The Ancient’s Edge

Puah Hui Sze

Gel ink pen, poster paint, water colour, glitter glue

2010

This is a painting of a temple in Taiwan. It was actually painted from a photo my mother took when she was in Taiwan. I first used a 3B pencil to draw the outlines of the temple, then, I used a black pen to sort of trace and add in the ‘dynamics’. The “dynamics” refer to the sketchy and really fast and edgy lines with varying thickness and texture. The drawing was then painted using water colour as the base, and the details were added using diluted poster paints. The Ancient’s Edge was a challenge as I used limited colours of diluted poster paints: dark olive green, apple green, dirty green, white, moss green, blue, red and brown. The colours used may be strange as the majority is green. Even the dark brown I used to paint the bricks was also the result of mixing moss green and red. Thus, this painting enabled me to explore the possibilities of using limited number of colours to create several other colours. I tried to make the colours appear as though they were being smudged and Photoshop-edited-image effect. I changed the ruined portion of the temple by simplifying it, deleting the other extra lines, leaving the essentials. I purposely added glitter on the outlines of relieves so as to draw the attention of viewers. I made the relieves as the focal points as I want viewers to know that this is a stylized piece of artwork, which the image of the temple is quite prominent in proving so. I thought that quite a number of artists may paint this temple as realistically as possible, thus, I wish to differ. I made the temple look as simple as possible, concentrating on the overall rather than going into the details of the form.