Recently, I have made a profound decision to permanently shut off my web development services. The sad thing is, there is a lot of competition in the web design market and clients are usually more or less informed about web technology(or so they think)… leading to a lot of confusion about what is the correct standard for doing things. Paying someone who is just out there for the money RM 4000 and paying a freelancer RM 4000 can get you something entirely different yes, but at the end of the day even you may not know which is better.

I am tired of convincing clients not to spam the world wide web with duplicate content, tired of telling them content is king and tired of telling them its not a ‘press button’ then you get sales kinda shit.

Therefore from now onwards I will only develop for my own creativity and with my own ideas.

Painting on the other hand, is a different animal together. When you paint, you feel zen. Its a meditation kinda thing where you feel at peace which is something I am so in tune with now in my life. I am no longer the crazy girl who needs to drive in the middle of the night up to Genting to code some web application while smoking. Now I play with my 3 cats, I sing before dinner and I paint after dinner before I sleep every night. I guess I no longer feel the need to be cool(to be precise, I do not feel the need to punish myself anymore). *smiles*

Done in 2004 when I was 15 with Corel Painter

When it comes to art.. its a long story.. but most of my current friends do not know that I have already put my 10000 hours in art and left it behind when I graduate, I mean who would think that creating art could put food on the table?

I am most familiar, as you can see with Realism. Simply put, I am a photocopy machine I could tell that there are greens in the lips cuz I am so used to see colors in the opposite of constancy mode. For example, at night under the street light you would see that a white car is still a white car but I would see that the car is yellow and brown though my brain is nagging me that it is white and the light is making it yellow.

Realism, however cannot get an artist sales or anything much other than a few ‘Wow, I thought it was a photo!’. Art needs to be interpreted in an individualistic style and I have embarked on my journey to find my style.

I would love to stick to portraits due to familiarity and explore from then onwards. Internet is a wonderful thing because you get to test if the audience love a particular style or not. For example, the picture above according to KY is very nice but it did not sit very well with the Threadless crowd and I myself felt that it is unfinished.

This painting above, I love the hair and the quality of the lines. I thought to myself, this is it I love this. This should be phenomenal to others. However, it was not the case. Someone asked if she is disemboweled, when I was just depicting a dress with frills. I guess colors are important. Oops. Looks like my art slipped into the horror genre without my intending it.

Then I did what all the daily painters are doing, landscapes.. paintings of still life and of life itself. For those unawares, daily painting is a movement started recently by painters who finish paintings frequently and auction their paintings off everyday via their blog and website. Here you can see me trying desperately to stylize while my hands are fighting to add more realistic detail to each element. It was a vicious fight, and I sometimes wonder if I do manage to stylize my art will I be able to turn back to realism.

Like just a thought, once Picasso went cubism could he still be capable of a realistic piece of art?

And so the efforts continue, the thing I have learnt so far is that if you want your art to be loved you have to spend time on your art. That is a fact.

The more you think about the execution and the more you plan ahead, the more spontaneous your paintings look. Ironic I know but it works. Look at sumi-e paintings(chinese ink), watercolor paintings.. they seem alive with a few carelessly placed brush strokes. It is NOT careless. Neurons probably died while the artist contemplate whether to place a certain dot in that space.

And of cos, I have been trying to sell my art.. thinking that posting it up to ebay would automatically get me sales. -_- How naive. I think a small page as a shop in art.hazelong.com would be sufficient when I have something of value. Ultimately, I hope to have my own exhibition by the end of this year 😀

xPlay at Opera

Btw, if you are interested in the local music scene and you missed the recent xPlay at Opera, Sunway Pyramid then you can look forward to the next xPlay party in Cabana Club, Johor Bahru this Saturday. You could also join xPlay in Bed Club, Kota Kinabalu on the 8th of October too.

It starts at 7pm til late. You can get free passes here.