Let's Talk About....

Love?
Nope. That's Celine Dion's song.

Art.

I am definitely not going to lecture you about art, as I am not even close to an expert. Just a common observer. I believe some of you sometimes are just wondering why a jumble of straight lines can be a piece of art, and worth around S$ 4000? It is actually what crossed our minds when our Art teacher, Mr. Lim Soo Ngee brought us around to the Art Exhibition in NAFA, just downstairs from our classroom. "We" here refer to me and my peers in the Western Art class (very beginners are we). It has good mix of colours, true. But why is that selling so high? We don't need to be an artist to be able to make straight lines, do we?

When my friends were questioning and Mr. Lim was busy explaining about the texture, colour, impression, optical effect (is it what he said?) and dunno what dunno what, something just flashed in my head.

Remembering the time when Mr. Lim corrects our drawing in our drawing blocks. He uses a certain technique just to HOLD THE PENCIL. Even until now, I still can't immitate that. Just to hold the pencil, for my goodness sake... OK, try this. Just put the last segment of your small finger (of which hand that you use, right for my case) on the paper, your palm floating above the paper and you just hold and move the pencil with your thumb, point and middle finger. What do you usually do? Looking at me and my classmates, we conclude that the commoners do it this way: put your palm on the paper, supported by the outside part and... smudge all over the paper. All the graphite from the pencil/charcoal/pastels/crayon/etc... will be over your not-so-professional drawing. Even until my seventh lesson, I still can't follow the way Mr. Lim holds the pencil. Try it and you will know that even drawing a straight line is a struggle. If it's easy for you, OMG.. it means I have to catch up really fast because I'm paying for the course, sacrificing my Sunday mornings, and you.. who are just reading blogs over blogs.. costless, can do it in a blink.

So my dear friend, from now on even if we still can't really fathom what lies beneath the straight lines, what are the hidden meaning, at least we appreciate their strenuous effort.

But the painting that we saw was actually done with oil, in a big canvas... It means they would not do it with the aforementioned technique. Oh well, just take it as: she/he is just a shorty who has to put an extra effort to step up onto a raiser and step down again and at the same time maintaining the straightness of the lines.

Lesson learnt after the exhibition visit: it is indeed easier to be an art critic rather than an artist.....

Arty farty party,
Rhere -not an artist to be-

ps: another confession -> I still can't sharpen my pencil the way he does. Though I've bought the OLFA 30 degrees pen knife. So in conclusion, for what purpose does my course fee go?