julienne tan :: illustration

updates

2011-03-07T23:57:00.000-08:00

A finished logo for a very charming chocolate cafe. I too wish that my work didn't all look so similar, but clients approach me precisely because they want the illustration style they see in my other work.

Other very different things I've been working on:
1. Album art for E+ML, to be released hopefully in a couple of months?
2. Price tags for Tocco Tenero, a line of soft leather bags
3. An advertorial for WDA
4. Synaesthesia, a Ceriph/Substation exhibition project
5. Various brochures for EAST

And all this and no time to make art prints to be sold on my other project, "a nomad sea". More on that another time. My own website has been updated too! With more client work, mostly branding. This has been a month without pause.

and finally...

2011-01-20T20:20:00.001-08:00

http://juliennetan.com/

Finally Up!

2011-01-11T21:03:00.000-08:00

My portfolio website. Little updates will trickle on here, but finally I have an online home :D

http://www.wix.com/juliennetan/portfolio

badges + photography

2010-12-27T19:36:00.000-08:00

Holga photos taken a long time ago came in handy when making these badges for a youth camp.

Sleeping Through Storms

2010-12-27T08:07:00.001-08:00

Sleeping Through Storms

2010-12-27T07:50:00.001-08:00

ceriph

2010-09-26T23:40:00.000-07:00

So I got a copy of Ceriph. Nice woodfree paper.

The story behind this: I sent winnie some colored illustrations and she told me it was a black and white issue. Wails. So not knowing what to draw, I told her i'd draw huimin, and I did.

As well as other characters in my life, such as k.

And myself.

I turned to the back and found that my profile was terribly unserious compared to the others. I'm the ditz of the troupe!

Haven't read all the other stories, but I thought this was a good spread, and works in monochrome.

But for readings, Jon Gresham's was a winner, and I wanted him to read the whole story out.

Get yours in support of local writers and artists!

sketchbook people

2010-09-12T21:57:00.000-07:00

One of the nicest places to draw is in a hammock on a weekend, as the sun is going down and I'm cradled into a slight incline. Then all the sketchbook people come out to play. Hipsters with their waist shorts and pixie crops and dark lipsticks, and museum mavericks with mustaches. It's always fun to see who comes out, and who stays indoors.

Ceriph Issue #1

2010-09-07T22:43:00.000-07:00

My illustrations are in there! Not this issue #0, but issue #1, launching 17 September.

It feels a little like when I was in primary school and had my essays published in the yearly school magazines. Not so much like when my fashion illustrations were in Female for a couple of years; I don't think I even told people about those. Or even when a story of mine was published in a CAP book, because it seemed to me to be a super-secret-society the rest of the cooler world knew nothing about.

But this is a collection of writings from people who care about a story being told the right way. By young people who have a ton of things to do but still think this collection is more important. Who take the time to teach others to read and have cake and chai. Who made being literary and homely very socially enviable indeed. So it gives me some lip-biting delight to tell you about this book.

Support your local writers, photographers and illustrators by getting a copy! Or come to Books Actually on 17th september, 7:30-9:30 pm for the launch/reading of Issue #1.

ski birthday card

2010-08-20T01:49:00.000-07:00

The brief was: "Birthday card for Mark. Maybe something about skiing or parties."

The response: "Oh. No. Jet-skiing."

A pity, cos I liked my little ski lodge and cable cars. Remember to get the facts straight before you design!

2010-05-23T09:44:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a new series.

And more to come.

Rachel's "Countries" wedding : Unpacking the elements

2010-05-19T07:56:00.000-07:00

The wedding package: everything you need for one table setting.

Unpack it,

and with a little DIY and a good metal ruler and blade,

You can make packaging for your wedding favour,

and create a centrepiece on a (relatively) shoestring budget!

The idea was to put together something that Rachel could ship over to the States, unpack without too much caution, and assemble with the help of her ladies. Instead of glass, wood, and metal, there is paper in all its gorgeous different textures and opacities, to be made into anything.

Personal menus

The real wedding is in July, so I will have to wait till then to see photos of how it all turned out. Put a few blossoms around the lantern, fill a room with these, add wine glasses and happy people, (don't flash that camera!) and it should be a happy sight.

Lugging the elements around might have been a trial, but I do appreciate the DIY nature of this wedding project. Now to finish up another wedding invitation!

another wedding thing

2010-05-10T06:11:00.000-07:00

This bride wanted a "Countries" theme for her American wedding, and wanted it in teal, and wanted there to be penguins involved. And so the teal penguins take a trip around the world.

Each table centerpiece is a different country; 20 tables for 20 countries. On the left, a logo that goes onto everything; on the right, the Paris table.

A wedding is a once-in-a-lifetime affair, the biggest birthday bash of sorts, the chance for a girl to wish for anything and wave her hands about to make it happen. There has to be that fairy tale element to it: sparkling lights, a little whimsy, a little glamor.

This bride is not settling for the readymade package, choosing instead to custom-make everything even if it means getting her friends together to cut out stickers. While I feel tired on her behalf, preparing the different elements that she has to put together, I like the belief she upholds that a bride can make anything happen. Even if it's teal penguins traveling to 20 countries.

wedding thing

2010-03-14T07:46:00.000-07:00

This lovely couple wanted something vintage, possibly letterpressed. But Singapore doesn't do letterpress printing! Anybody know of a printer who does? In the meantime, I faked the letterpress effect with good ol' Bevel and Emboss. Adobe forever.

simple,

2010-02-23T06:50:00.000-08:00

and complicated.

happy valentine's day

2010-02-14T07:12:00.000-08:00

Made a graphic novel cover as a card, for the boy who has a filing cabinet drawer full of them in his office. The text is vague and heroic and doesn't attempt at creating any plot. I tried a generic comic book style illustration for the front cover, but had to do something more painterly for the back. I learnt that graphic novels were not all abt hard black line drawings when I saw the work of James Jean in Fables. And yes, that's me in the last picture, I think I do look like that.

happy 2010

2010-01-07T23:43:00.000-08:00

i've been busy...

...making pocket-sized calendars, with their own little calico bag.

it's time to be set apart

2009-11-23T21:38:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-21T07:27:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-28T20:12:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-27T07:24:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-26T01:09:00.000-07:00

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

and done

2009-08-23T00:57:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-19T00:58:00.000-07:00

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

back from this place

2009-08-18T03:14:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-07-19T07:39:00.000-07:00

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,

2009-07-16T01:23:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-29T22:41:00.000-07:00

so blue, so very blue

sounding quite still

2009-06-22T23:00:00.000-07:00

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

back to the sketchbook

2009-06-22T06:06:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-20T07:14:00.000-07:00

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

joeun's death

2009-06-18T20:44:00.000-07:00

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,

2009-06-18T20:40:00.000-07:00

something more at second.

for FL.ag world AIDS day issue

the last of the last season

2009-06-16T19:41:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-05-15T23:05:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-05T01:49:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-12T10:14:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-12-12T00:54:00.000-08:00

is unresolved,
but getting there.

Not much time to draw, but I was with the children last week. That, of all things, should be counted as working on this project.

This time many of the children were from small foster and group homes. It makes a difference when a child has two people to call Guardians, or sometimes, Parents. They rest well, they listen well, they part well.

I had two girls in my care. I was braiding the hair of one of them, and another tiny girl came and stared at us with her mouth open. She went away to get changed and then came back to stare. "You look like her mother," she said. "Only mothers will tie hair."

Last year I felt that I had a monstrous heart because my love for the kids was limited to five days. However sincere my love was, it had a cap.

This year I felt that I could stay there forever, cold showers and all. Or at least for longer than five days. Maybe because they were easier to love, maybe because I came more prepared. Maybe this monstrous heart is morphing.

change

2008-11-28T07:32:00.000-08:00

for tiger translate.

I've also been busy reworking my final year project, drawing on trains. I find that nobody stares, I can do anything on trains.

I'm thinking along the lines of something I wrote as a subconscious doodle in the very first History of Great Inventions lecture.

"My monstrous heart
my monstrous heart
my monstrous heart
is not big enough
to take you in more than five days."

The full story coming up shortly.

a study: claustrophobia

2008-11-20T02:26:00.000-08:00

How interesting that claustrophobia, when collided into itself, is a chaos trap.

This is your claustrophobia:
not getting too near me,

like the hikikomori perhaps,
will your earth shake if you let me in?

good lookers

2008-11-20T01:05:00.001-08:00

I can't do a thing
so i will just have to look at you

for the ____ of typography

2008-11-15T06:58:00.001-08:00

is made up of people who cry but hold on
and things that will start if you let them
and thorns that will turn into flowers if you let them

Nobody gets it right all the way. But love is a growing thing. So keep trying, and let it grow.

re-route

2008-11-15T04:08:00.001-08:00

one campaign is not enough to tell all the stories i want to tell.
there is so much more.
there are the single fathers who come to be better men.
there are the children with no siblings, who come for a taste of it.
there are the abused children who grow up to help other abused children.
there are the parts of me that cannot understand or forgive.

there are only three more months.
but i think it's worth changing my route for.

posters

2008-10-21T08:01:00.000-07:00

So we had another class exercise, and we created pieces based on another person's description of their projects. Sarinah painted a melancholy Munch-like portrait for my project. It was a child's face made out of two parents linking hands. And with these pieces created for us by our friends, we had to make posters for ourselves by adapting them in some way.

I did away with the actual painting, lovely as it was, and used Sarinah's compositing idea to redraw the balloon child:
(click picture to enlarge) The parents make up the face of the child. The cheesy slogan was a temporary filler.
These are the kind of illustrations I like to do most: smaller pictures within the big picture, hidden stories and obvious stories.

The bird is the balloon child's friend, who the balloon is afraid of getting close to at first because of its sharp beak. The balloon child is almost like the bird, just that it is tied down with a string. When it is ready to have its string cut, the bird comes back to help it with its beak.

the balloon child becomes a parent

2008-10-17T07:07:00.000-07:00

where did you come from?
i want to protect you forever.

but i have no hands to hold you
perhaps wrapping myself around you will do

you cry too loudly for my large ears
made of air, i want to burst with air

--

Cindy suggests doing the animation first, perhaps with my voice telling the story. I know all the frames but can't bring myself to do them. I foresee them taped to my wall, my wardrobe, my shelves, a wistful narrative of disproportionate beings, and it makes me want to start.

I have to find the voice of the balloon child. Is it a soft voice? A child's voice? A girl or a boy? It seems that all these nuances of sound will determine the script. And that trickles on into the typeface, which trickles into the size and form of the book, and everything else.

I wish that 'balloon' was another word. I can't title this as Balloon Child, or Balloon.

Meanwhile, tomorrow i go back to the start. I only felt for these children when I came to know about them. And that is thanks to the royal family kids' camp, which i stumbled upon without thinking and have never untangled myself from since. Tomorrow begins the training for this year's camp, and i'll hear the stories again, sing the songs again, meet the volunteers again. Many more have signed up this year, expectant for something.

I'm not a kids person, I say to everyone. I really am not. But even among injustices there are some more unjust than others.

balloon boy and difficult things

2008-10-02T21:47:00.000-07:00

Biomorphic explorations with the Character. With each psychological change that takes place, his body morphs a little. Until there is the swollen head, no mouth, no limbs, no heart, no belly, large ears. But there is a string tying him down.
When the Balloon becomes a parent. How can it hold its child when it has no arms? How can it handle the cries with its big ears?

The string has to be cut. And when it is cut, there is a tremendous release of pressure, and the Balloon can reform, become proportionate again, grow limbs.

I am exhausted from drawing and scanning and putting together saturday's presentation. Soon enough there will be a proper post on the Balloon.

This week I read A Child Called It by David Pelzer. And I talked to Felicia from Fostering about abuse investigation, child protection schemes, and most importantly for my project, the solutions and exits for parents who haven't been dealing too well with parenting.

From the interview, the good news is most physical abuse cases in Singapore start from the intention to find a discipline method that works; in other words, purely sadistic abuse is not common, although I will not hasten to comment on where the boundaries lie. Sexual abuse is a completely different arena altogether, slippery and altogether sinister, an inexcusable perversion.

The way I am approaching Abuse as a whole, I am closing an eye to the perversion that drives a good number of cases, and focusing instead on Abuse as a living force in itself that can be averted, like closing a window to put out the wind, or in this story, cutting the string that ties a balloon down. It is mild, it is non-confrontational. But is it right?

I still say that we shouldn't rush to condemn abusive parents as villains, because they could be victims too. But we cannot ignore the inexplicable part of it: the darkness of the soul, the demon-like glee that pushes a human being to hurt another human being, and enjoy it. This is where I must stop and think. Do we open up Pandora's Box?

fyp on the beach

2008-09-11T23:13:00.001-07:00

It wasn't entirely play. :)

I tried some similar videos with text but the tide was going out. Maybe I'll go back another day when the tide is coming in.

Brunch insights

2008-09-07T07:55:00.000-07:00

early sketches

I had a talk with my mother over brunch. She told me about her mother walking out on her father when he turned violent. "That taught us that we can say no to abuse," she said. Later on she moved back, and the family's story ends happily.

But what was irrevocably reaped from this episode was education. She said, "I knew what I must do if my husband ever beat me. It takes generations to learn this. In my grandmother's time women were 'oh he beat me but I cannot tell anyone, it's a shame. Only a broken rib, at least I'm alive.' Three generations down, now you won't even marry a man who perms his hair."

I swear that's my mother's exaggeration. But I get it. Silently suffering abuse is hereditary too, because children watch and learn.

By the end of lunch, I had grown a beehive of thoughts. This campaign could be educational.

seeing things #2

2008-09-05T03:03:00.000-07:00

Julie Morstad

www.fourexhibition.blogspot.com

Carolyn Alexander

James Gulliver Hancock

Rob Ryan

Hans Op De Beeck

Sam Winston

story sketches #2

2008-09-04T01:25:00.000-07:00

The last two days of camp are the hardest because they push us away. T gave away the present I gave her. She ran into the lift and pushed me out. "Don't follow me!" When I hugged her goodbye on the bus, she asked if i was coming along. I wasn't, and she pushed me away. I looked at her through the bus window but her eyes never met mine.

The older children are better at facing the reality of goodbyes, and let themselves cry. M always warned us about being pushed away. It's just a defense mechanism for those who are scared of separation.

Just as well, I thought, because I can't promise her forever either. I can't even give her more than five days. Still I wonder how raw her hands must be, from pulling and pushing, pushing and pushing, not even willing to make memories.

story sketches #1

2008-09-03T23:21:00.000-07:00

It's a campaign that revolves around a story.
I want to make her somebody you love.

And so when you love her, how can you condemn her?

seeing things #1

2008-09-02T20:07:00.000-07:00

Beauty is subjective. This is the beauty I like--a little raw, a little scraped off. All artwork not my own.

It's like a nightmare, and yet it's so sad that you want to hold it close.

I like white space, a lot of it.

I like ambiguous fairytales told with disturbing lines. Somebody is eating somebody else, somebody is afraid, but who?

Paper engineering is, sometimes, everything. I learnt that the hard way in year one.

What makes this image is the shape of it. And the absence of just enough.

And flatness: so gustav klimt, so egon schiele, so whitewash-over-an-underpainting. I hate gradient colouring. Let everything be pressed and pasted on walls.

This is the time for new images to be born. Every new phase has life of its own. I watch with amazement as lines and people come spilling out of the pen. It's time to stop seeing things, and let the pen bring forth what it will.

2008-09-02T08:52:00.000-07:00

More string explorations on the table as the sun was setting.

And pages from the book that resulted from all the exploration, shot on the light table.

Isn't daylight always prettier?

After my fruitless contemplation of an installation for fyp, i think I will do a campaign instead. Because what I want to say is best said in words, actually.

So the campaign will include:
1. a book
2. exhibition concept/ panels
3. collectibles (notebooks, stationery etc)
4. a video

I've been toying with many slogans. But today while casually telling a friend about my fyp, I said, "I'm looking at Abusers as the Abused."

And i think that is actually it.

why this project?

2008-08-30T00:11:00.000-07:00

I didn't want to step into something so vast and sad, not for the project that supposedly launches me into the world as an illustrator/designer. I wanted to do something light and fun. Music, fashion, colour, anything but abuse.

But here it is, my fyp about the cycle of abuse.

The true reason I'm doing it is I dreamt of them again: the children. I went to the Home to visit, and T and M came and sat on the bed beside me and talked to me. I put my arms around them both and said, "You must learn to love each other."

That's it then. I listen to my dreams. They tell me what is important to me, what lasts after music and fashion and colour.

"You must learn to love each other" sounds so mundane. But it is a big lesson for these children, who grow up learning that they must fight and be alert to keep what is their own.

I can't protect them from circumstances now, not by volunteering at a camp once a year. But I can help to break the cycle by teaching them that love can be safe. That they don't have to grow into their adult bodies with the same tense hearts of hardened children.

What I can't wrap my mind around is the lens of this project. There's a campaign, a company identity, print media, new media, and installation. I flung myself at Installation because it was the only one that seemed airy and large enough to contain everything I want to say. But maybe not.

String: an exercise

2008-08-28T01:35:00.000-07:00

Explorations with that roll of white string. I don’t like cute chubby stiff string, I like thin scrawls of membrane that look alive and floating. Shot on a light table in the workshop.

How will this relate to my fyp? String is such a basic metaphor that almost any story can be told about knots (the default troublemakers in any situation). It’s not easy to be original with a ball of string. I may or may not use the knot metaphor because of that.

But if I did, this is my string story: if you don’t unravel the knots as they form, they’ll remain unpicked as other knots form. Again, could be said about any other issue in the world.

I much prefer to look at the nervous quality of the string, how alive and how floating it looks cuddled up as a nest, and how similar it is to my own scrawled handwriting.

Helping with Jane Lee and Paolo for the biennale, which should teach me a thing or twenty about installations and the working process. It’s worth skipping class for, and my meetings with them will be up on this blog too.