New Year’s Resolution 2015

It has been a great year in 2014 and my new chapter of my life has just started in the UK. I think it is time for me to set a New Year’s Resolution 2015 now!

New Year’s Resolution 2015 for Fine Art and my professional development
_____________________________________________________

1. Build up a professional photography and makeup portfolio
2. Take weekly pictures of any kinds of photography
3. Take weekly pictures of portrait photography
4. Start portrait photography based on my drawing
5. Try mixed media with drawing or collage
6. Blog twice or more a week
7. Go online often
8. Work hard

What is your New Year’s Resolution 2015?

Identical Twins?

Identical Twins? Reflections are always good for photography and this time I tried to shoot through mirror and window, which makes them look like identical twins.

Finally, I would like to show you how I transformed her facial expression by photoshop. I made her reflection look greedy and made her actual face look even more innocent. This made a total difference and contrast between those twins.

Do you like this series of my portrait photography?

What am I interested in?

Everyone told me that that was a huge change for me to study Fine Art but not continually studying Makeup instead. I was wondering if that really mattered as I believe Art and fashion, or makeup can be combined together, like perfectly.

I stopped studying Makeup and one of the reasons was I have already took loads of trainings before I came here as well as I have lots of makeup-related diplomas or certificates that prove that I am qualified. Also, I have been working as a makeup artist for four years or more, so I guess that there is no point to continually study in Makeup.

So, why art? These two things are totally different. Yes, they are completely different. However, art is everywhere, like everything. Every time when we read a fashion magazine, there is always art there. The collage I made that I show above, it was actually something that I found in the fashion and beauty magazine, I cut out everything that I am interested in, and then pasted them all together.

So you all know that I am totally in love with makeup, and that is the main reason why I am in love with portraiture at the same time. I found portrait photography really interesting while I was documenting my works, where I could put makeup, art and photography together.

I am so happy to study in Fine Art where I find my interest in photography and explore my creativity for makeup.

Honest and Dreamy Portraits

This is my final project of term one for lens based which focuses on portrait and self-portrait. I like to take portraits and this really is a project that related to my personal long-term project too! I will need a minimum of four, two for reach of the portrait and self-portrait.

Main ideas: (1) A portrait of someone that you know and one that you feel shows them in an ‘honest’ way; (2) A portrait that shows the person in a way in which you or you both would like others to see them.

Picture 1: Showing my friend – Amber Stanley in an ‘honest’ way.

I turned her into a very old woman with makeup as she and I think that she actually looks much older than her age. I made it a little bit exaggerated because I wanted my idea stand out even more, and how she looked a bit sad as she did not want to look older than her age.

Picture 2: Showing how we both want others to see her.

I made this picture a bit blurry to make it look like as dreamy as possible, and the big contrast (by comparing both pictures I took) makes her look even younger than her age!

As I told you that this is my last project this term, I will still keep taking pictures in my leisure time because I enjoyed it so much! Also, I will show you my self-portraits that I did for this project soon!

Definition of Portrait

Portraiture is one of the artistic ideas that I am concentrating on, and a portrait could be a painting, photograph, sculpture or other representation of a person. (That was what I define portrait.) There are two definition of portrait in Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary at http://Oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com that I am showing you in the following:

portrait noun ˈpɔːtreɪt ; ˈpɔːtrət ; ˈpɔːrtrət

1 a painting, drawing or photograph of a person, especially of the head and shouldersHe had his portrait painted in uniform.a full-length portraita portrait paintersee also self-portrait

2 a detailed description of somebody/something

synonym depictiona portrait of life at the French court

That was how I define portrait/portraiture, but after I saw the work from few artists who work on different type of portrait, including landscape and animals, made me re-think about what constitutes the portrait, and I believed that there is a huge boundary to consider what portrait actually is. 

Omaha Beach, D-Day 1944 by Robert Capa

The Steerage 1907 by Alfred Stieglitz

Fils / Père: Nathan, 9 ans & Ulric, 32 ans by Ulric Collette

These portraits are quite different from each other. Which one will you be considered as a portrait? Sometimes an object or a landscape could also be in a portrait, like a portrait of landscape. What do you think?

Welcome to Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries. Word of the Day. Available athttp://Oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com (Accessed: 3 December 2014).

Tempting Touch by Tong King-sum

I went back to Hong Kong this weekend, and I finally had some spare time to visit Hong Kong Museum of Art and I really enjoyed one of the galleries from this museum which was all about Sculpture – Tempting Touch, the Art of Tong King-sum.

Tong King-sum was born in Hong Kong and had worked as a designer who was based in Hong Kong. He was keen on art since his younger days but he first started to learn sculpture under Cheung Yee in 1971.

Tong believed that the sculpture of body structures and muscles that demonstrate vitality and he thought the upper body itself is prefect that was why he did not carve the head, arms and legs.

I understand why Tong liked to make perfect-body sculptures after reading the background of the artist, and which makes me think about I should always live like there is no tomorrow. His work did impress me.

Sketch: Standing 1987, Teak

Sketch: Standing 1987, Teak

Sketch: movement 1996. Teak

Sketch: movement 1996. Teak

He named these pieces as ‘Sketch’ because he actually used live models to pose in different ways and make some sketches so that he could closely observe the effect of gravity on the movement and form of the human body in order to delineate precisely the outline, skeleton and muscle, giving life to a rigid wooden block and presenting sculptures that almost breathe.

Sketch: lying 3 1981, Teak

Sketch: lying 3 1981, Teak

Every details he made makes me stop and see every single detail precisely.

Back 1979, Teak

Back 1979, Teak

If you are interested in his sculpture too, the one and the only one method is to go to Hong Kong and visit Hong Kong Museum of Art. More details please click here.

Tips on Best Images for Blogging

Having the best images for your blog is considered as an important issue because images could be something that raise your audience’s interests. No one is going to read a very long passage without a picture. Now, I am going to show you some tips on the best images for your blog from my blogging experience and what I have researched on the Internet.

1. Keep your picture size as small as possible. It is very annoying to wait for an images to be uploaded on your blog/to keep someone waiting for your images to be loaded.

2. A smaller picture size does not mean a smaller picture. Always keep your picture to be seen easily. You can always upload your picture to somewhere and then save your JPEG image around 80% quality range and there will be 20% compression which makes your image size a little bit smaller but it stays in the same quality without any pixels changed.

3. Do NOT distort your image or it will not be in proportion.

Click the link HERE to see more tips on best images for blogging.

Beauty & Makeup Blogging

Online presence is very important in this century and blogging is one of the significant social media for artist/makeup artist to share their work to people around the world. I have done some researches on different makeup bloggers as I think it will help me developing mine. There are two blogs I am going to show in the following that I think I can learn something from them, and there is something that I should avoid at the same time.

Both bloggers are well-known ‘vloggers’ on YouTube, and I believe that it is a very good idea to start blogging with YouTube as it is another significant social media for makeup artist.

Example 1: Michelle Phan

Things I should do with my makeup blog:
1. It has a professional layout with her own domain name, everything is clear and easy-to-navigate.
2. Categories are clear and it has a variety of information with different subject from fashion and beauty to her daily things.
3. Pictures are beautifully edited and I do not need to read through everything but only click on the post that I would love to see.
4. A long passage talking about Michelle Phan herself.
5. It links to other social media like Facebook and pinterest, which makes us much easier to contact her.

Things I should avoid:
1. Advertisement that are not related to their business, and its advertisement is actually covering her post which is quite annoying.

Example 2: Zoella

Things I should do with my makeup blog:
1. A long passage talking about Zoella herself.
2. It links to other social media like Facebook and YouTube, which makes us much easier to contact her.

Things I should avoid:
1. There is too many advertisement in this blog and the background is also the advertisement that is not related to her posts.
2. The layout is not professional enough as it looks a lot like a blog by Google blogger with her own personal domain name only.
3. There is no category or label for readers to nevigate and I have to read every single posts, which means there is no specific theme for her blog and it is very hard to find out something specific.

There is a lot that I can do with my makeup blog. I am now going to start developing my makeup blog and I am sure it will accomplish my career aspiration as well!

Print-making Crit

I have been doing a lot of prints within 7 weeks, and my crit for print-making has finally come. I found it really useful for me as I did receive a great deal of advice and inspirations from others, especially from my tutor. In the following I am going to show you some of the prints I have done and my artistic statement specially for my print crit.

Here is my artistic statement for my print-making crit:

I like to focus on self-portraiture and mix it with nature, and I believe the main reason behind is being a makeup artist that I have been working for over two years. I am totally interested in makeup as I think it is like painting on faces instead of paper, and it is really challenging because I am painting on a 3D surface instead. At the same time, I believe that floral things beautifully represent either my positive or negative feelings. When both of them come together, they become something really unique that only representing me.

   
 

I found a real big problem after this crit as I did not really mix them together properly. They are separated like there are lots of portraits and flowers. What I am going to do is to try putting them together in one piece of art that really means something, like the last picture I show here!

Hong Kong is stacked!

Hong Kong is an urbanized city with full of buildings, and it’s always crowded where it will never get tired as you can actually see lots of lights at night, which is so-called light pollution and it’s very common and normal in Hong Kong.

Stacked – Hong Kong is a series of pictures on the dense urban environments, and architecture of Hong Kong’s public housing by Peter Stewart who is a travel and fine art photographer based in Australia. Stewart love to focus on capturing cityscapes from around the world, and he also like working with film and shooting street photography, like the one he did in Hong Kong.

I am originally from Hong Kong, but I have never seen HK within these angles, and I just found them very interesting and extraordinarily beautiful!

Tetris
Choi Hung Estate in Wong Tai Sin.

Vortex
Oi Man Estate in Ho Man Tin, Kowloon

The Golden Cube
Cho Yiu Chuen Estate, Lai King

The Cylinder
Lai Tak Tseun Apartments in Causeway Bay

They are so stunning! Visit Peter Stewart Photography for more amazing work from him and click here to view more pictures from the same series.

If you have time, please visit Hong Kong at least once! 

Enjoying Sunshine and Nature

Another reason that I chose Lens based was I could practice my photography skill and document my makeup work at the same time. Also, I am sure it will accomplish my career aspiration. ‘Enjoying Sunshine and Nature‘ is a series of pictures that I took and edited, and it focuses on portrait to capture the moment of how sunshine and nature work together.

  

I enjoyed doing fashion and makeup photography all on my own as I will always feel so achieved when the edited pictures finally appear in the magazine and the credits go to me.

Art Direction, photography, hair and makeup, styling, editing by Amy LAI
Modelling by Khadija ADAM

Rose & Me

I have been doing a lot of prints throughout, and this is my very first time to try painting, and put them all together as a mixed media work. I really like how I mixed them and blended them together in one work, and it is like a completed work now! I think I will experiment doing work with different media like drawing and paper-cutting as well.

I did loads of collagraph prints for the same rose I engraved on the board, and I cut three of the extras out for the painting I did below.

Rose here represents me, I might be the wallflower that no one realized my existence, but I am the one who is ‘obvious’ enough to show the ‘potential’ within the sea of flower.

Gothic Fashion

Most of the time, my ideas come from my observation, and I did this shoot because I saw a majestic church in the city centre where I found it would fit the theme of Gothic.

The pictures below show the before and after that I edited with photoshop, I made the background of the church in black-and-white colour as I believed it would make it feel even more Gothic, and its contrast will make the model stand out.

I hope you like this shoot and thanks for my stunning model – Khadija Adam.
Photography, hair, makeup, styling and editing by Amy Aguilera.

Sewing x Monoprint

I really like what I’ve done this time, and I think I’ll keep making prints with loads of different materials with different textures! What I found the fun part of print-making would be the outcome that you never know how it will look and it’s always like a surprise for me! I enjoyed it so much!

They are from the same image that I “sewed” rather than painted/drew on paper, but I’ve used both sides of that pieces and the back looks so cool and abstract because I didn’t know how it went while I was sewing!

 

I experimented loads of colours and was trying to find the best one I like most. Which one do you like more? I like the red one and the very first one I show above. 

  

Finally, I cut out the extra ones and made them all together on one paper, like making collage.

This was so much fun! I’m gonna try another style of sewing next time!