and all received snacks and toys beautifully wrapped up for Christmas.

Gran may not be here anymore. But she will always live in my heart.

I share this love hate relationship with grandma. There has been a lot of pain she has caused and yet a lot of pain she has endured, and of course love she has given to me. 

This article is actually written for the art zine (15 spreads or thirty pages) in which we are only actually given two weeks to complete - considering how Chinese New Year is in the middle, it's actually pretty crazy. 

Working with D and SY has been great, they are really really intelligent - which stressed the heck out of me sometimes- but we somehow managed to present nostalgia, tradition and future in the context of death- hence a very timely tiny memorial for gran's coming death anniversary. 

Sibs

Cny photos coming soon ( I think ). 

In the mean while, perhaps the bro and I should start a fashion blog.