Dream to travel the world
and Paint the walls,
Visit new countries
Make new buddies.
Study the culture,
See the wonders.
Stroke a parrot's feather,
And you'll know better,
That Mother Nature,
Is the greatest designer.
She creates Treasures
for us to discover.
Wrote this after Papa Balzat,Aunty Annie & family
brought us to O'reillys to feed wild parrots.The place was Amazing!
Luv~Canz :)
brought us to O'reillys to feed wild parrots.The place was Amazing!
Luv~Canz :)
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| Coincidentally, after seeing all the birds, on our way back, we spotted this cloud in the shape of a wing. The wonder of nature! Photo taken by Denise. |
Maxine's Room
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| Turquoise is Maxine's favorite color! This is when we are all really excited to get it started. |
First we went to the hardware shop to get the right paint and I must say...I LOVE LOVE loveeee the hardware shop in Australia. It's like a wonderland for me. It's HUGE and filled with varieties and amazing tools and brushes! I bought few great brushes home and I was surprise that for such good quality it wasn't even expensive. The paint is also amazing! Over here, the only paint that can compare to theirs was Nippon's. Wasn't as good, but near. The paint (too bad i forgot it's brand) was light and smooth and great coverage. It's a type of waterbase Acrylic paint and the color pigment is brilliant! Just for this reason alone, I'm already so inlove with Brisbane. Not to mention yet that the people are so lovely.
Maxine loves the nature,so I tot of making her room a little bit of a jungle kind but not over doing it. I must say, she got great taste, the turquoise color she picked came out REALLY pretty.
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| The base: All sorts of direction.(this is what happen when we r too excited) :) Who cares when u got great paint! It came out really smooth anyways. |
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| The small creepy crawlers. |
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| Done. |
After Brisbane, the next stop is Melbourne City!
Ron & Susanna’s house @Melbourne, Australia.
It was CHRISTMAS time, so I'm getting the wall done before the family Christmas Meal !
It was a pretty looking house with a beautiful garden. Susanna loves design which has a little oriental taste in it, very simple yet nice. She has chosen one of the walls at the living area to be painted. It was a very special wall to me, because its position is slanted facing the garden and captures the best natural lights. The living room is decorated with off white color sofas with a violet blanket on it.
The best type of paint to go with natural lights is semi-gloss acrylic paint. And of course, the best color to use will be violet. To give it a softer look, I’m gonna use 2 tones of violet. One lighter shade behind.
I did this free hand because I'm used to painting chinese art. Let me explain incase you don't see the linkage.
Chinese painting is about compositing in your head. The moment your brush is lay on the rice paper, the wet ink begin to spread, there’s no time for thinking your next move and there’s no outline in advance. You need to follow the flow in your head and control your brush’s speed and pressure to get it right. I was so used to that, in order to get composition of the Cherry Blossom branches right, I gotto do it the way I do Chinese painting. Move quick and follow the flow.
You can see this as an advantage and also a disadvantage where I can’t statically plan the branches by slowly outlining them first. :) However, there are certain types of graphic that MUSt be statically plan in advance. Like the restaurant mural I did.
I am happy with this mural as I have painted it exactly how I wanted it to be.
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| Ron & Susanna's House - Outdoor I LOVE those Candy cane lights! |
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| That's me at the corner. I bet you didn't notice me, with that HUGE chirstmas tree going on in there. ;) |
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| Although this isn't a white Christmas, but Christmas in Melbourne with Ron & Susanna and family is really different from those I had in Malaysia. It has that true Christmas FEEL. The decor, the carols, the people, the smiles, the gingerbread house, the streets..everything is just sooO..CHRISTMAS! I dunno how to explain, it's just different. |
Hong Kong Trip
Hong Kong is very interesting. Senior citizens are in good shape ( as in 60 years old with 6 packs and tone bods) playing ping pong at the park early in the morning and younger ones are looking busy , very hardworking, most had a day job and a part-time night job at some fast-food joint. Most business people are into Feng Shui and very cultural stuff. It’s a bit like Korea, you don’t see much fatter in size people, maybe because they move around a lot on foot. Walking along the street at night; I can see a lot of Taxi drivers will gather around smoking and chatting out loud about women, celebrity news and money. :s
In the major city, working class people dressed fashionably and looking really good. During my visit, they were having an exhibition of LV products and history. So I went and check it out. It was very inspiring. Too bad they don’t allow us to take photos. In there, they show different designers’ portfolio who had worked with LV’s print and they also display some of their personal works and paintings with the theme of "night life around the world",yup! pretty interesting stuff.
There are many small little things in Hong Kong that inspired and motivated me in many aspects. Majorly was how they make the best of what they have. Regarding murals and design, here are some pictures that put ideas in my head.
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| This makes good silhouette vector design on wall. |
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| The Lv art gallery |
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| Disneyland - Disney Cartoon character sketch! :) |
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| Classic Disney Watercolor sketch. LOVE love love them, they bring back my whole magical childhood imaginations. |
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| Disneyland. These are hand drawn musical notes.Not sticker nor wallpaper. You just cant use stickers, it'll bring down the quality of the place. |
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| All along the waiting hall before entering the 3D theater. |
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| Disney's Hollywood hotel. Black and white pencil sketch mural. |
Seremban Trip - Indian Wedding
My sister knew that I love colorful things and that I have never been to an Indian wedding, so she decided to bring me to her friend's wedding in an Indian Temple hall at Seremban, she says I should totally check it out, I'll like it. She was right, it was alot going on for me. First I love the Sarees the most, the Sarees that the lady guests wore to the wedding are so beautiful, the beading details and the sparkle of the sequins, Jasmine on the hair,the jewelries, nicely groomed..I think this is a royalty type of beautiful.
The environment is happy. Everyone carries a wide happy blissful smile, greets one another, giving hugs. And ofcourse, once I entered the hall, first thing that caught my eye was a HUGE hand-carved portrait. It was the first time I came this close to check it out ( usually only from the internet ). To be honest, the hand carvings are SUPER fine and detailed and it was carefully hand painted. These artists are so amazing, yet I have never seen any who goes to the media and boast:" Look I can do such great work, can u?"
I think these are GREAT masterpieces from great skillful and humble artists.And I believe there are so many of them, after finding out that the whole Temple are mountained with hand-carved statues. This is only the hall.
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| The 1st Carving I saw. |
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| Look at the detailing of the hair. |
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| That's my cute sister (in pink) hugging the beautiful Bride :) |
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| The Garland. SMells really nice! |
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| Kolam - A type of sandart decorated using colored rice powder. This is place at the entrance, I believe it is a sign of invitation welcoming the guest. |
The 2 Elephant mural visuals I did inspired by this visit
Singapore Trip-
We stayed in the beautiful Intercontinental Hotel, Bugis.
Intercontinental is beautiful, it is the only world class hotel in Singapore which preserved the Perakan artistry.It is a blend of Chinese art and Malay style together creating a hormonious Atmosphere. Besides all that, it is also a really terrific location to get to your SHOPPINGS!!
Here are some of the photos :)
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| First of all, the beds are SUPER SOFT & 'Cloudy'. That's my little sister in there snuggling in the 'marshmallows' |
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| Ok it's not about my pink boxers pj, it's about the carpet- check it out : Malay geometric pattern |
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| Blending with Chinese Style Hand painted Cabinet- Truely Peranakan. |
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| Pretty Hand-Painted Ceiling! |
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| A sweet present from my buds - my dream brush* |
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| And the best "lining" brushes from Kevin. Pouch from Ash, Jing,Vis and Van~ |
Heading to the city~
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| The big neon Xmas Tree.That's me on the left, my lil sister on the right. |
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| OK...u may think that I like this coz it's pink. But actually I LOVE it, coz these guys are GIGANTIC, PINK and with BUTTERFLIES! During the evening, they just Gloww. |
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| Hello Kitty jewelry display.Sweet! I wanna do a Hello Kitty wall with this kind of sweet pink. Will try when I get the chance to. |
Nope, I didnt get to paint any mural during this trip, cause the schedule is too fun and packed, we haven even had enough shopping. Maybe next time. I'll 'dominate' one of my friend's house to do it. Initially when I started wall paintings, I did it on small apartments, because the space are smaller, by putting a little mural at some corner can really light up the area and even make the space appear not so uptight and more interesting. Little murals are really friendly for apartments and condos.When it is place on the right area, it can lift up the mood of the entire space.
The most frequently request area was,the wall between the kitchen and dining area. ( like a little partition wall ). Because the kitchen area is wet and oily, it's not suitable for wallpaper to last. They'll 'bubble' up after 5-8 years.
Tips for painters or people who have the 'bubble' wall problem :
However getting it painted with high quality anti-fungal and washable Acrylic paint, you can easily maintain them for years. That's why,for both the mural and the base, I will use that type of paint. So your wall design will last.
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| My B.A.B.Es - Best Awesomest Buddy Ever. I luv EACH of them to bits,too bad Jing is missing frm the picture. I hope things will remain as sweet. |
