Oil painting

My first oil painting! :D

I had my first oil painting class yesterday at NAFA, The Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. Actually, I have been considering taking up this lesson ever since the holidays when Joe brought it up to me that time. It is one of my passion and interest. It fulfills my desire to make good use of my free time and being able to learn something new to refresh myself from my routine work and classes. Thank God for giving me the chance to learn oil painting. Thank God for creating colours in this world that brought such beauty into our lives. :)

The lesson is really very fun and I LOVE IT! :D I am certainly someone who is not good at drawing (as you can see above :P) but like my instructor says, you should not expect your painting to be a photograph of what you are drawing. Art is a subject that should not be spoon fed to us. It is more of a subject that shows your creativity. Or else it will lose its uniqueness...lol

For oil painting, the uniqueness of it as compared to many other arts is its thick texture, its richness in colour that doesn't fade easily, its multi-layers of drawing and its colourful historical culture. Our instructor taught us not to try to perfect it but to be BOLD -- bold in your strokes, bold if your drawing and bold in your colour. Hahaha...I guess this is one part that I like about oil painting because you can anyhow wipe the paint onto the canvass sheet in any direction and not like those kind that you got to be careful not to mix up the strokes. Hahaha...finding some entertainment and beauty out of a mess ya? :P Indeed a nice way to relieve your stress manz...lol

I am happy that I have attended this course as I get to know different people as well. We start off the class by sharing why we attend the class, what we are looking out for in this class and what we want to gain from it. There is a couple who are both proffessionals, a lawyer and a retail buyer (moreover they are both accountants and auditors before they change their line of career) share that they love oil painting and want to have some fun out of it. Then there are coincidentally two IT consultants and a graphic designer who want to make their own oil paintings as buying one from outside will be way too expensive. Others like me seek to take it as a breather from our daily routine work and have some fun here.

All of us come from different areas but yet a piece of oil painting has brought all of us together, sharing the same joy and likings. Like my instructor says,

"Painting is not about making a photograph out of your surroundings.

Painting is about showing the characteristic of the painter."

Hahaha...I am really looking forward to my next class manz...YEAH!

"Cheers to great art! *wink* :D"