Poem: Shipping Out

Shipping Out
creepy lonely feeling
this melancholic tang
o’ sweet sour taste
that’s felt more than tasted

as if there’s a finality
to everything

as if my soul is
reviewing my life

I’m packing my emotions
in a green duffel bag
shipping out
and starting anew

Ivan Chew
Originally drafted (heh, pun unintended) in 2006, June.

“Bags” originally uploaded by n2linux

Song: Vox Humana (2009)

[Also posted at Starfish Stories :: The Band]

Completed this piano-based piece today.

VOX HUMANA (2009)

VOX HUMANA (2009) by Ivan Chew is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Singapore License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at ramblinglibrarian [at] gmail.com.

Composed, recorded, arranged, mixed/ sound engineered by Ivan Chew. Feel free to use/ distribute/ re-post/ modify/ sell this track, as per the conditions stated in this Creative Commons BY-3.0. Singapore license. All that is required is that you give clear and proper attribution to the original creator. Like this: “Ivan Chew. MyRightBrain.wordpress.com“. The track can be downloaded at www.archive.org.

“Earthrise / Apollo 8″, uploaded at Flickr by woodleywonderworks.

More at this post.

Code Hunters

Cool!

Agency: MTV Asia
Executive Producer: Charmaine Choo
Production Company: Blinkink
Producer: Bart Yates
Director: Ben Hibon
Screenplay: Ben Hibon
Concept and Storyboard: Ben Hibon

Rat-racing Hamsters

I took this video when I passed by a pet store. Noticed these particularly frisky hamsters that kept piling themselves onto the wheel. My wife and I found them hilarious!

Music by jacinda espinosa
“Uh-oh…”
2009 – Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0)
http://ccmixter.org/files/jacindae/19581

Poem: Caffeine overdose

Caffeine overdose
feeling edgy
from a caffeine overdose

four frothy consecutive cups creamer fortified rich brown coffee loaded with a dash of sugar or two i don’t know how many dashes i lost count i think i went overboard with the sugar

and now I feel
spent.

Ivan Chew
2006, May 22

“Creamy cappuccino” originally uploaded by adactio

Random story: Coffeeshop scene – What was it like in the old days?

I’m sitting at a neighbourhood coffeeshop. There are about ten people. All above middle-age. Mostly male. Sitting around the mostly empty seats. The lunch time crowd has yet to break out of their offices and homes.

Two tables away, a man in polo shirt and Bermudas reads his papers with a cigarette in hand. Another table away, three men are engaged in conversation, sporadically staring out at the main road from their seat. Hi-Fi speakers suspended at the corner of a pillar blare out modern Chinese songs, alternating between Sentimental and Techno-Pop.

A coffeeshop lady, uniformed in an orange T-shirt, asks what I wanted for a drink.

“Teh-C,” I say.

My noodles is served. I pay the man $3. A consistent breeze wafts across where I sit. The steady noise from the busy main road serves as background noise.

The coffeeshop lady switches on the 26″ Toshiba flatscreen TV. I notice the screen size as being much bigger than what I have at home. The LCD screen comes to life with a Taiwanese soapbox. The coffeeshop lady adjusts the TV volume down. The Hi-Fi continues to blare the Chinese Techo-Pop. The cornucopia of sounds becomes a mishmash of noise that is surprisingly not unpleasant.

My Teh-C has long since been drunk. The cup and empty noodle bowl efficiently cleared by the coffeeshop’s hired cleaners. If not for the warm pleasant contents in my stomach, I would’ve thought I’d not eaten.

Subtly, the whole place seems to wake a notch. The noise increases slightly as more customers arrive.

And as I sit here listening and observing, I wonder how anyone would describe a coffeeshop scene 50 years from now.

Would there still be a coffee shop? What did a coffeeshop scene looked like 50 years ago?

I switch on my handphone and connect to wireless@SG (it is a no-brainer that they didn’t have WIFI at coffeeshops 50 years ago). Tried to Google for some archival images but the connection is too slow. Ah well… things may improve 50 years from now.

“People in coffee shop” originally uploaded by Mr. Dew. Image licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC 2.0.

Art Practice: Mike Mignola’s Hellboy (Part 3)

From Part 2:

009 Photoshop image layered for painting & fills

010 Paint Whitespace

011 Paint Background

012 Paint Uniform colour

013 Adjusted brightness level

014 Selection Brush Tool to copy signature & caption

015 Add border – Over-paint w Dry Media Brush on Transparency settings

016 Practice 1 Completed

Quite happy with this practice session. I’d say it’s a pretty decent replica of the original:

Check out Hellboy, vol1: Seeds of Destruction.

Art Practice: Mike Mignola’s Hellboy (Part 2)

From Part 1:

Layering Practice1

Layering Practice2

Layering Practice3

Photoshop Colouring Practice 1 – Fill w 20% Transparency

Photoshop Colouring Practice 2 – Overlay 2nd colour 85%Transparency

Photoshop Colouring Practice 3 – Add whiteBackgd Layer for actual colour tone

Photoshop Colouring Practice 4 – Recalling colours

Photoshop Colouring Practice 5 – Create own Colour Palette

Photoshop Colouring Practice 6 – Colour Palette w Whitebackground

Next: Part 3.

Art Practice: Mike Mignola’s Hellboy (Part 1)

Back in 2007 (or was it 2006?), I picked up a copy of the Hellboy “Seed of Destruction” comic at Central Lending Public Library. And I was hooked. The illustrations and storylines simply blew me away. I was an instant fan.

There’s heavy use of shadows and contrast in Hellboy (lots of black).

At one page, I saw this particular panel and decided to use it as art practice. I took a digital photo for reference (From “Hell Boy: Seeds of Destruction” by Mike Mignola & John Byrne):

Sketched it on watercolour paper (not traced). It was a practice in observational skills:

When I was happy with the sketch, I proceeded to ink the outlines (alternating between Indian Ink applied with calligraphy pen, and a marker — in the end, I was happier with the Indian Ink as was more vibrant):

Here’s a shot of how I referred to the digital image (on a laptop) and inking on paper:

This is a scanned image of the completed outline in ink:

Then I filled in the spaces with more black:

Inking completed:

At this point, I wanted to apply watercolours, but I suddenly felt like doing the painting digitally. So I scanned in the image and retouched it in Photoshop by filling in with black and white (this definitely improved the picture in terms of smoothing out the uneven tones in the hand-coloured picture, and the black and white areas more defined):

Next: Part 2.

Technorati Tag: art practice, hellboy, photoshop, inking

Candy on the Train Floor

Candy on the Train Floor
——————–
Chupa Chup
Half-sucked
Stuck
on the train floor

24 Jun 2006
(My wife & I co-wrote this when we saw this half-eaten candy in the train carriage. It’s not great poetry. Not even passable, I think. But it’s something my wife and I did together. That’s something!)