it's time to be set apart

I started this blog one whole year ago for my final year project, documenting my thoughts on child abuse and the illustrations that resulted from them.

But project aside, drawings aside, it has always just been about the kids. But now the domain name doesn't tally. This is my career blog. The children fall out of it, being too small for a blog so divided in attention.

So I continue my Final Project, now a Life Project, in a different home.

set apart. be a-part of this. be a-part-ner. (click for link)

In that place I will be talking about kids' camp, organizing independent excursions for the kids, creating products to raise funds for these events, and rallying you to join me.

in-between computer clicks

is all the time i have to draw these days.
How i long for a space, and whole days, to paint.

A Story of The Image - Old And New Masters From Antwerp

A Story of The Image - Old And New Masters From Antwerp
Originally uploaded by thediaryaffair

Marlene Dumas at A Story of the Image, the National Museum. Looking at these unfinished watercolors, I missed being raw and primitive. You have to step right up to these women to see that Dumas used sparkle in her paint. It's absolutely subtle, and they still look like provocative ghosts.

studies

i saw some strange faces today.

and after studying them, made their children. i love strange faces. i love cleft chins. i love downturned lips and chubby sulking cheeks.

So now i have Ellie who is not afraid of spiders, and June who is perpetually melancholy about nothing and thus annoys her friends but is still much loved by those who matter.

Too lazy to scan so these are snapshots, and to punish me for being lazy the colors come out a little harsh. I love drawing on brown paper, and on wood. I've stayed away from pencils and color pencils since secondary school, but with brown paper, pencils are friends again.

Study days are lovely. They are just for me, not for clients or any audience. They are for experiments, old magazines, photographs, and interesting people. Most of all, they feed the mind. Empty minds can barely imagine anything.

portfolio

Finally I've uploaded some sort of online portfolio: http://www.flickr.com/photos/juliennetan/show/

and done

It's supposed to be yellow but it came out as blue. Sometimes I envy other people's colorful, textured illustrations, and I try to dress mine up. But I always come back down to earth and realize that where I come from, less is best.

half-dressed

something i worked on today, thinking about the lunch i didn't have

back from this place

and I'm still not done with nature. I put on flipflops and walked across to my castle by the lake, where I survey all the trees and park joggers. This is the castle where I drew this last year:
but this time i could draw nothing even though the sun was golden and there were biscuits in my bag. I thought about the Japanese children and doodled, but I think they are not meant to become drawings.

It has become a fact of life, that whatever job i find must allow me to continue with the kids' camps every year.

I go to hokkaido in less than two weeks, to be part of the camp for abused kids there. New stories to be told, perhaps through new drawings. I started this blog as "the last season", to document the final project. But this looks like a project that will be part of my life for many seasons to come.

on an otherwise dull day,

tiger translate! has finally revealed itself after many months. Check out the work from this year's theme, Change. And the many artists from different countries who have worked on it. (including a certain girl who pieced hers together in the school lab because her computer was dying on her, and who is still about monochrome line drawings in the land of Tiger)

where i stay

so blue, so very blue

sounding quite still

you pretend not to look, but you can't help but grow like a plant towards the sun

back to the sketchbook

hooray for scanners that work and pencils as hairpins!

Went down to old school for the last time this season, and my fingers are sore from peeling adhesive remains off walls. Then I trawled my fabric haunts to get stuff for this saturday's shoot with samantha (click for flickr stream), and was inspired to spool up the sewing machine lying in my house to make clothes with all the fabric i've been collecting.

I am still searching for a job, though little ones have been trickling in. God willing, I will have just enough work to be happy (and i'm so easily happy, with breadtalk buns too), and be able to do the other non-work things I need to do.

Meanwhile, I don't need a job to keep me doing a doodle a day.

claustrophobia

Claustrophobia is your magic cloak, your invisible circle. I can only pretend that I am close to you.

joeun's death

One of my favourite school projects, compiling people's views on religion, life and death. I've always loved the projects that require field research, because my head isn't large enough to imagine what really is.

love at first sight,

something more at second.

for FL.ag world AIDS day issue

the last of the last season

And so it ends, a dream at night that turned into five books and a spread of vinyl planes on glass. Thank you all who came and even those who took away my portfolio postcards (hello schon, I don't think you're the only one who took things away). I have given up counting which ones are lost and will just reprint that set for interviews. But please please don't take anything else away.

The party of tomorrow of a few days ago is still the party of tomorrow. Except now the stories in my head will have to creep out in different ways, in different places. There is a theme I would like to draw and it's making me stay in today.

on a hot day like this i wish

that is is was and was is is

img: clouds, from My Monstrous Heart

you stole my heart

Somebody stole one of the hearts from my exhibition booth. One of the hearts is mine, and the other belongs to a child. Somebody took one of the hearts and closed the box, so it would take me a bit longer to discover that my heart has been stolen. 

Not the first time that I've lost something in a school exhibition. Last year I made an illustration book called "Mine", about possessiveness, and ironically somebody has made it his or hers. It is still mine.

Who would steal student work? A student? But a student would know how precious a project is and how it hurts to lose it. One copy in the entire world. I'm considering taking everything back from the exhibition.

white noise

preview of upcoming website:

white lies
white lies still
white lies down

Yes it's been a long time, and many new people have been born in my sketchbook since my revelation about what things should be.

Sometimes I feel that I should be colourful and noisy to get a job: collages, distressed type, big blocks of helvetica singing electropop lyrics. And sometimes I feel that I should show how clean and sleek I can be: hello corporate annual reports.

But I know I am happiest being myself: "just sit beside me and be quiet."

And so the white pages with the fine line type and drawings will stay.