We do some sensible, fun things for our quarterly retreats.
This time, there were quite a few of us, so the organizers, Amelia, Jialing and David, got us to do some Tote Bag painting somewhere in sleepy Bishan.
Each of us can pick a blueprint picture to draw on our Tote bag, or we can exercise our creativity and draw one ourselves.
I picked this image of the Totoro from the anime My Neighbour Totoro because I thought it is less complicated and should be doable for “my level”.
We start by tracing the image onto the Tote bag with tracing paper behind it. You will get a line (that will eventually fade over time) like what you see here.
What happens when there is a lack of guidance?
A nice lady guided us through what we were supposed to do. We were taught the function of each item and instructed on how to handle specific images, to remember to blow dry the paint at some point so that the paint doesn’t smudge together.
Here’s me attempting to paint the black lines with the paint onto the bag. It has been almost thirty years since I touch a paintbrush to paint something. While my art has always been a decent grade, and I drew art as part of my extracurricular activity in Primary School, it feels different painting again.
I looked at the black lines that I drew on the Totoro, and I thought: “This looks hideous!”
Then “I think it was a mistake picking this!”
I grossly underestimated how the lines would look when painted. In fact, most of us underestimated how hard it was to paint the eyes and some of us screwed up or nearly screwed up the eyes.