Exam is Hitler's Middle Name

It's official. I'm released from Auschwitz.

I HAVE SURVIVED THE TWO WEEK ORDEAL CALLED THE EXAMS!

Oh yeah. Oh yeahh. ~hyperdance~ *trying not to think about how well (or rather, how bad) I did*
Here's a lil recap of my two-week isolation + being taken POW by the evil exam monster. I swear, Hitler's middle name is Exam. (Adolf Exam Hitler?) Anyway.

Day 1
It's a holiday before the exams. "Holiday" is now effectively "revision time". Tomorrow's math exam. Math is important. Math is hard. Math needs cramming. Wake up at 10 and reaffirm my own belief in myself. Yeah, I'm those kinds of people who write motivational notes for themselves like "You can do it!" and stick 'em on the mirror. Anyway. Feel like a loser. Work super diligently, and by the end of the day I'd put in more than 10 hours. Not bad! I now feel like a half-loser, as opposed to a full one.

Day 2
YAYY! Math exam is over. This means, PERMISSION TO REST! Besides, I totally kicked ass revising yesterday, right? My rest stretches on and on and on and on and on and...until 8 p.m., basically. The next day's grammar exam, so I'm not TOO concerned, but there are tons of other exams to revise for. I feel guilty. Stay up late trying to revise.

Day 3
Right. Okay. I messed up revision yesterday, I'm kinda screwed today coz I don't have much time, but WHATEVER. Concentrate. Oh no it's CHINESE tomorrow! That's extremely.depressing.for.someone.who.sucks.at.chinese.like.me. *big sigh*, takes out a chinese book, revises. Nothing seems to actually register in my head. Oh well. I tried. (That's my excuse to make my pathetic self-esteem feel better.)

Day 4
So maybe chinese paper 1 didn't go so well. But the other chinese paper was okay, wasn't it? By this time I wonder how on earth I could be so concentrated revising for the math exam. Anyway, tomorrow's LS and english literature. ARGH. ~cramcramcramcram~
10 minutes later: (In the kitchen wolfing random objects down my throat) What? Eating is a necessity in life.

Day 5, 6
Yay it's the weekend. Boohoo it's revision and revision and revision. <insert the unfortunate, infuriating art episode> OH NO no time for revision! AHH! =.=

Day 7
Cramming for science again.
FINALLY I have another productive day. I spend half of it doing a bit of history prep rather un-serious-ly, and then: OMG It's Four Already! and then seriously starting to revise for science.
Had a few little trips to the internet. Suddenly it was NINE O'CLOCK. I had a bunch of papers and exercises and spare worksheets that I wanted to do, but I now have no.time.to.do.those.exercises! *GROWL*
And then the usual guilt kicks in and when I find that I don't know the answer to a question on the exam, I beat myself up.

Day 8
The exterminations in gas chambers HAVE BEGUN. Tomorrow is history and Technology&living. Then it's chinese history and then geography. These subjects = heavy revision required! (danger zone)
 and we have 'em ALL in a row! Life is about making choices and everything, so I decided to ditch technology and living and do history. yeah.
Another late night.

Day 9
I'm beginning to feel it. I get home at 4.30 pm ish due to undisclosed reasons and start revision RIGHT away because if you've ever done chinese history before, you'll know exactly how thoroughly exhausting and energy-draining it is to memorize every nitpicking detail of some bloody king's laws. UGH.
Surprisingly, I manage to concentrate (may I add, very very well - yes I'm tooting my own horn here :p) and finished everything before 12.30 am which is MAJOR BREAKTHROUGHH! woohooo~

Day 10
Of course, everytime I concentrate superduper hard there's always the rebound. Yeah. I come home and mess around for two hours. I try to study to no avail. My brain is refusing to work and instead all the past exam stuff begj  popping up and all I can think about is chinese history. I take a 3 hour nap, get up, panic and start revising till the wee hours of morning. I'm beginning to feel like a beat-up Toyota truck with a malfunctioning engine.

Day 11
I come home. ALL THE MAJOR EXAMS ARE OVER! Now THAT calls for celebration...but not too much yet, because there are five chinese papers due the next day and I haven't started on any one of them yet. Too busy cramming.
Just finished 'em and now I have to brush up on my mandarin cuzza the oral test tomorrow~

Day 12
Oral didn't go so well. I backtracked cuz I read something wrong, which is MAJOR NONO!
Oh well. EXAMS ARE OVER!!! THIS CALLS FOR CELEBRATION.
REJOICE!!!

Epilogue
Went to sleepover. Did what girls do in sleepovers - hideous makeovers, barbeques, aimless bickering, gossiping. Slept at 3 a.m. Not a good idea. Feel even more like a malfunctioning Toyota.
Can't I be a nice new Subaru for once? Or like, a working Porsche?
Get up early for a lesson.
Brain not working anymore.


~Sorry for the long post! ~ If you're still reading this, TEN AWESOMES FOR STICKING WITH ME! :D

I'm Very. Annoyed.

Okay Okay I know I said I wouldn't post. But something really INFURIATING happened just now and I just HAD to vent, so here it is. (or maybe it's just my excuse to take a break from studying ?)

 As you know, this is my exam period, which means I'm cramming in as much revision time as possible. I'm already short on time with all my extracurricular stuff and jazz exam and speech festival competitions and whatnot, but this exhibition for art that I REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted to do cropped up. The exhibit was due tomorrow since there was a truck coming to pick everything up, so I dashed to art class to finish my project even though I wanted to stay home and revise.
AFTER I finished the freaking project and was real pleased with myself, the instructor told me that because I had been absent for quite some time before (I skipped some classes to cram in more revision time), she didn't think I'd be able to complete it today, and so she hadn't planned on me participating in this exhibition after all. Seriously?! After I'd worked from 11.30 a.m. to 5 p.m. non-stop and actually COMPLETING the project, she tells me that I can't do the exhibit?! I'm angry (and fatigued - but a douse of coffee solved that problem).

The reason was because I had only coated one layer of paint, whereas some other people who weren't absent as much as me the previous few times had time to coat two layers. One layer of paint is apparently "not thick enough". GRRRRR!! This is my EXAM period I'm talking about. I basically wasted 5.5 hours working on some art that could have been done AFTER my exams!
I'm pissed that I can't do the exhibit. And about the fact that the instructor only told me I couldn't do it after I'd completed the project. She had suggested after a few hours that I give up trying to make it, but when I said I really wanted to take part, she just nodded and let me work my butt off for another 2 hours! That's sneaky. I'd rather she told me straight off, before I even started working on the project, that I wasn't even going to be in the exhibition. Such a cow. (Sorry can't resist)
 The instructor told me that she'd wait and see how things turn out and that she'd slot my thing in if possible, but I don't want to "wait and see." I want a guarantee.
GOSH I'm mad. Anyways, crossmyfingers I REALLY REALLY REALLY hope that some miracle will happen or someone will intervene and get my project onto the exhibition!!! I do not want this to be the first year in which I do not participate in an exhibition.
Anyway. -Rant over - I'll be posting the pics of the project up after I get it back. UGH. Oh and I'm not going to be posting for a few weeks cuz it's exams, unless something as infuriating as this pops up again and I just HAVE to post.

Artist's Cat

I have a cat. I'm pretty sure you all know that. Wait...do you? I thought I'd told you! *no response*
 Anywayy. Because I'm procrastinating, I decided to take pictures of everything and anything and blog about random stuff, and then it hit me: I've never posted a picture of my cat before.
So here's the wiggly, spunky artist's cat that has until now remained behind-the scenes :)

She's so adorable! But I'm MORE adorable :p Haha so much for the doting mother.

Anyway, this belongs to an art blog like this because...(my mind is racing to think of something reasonable) because...the camera angle is artistic :) I practically had to lie on the floor to get it!

I should probably do an intro paragraph for my cat so the tabloids can introduce her properly when she rises to fame.

She's called Fafa (lame name - don't ask why) and has the temperament of an over-friendly dog. Whenever someone rings the bloody bell, she dashes out and literally sits right at the door to wait for the door to open. When I come home, she practically collapses onto the ground and starts wiggling around to lure me to her. If I don't pet her tummy, she gives this mournful look (this is how she manipulates me) but when I do, she looks content for about a second and then puts on this martyred expression, as if she's enduring my petting. Such a sly cat.

Oh, and she licks people. Her tongue feels like dry sandpaper, unlike dog's tongues which feel like soppy sponges, so it makes people think that her tongue is really clean, but I shudder to think of where it's been - I've seen her comb herself, including her -ahem- rump. In fact, she does it quite often. Ehh.

Yes, so that's my cat. Anyone else have cute pets?

* I will probably NOT be posting again for some time (around three weeks) since my exams are coming out and I need to revise. Because revising gives high marks. And high marks make me feel good. And I need to feel good because my self esteem is just that low. :) just kidding...

20 Minute Sketch

Yeah yeah. I haven't posted in a while. I know, I know...
BUT THERE IS A REASON. And this reason is...

wait for it...



a bit more...



nearly there...



drumroll please...





Okay... whatever. It's basically because, well, I've been busy with schoolwork and entry exams and jazz exam and whatnot.
This is basically the period in my life (actually, it's like this all year long) where I have 9 tests a week. Yes, 9 tests. Crazy, right? I sleep at around 12 every night, barely finishing all my school stuff, giving up Nanowrimo in pursuit of getting some shut-eye and not having any time to do what I want. Like art.
All the little 10 minute breaks I get in a day, I use for sitting idly in my chair, all my energy just totally...drained...from...me.

Which is why I didn't have time for art.

BUT I finally did two 20 minute sketches, and HERE THEY ARE :)

This is based on a drawing of a baseball glove.

This unifinished drawing of a nun-ish type of woman (not too sure about that) is based on an ink drawing by some unknown artist :) I know she looks a bit like an old hag, but that's probably just my sucky drawing skills.

Alright, I'll admit that they're not exactly the best stuff I've done.

But hey, I did this within 20 minutes and that's prettayy good for such a short time, right? Besides, I'm not a fast artist. I more of a, say, slow person who takes time to draw (that's my excuse to make myself feel better).

Anyway, I'll be completing these sketches and posting the completed stuff up :D

Toodles!

Oh my goshh I have three major tests coming up next week :/
AND IM STILL BLOGGING...
(internet obsession much?)
Anyway. Before I run off to start studying and immerse myself in the vast ocean of unending textbook chapters, I feel the need to announce that,

IM GONNA START ON A RAG QUILT PROJECT :DD
I'm obsessed with patchwork and sewing. I just never find time to do it. So hopefully, I'm gonna muster enough time and motivation to actually finish the rag quilt :)

Colour ideas, anyone?

Cat Links

In yet another procrastinating session, I've gone on a youtube spree. Again.

So it has come to this: eleven o'clock at night, staying up watching cat videos. What a glamorous life, I know.

Anyway.

Cutest hug ever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw4KVoEVcr0&feature=aso

Got me laughing like crazy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLDbGqJ2KYk&feature=related
(you have to watch till the end before it's really funny though)

Fat cats:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHUKXCsxQwc&feature=related - japanese
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHUKXCsxQwc&feature=related - can't wash himself properly

Potty-trained butt kinda klutzy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ug7WEUxH68&feature=related

Low On Art Supplies

I really need to get more charcoal :/ I don't know why, but I really like the willow charcoal (medium) from Coates. Linked here :) I also really want Prismacolour markers. I can't believe I'd forgotten to get em when I went to ze US last summer.

Oh and I've never tried serious graphite before and I really really really really really want to try. I've read other people's art blogs and their granite art is AMAZING. *whimper* I've also never really did a proper sculpture (the white marble kind you see in museums), so I want to try that too, when life actually allows me to. I have SO much homework, it's unbelievable. The education department must be slightly insane.
My to-do list is at least two feet tall.

The Cat and Her Tricks

My cat. Her strangely irresistible eyes and heartrending purr sets off a little wave of shivering affection in me, and should she lie down on the floor belly-up, do a little wiggle, and look up at me, she will have - without fail - charmed me into dropping whatever I was doing to rub her belly.(I swear, cats are THE. best. pity-me, persuasive, i'll-make-you-love-me creatures. ever.). That crafty little fox, once I actually start to enjoy petting her, she puts on a martyred face fit for a saint as if she was the one making the ever-so-enormous sacrifice by patiently enduring my rubbing and petting/treacly outpouring of affection. Once I get up to leave though, she alarmedly cocks her head and stares at me with such indignance that it is impossible not for me to go back to petting her. Seriously. The cat is SUCH the wily, capricious creature.

...or maybe I'm just too soft at heart? :p

Portrait of Einstein

This took me AGES :/ Seven hours working with charcoal and grey acrylic is...not the most pleasant notion. 'Specially when your fingers are all black and sooty at the end. I guess it was all worth it though...what do you think?

Note of Randomosity (grand words FTW!) -  My new fav song is "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz. Obsession kicking in... You done done me and you bet I felt it, I tried to be chill but you so cool that I melted...hmmhumm... Anyway. I will stop humming now and let you escape from the clutches of this crazy blogger now :p

A Long Ramble about Math, Technology, and My Cat

I just found out that long division with indices and algebra is really hard. Like, REALLY. HARD. I spent 20 minutes on one friggin question and I'm about to die with about 19 left to go. I guess I'm just not a math person. Everytime I do math, I get really sleepy, and I'm not even faking it. ~groan~ Oh GOSH and I still need to do boring stuff about tangents and sins and cosins. ARGHHH.

AND my macbook still isn't fixed yet. We were gonna get an iPad, but we still haven't got one yet :( Lots of people say iPad is definitely better than Kindle, but is that true?? It's getting harder and harder to pick the best device, what with all the competition and everything. Now even BlackBerry's gonna unveil a PC Tablet to rival the iPad. ARGHHH choices, choices.

I just noticed how obese my cat is.

*A/N: There are some slight proportional inaccuracies in this watercolour, but I couldn't find a way to inconspicuously fix it, so I just left it as it is.

This watercolour is supposed to portray the ambience of a street vendor in the roads of Hong Kong. Although I have seen, passed and eaten lots of these stalls and their food, the inspiration for this particular drawing wasn't my own experience. Rather, it was someone's (probably a tourist; how ironic is that!) photograph of an egg puff hawker. I don't really like doing big paintings with watercolour, because the paper gets fuzzy if you rub colour onto it too much and then you can't add any other colours onto it. Another thing about using watercolour is that you have to wait for the first layer of colour to dry if you want to pile another layer of colour on top effectively. This one was no different; I encountered the usual problems. I'm still glad I did it though :)

GOSHH. I was scrutinizing the picture and I find it reallllyyyy reallyyy hard to resist the urge to tweak everything a bit.

Penguin Watercolour

I did this three years ago. I was trying to cram all my then-newly-learned techniques into this watercolour, hence the dotty blue background and the greenish-brown ground. It's supposed to be two penguins with one of them sitting on their egg. I put this in a box for Mother's Day, coz it symbolizes a family and everything, but then I couldn't finish it before Mother's Day, so whateverrr. lol.

HAPPY MID - AUTUMN!! (to the people who celebrate it)

Revolution of the Forks

I actually don't know why I did this painting; I didn't really want to do it. It stemmed from my art teacher telling me to do sketches of something at different angles and I impulsively yelled, "FORKS!"

So that was that. I randomly decided to make the background a desert, and I just sort of went with the flow from there...

I find art extremely funny. When you look at a piece of art, it seems really hard to draw and you're convinced that you'll never be able to draw something like that (at least to me), but then once you get started, you find out it's really not THAT hard. I was really apprehensive about this piece at first because it was only my second time using oil paints, and also because I don't particularly enjoy sketching stuff (forks are really hard to sketch, by the way - I spent HOURS doing drafts). I planned for it to have a Renaissance feel, but it turned out to be a bit...Salvador Dali maybe??

Rotten Corn Sketch

Sketch of a dehydrated corn. I lurrvee how the skin is all crisp and purple :D

Oh, and my macbook broke :( The top rows of keys on the keyboard don't work and my iTunes is wonky. My iPhoto and iMovie are kinda screwed too :/ Ugh. I MISS MY MAC :( I'm using a lenovo right now and it's SO different from using a mac...

Mounted Cow Head

This got displayed in some exhibition about cows. It's actually acrylic on flax cloth cut into a cow head shape and stuffed with cotton, then mounted on a wooden plank. The design was basically inspired by Aboriginal patterns and old tribal stuff like that, which I really like for some reason...Yahh. I'm obsessed with Africa and countries like that :D You know, prairies and savannahs and safaris and tigers and lions and elephants and huts and tribesmen and cannibals and I could go on and on and on :)

ANNNYWAYY. It's mid-autumn festival today!! Tomorrow I have a day off from school, which is So. Awesome.!! Except I still have to study, what with lots of tests coming up and stuff. :(

Me being a mooncake lover, I couldn't resist eating lots of them (too many I should say) - not my fault they're so good!. I'm so bloated I can feel puke any second, so I better get away from the keyboard before my vomit sprays over my computer :)

A Squinty Eye Sketch

Now when I look at it, I keep finding things to tweak, like how the eye is a BIT too squinty and the white spots inside the eye are slightly too bright/white, but ah well.

I quite liked doing this sketch. It was funnn :) The inspiration was a magazine picture. So I guess technically it's not my fault if the person's eye was squinty. (There we go again...excuses, excuses)

Cya!!

Oils: Snow Scene in Canada

My first ever oil painting!! The inspiration was a snow scene in Canada.

I found out that using oil paints are actually extremely hard. The turpentine stinks and it's really hard to do the first coating of paint, but I think the end result was worth it :)

Peas in a Pod

Sketch of peas. This was done in art class extremely grudgingly...

Upside Down

I really like the idea for this watercolor (yes, it's watercolor! I know it looks like poster colour, but trust me, I'm not stooping that low to use such an elementary medium...yet). It's supposed to be a chef and a nobleman at the same time. :)

Rubbish Turned Flamingo

Just found this one from a looonnnnggggggg time ago, as in, when I was around 8 or something?? It was supposed to be a flamingo made out of unwanted rubbish. I remember I was soooo proud when it got displayed at some exhibition and featured on the news...

LOL :)

Sketch of a Pencil and Shavings

A sketch I did last year. If the sketch is any good at all, it's fairly obvious that it's a pencil and some scattered shavings.

:)

SOOO HAPPY!!

I'm SO friggin happy. Recorder exam is overrrr :DD I think I did ok, but I TOTALLY screwed up sight-singing :/ I sang it in the wrong key. ARGH. Not really looking forward to the results...

But still. At least it's over. I decided to "celebrate" and lazed around watching The Ellen Show for three hours :)

Sketch of a Peanut

A sketch of a peanut a loonngg (sort of) time ago :)

Overwhelmed

Life's just sort of overwhelming right now. I have a recorder exam coming up and my scales aren't exactly up to par yet, homework is just swarming in and I'm buried up to my neck in it, I have lots of other things on my mind and I haven't touched any art for a looonnngggg time because of everything else I have to do. WHICH SUCKS. :(

I feel like curling up and going to bed and just leaving all that worrying to someone else. It especially frustrates me when I look at the clock and discover that, say, I only have two hours left before I need to sleep. This sends me into a frenzy of paranoia and worry worry worry, which is what I'm doing right now, and so I have to go now and start doing something useful. ARGHHH. I WISH THERE WERE 25 HOURSE IN A DAYYYYY!!

Recorder exam

I have a recorder exam (EEEKKK!!) on the 21st...It's scales, arpeggios and diminished sevenths for me untiil then :( It really sucks, because I used to do descant recorder and now I've changed to treble, which has different fingering. I NEVER get the fingering right. I have a feeling I'm going to flunk sight-reading AND scales. ~sigh

Better run to start practising nowwww!!

The Beginning of a Blog

I've had a track record of starting blogs and never finding time to write in them, but this time I told myself that I WILL blog here. So here you'll (hopefully) find a blog about me, my art, my writing, and my rather boring life.
Enjoy!