SAY NO TO DRUGS

This was one of the first few bigger paintings that we did back in 2009. I remember doing lots of good prep for this and I'll find a time to add them in asap!

This assignment was done in view of anti-drug campaign submissions and the medium we were expected to use was water colour or poster colour paint. And just a random thought, I realise in aep we've never really been taught how to use a certain medium, for example water colour. It kinda gets integrated into the curriculum when we do assignments like this >>> this is what I didn't expect when I first entered AEP in 2008! How we picked up new art skills so subtly is actually quite fascinating!!!

Back to the painting...

I'm happy with how the sense of depth was achieved in the final work! I tried very hard to achieve this by overlapping the different pills, capsules and tablets (aka drugs), and introducing jet black background in the spaces. The work is obviously not meant to be very realistic, but sadly in the process, the face became a little too distorted. Then again this was the very first time I painted a human face, so I guess the tones rendered are considered not bad?^^ the eyebrows are too bushy though, and the thick lips make the gender of the figure a little.... ambiguous. 

What I also realised was that sometimes, things that turn out good happen my chance. For explain if you look at the syringe, the prep work I did for it was actually must better and well-blended. but for the glue, I think the final painting of it was more realistic, with a very light shadow to it. Also, some of the drugs suffered a sad fate cos I applied too much water to it, causing the paper to start to flake off. 

As for the story behind the work, I just hope to highlight that taking drugs is something that you can't back out of. The jail bars are supposed to symbolise both prison bars (which drug abuser will land themselves behind if they were to be caught), and metaphorically, a sort of entrapment --- once you start, you can't stop. The drugs were deliberately painted in a wide array of attractive colours to represent how they seem so harmless. Yet of course we all know what harm they can bring yes?

So in conclusion, the same message applies till today

SAY NO TO DRUGS EVERYBODY!!!!!!!!!