Ponderings: Tired of studying…

Getting really tired of studying for exams now, though the good news is that everything will be over by Tuesday. I keep gravitating towards other stuff besides my notes and books, a sure sign of procrastination, but at least my restless soul is a little appeased from the breaks.
Here’s a summary of what I do during breaks:

A little bit of art and online shopping because it’s Black Friday week. Not the only piece of art I did during these past 3 weeks or so but this is the most recent one from today, after I placed my shopping orders. The image just popped up in my head and I knew I had to put it down to paper somehow. This is just a watercolour sketch on a pre-painted background in my art journal. It’s not watercolour paper so the paint appears a little splotchy but I like the textures it produces.

I am typing this post on my new iPad, which my cousin sold me at a discount. Not the fastest way to type but I wanted to give it a try. Had been wanting to get one for school because I have decided to go digital instead of printing piles of readings and papers. I must say though that it had been rather useful and convenient these past 3 weeks while I study for my exams.

Hope you have managed to find time to do art while you are busy. I find that just doing something small everyday keeps me sane, even if it’s just dipping a paintbrush in watercolours and randomly applying brush strokes for 5 seconds. Hope you got a good haul during this Black Friday as well! We all know the happiness of buying discounted goods and getting new art supplies.

I should be back next week with some posts. Hopefully the art momentum will continue in full swing since it was not broken in the first place. Thanks for stopping by!

More Mobile Art

Scrolling through my phone gallery and found more mobile art that I drew/doodled in the past couple of months. Just like the last ones I posted, these were drawn on my mobile phone using the Sketchbook app and I feel like I ought to have a new section just on mobile art (seriously considering)! Most of them I did while I was bored or really restless so there isn’t any theme here except that I was trying to go for a background pattern kind of look.

I didn’t mark the photos with “My Craft Diary”, though lately I have been rather forgetful at doing that. A lot of people do mark their photos with their name or logo or something, but I do wonder if there is really a need to do so. Hmm. Anyway, these are unmarked because I’m allowing them to be used freely! So you can save them and do something with them, but be sure to let me know what you did with them in the comments below!! I have the tendency to use my mobile drawings as my Whatsapp background picture but of course there are other uses for them I imagine. And another hint: rotate the image! I tried rotating earlier and they just look so different that way.

Lastly, a quote I wrote out as well, attempting rainbow colour shifting digitally. This was first seen (and inspired by) Motivational Monday from Amy Tangerine. Not a fantastic attempt, but it’s kind of cool. I think.

Quote is by Paulo Coelho.

Ponderings: Being creative in school

Hiya everyone, I’m back again after a crazy two weeks of deadlines in school. I have submitted my last assignment on Thursday (yay!) so I have a little bit of a lull time/a breather before it’s time to study for the upcoming exams. It’s always this busy towards the end of the semester!

Today I’ll like to share all the creative opportunities in school. You know all those creative projects that teachers/lecturers like to set? Now that we are all older and people acquire more skills, I’m starting to really see the creativity in some of the final products that my classmates come up with, compared to say when I was a secondary school student whereby creative more often than not means a skit. The creative projects that I’m going to share today are part of a module titled “Interpreting Tourism Spaces and Culture” (module code: GE4218), which is a geography module that focuses on responsibilities in tourism. We can pick any sub-theme that we want to work on and here are some projects that sparks off my creative receptors!

1. Marine Feed on Instagram. The group uses photos as well as typographies to bring their messages across, with more detailed explanations in the photo description. The project discusses captive wildlife, some pros and cons, as well as snippets of information on captive wildlife.
2. The Responsible Tourist: Caring for Pulau Ubin on WordPress. The group curated messages and advice on how to be responsible when travelling at Pulau Ubin, a small offshore island that is a popular recreational spot for locals and tourists alike. I felt that their site design was really nice and clean, and they even composed a music video to that sings out the responsibility messages!
3. GO SLOW on Facebook. This group is interesting because they feature locations in Singapore where you can slow travel, as part of slow tourism. This is a concept that I’m rather attracted to (and incidentally, also what my group worked on) and I think they did a great job with the location features.

My group did on slow food tourism on Facebook and Instagram, featuring our very own local delicacies in hawker centres. We also conducted some food trails which were rather fun to carry out in a group. All these project are a little academic oriented (this is a Honours level module afterall) but I believe all of us tried to express them in layman terms. I think they are worth a read if you have the time and is interested in the idea of what is responsibility in tourism. Unfortunately, these sites will no longer be updated since the project is already completed but there is still quite a lot of content for a one month long project.

Are there creative opportunities that you find in non-craft areas too? As always, feel free to comment or post any questions you might have. Posting would probably be more intermittent for the next month or so, as I get ready for exams. After that, I should be back for the holidays (: