A very long-winded history of my drawing experience

My parents teach drawings to people with different age levels. Like other kids, I sketched lines on walls and unwanted calendar papers when I started to learn how to walk. At the age of 4, I started my formal drawing lessons from my parents starting with colouring and started to learn drawing when I was 7.

When I was 8, my drawing was sent to Japan for children drawing competition and I was told by my school teacher that my drawing was showcased at a gallery in Kyoto Japan. At the age of 9, I was awarded a 2nd place in World Peace for Children poster drawing competition nationally. I was really upset because 1st prize had the chance to attend the International World Peace for Children poster drawing competition in Japan. However, I continued to be actively involved in any drawing competition in and out of my district until age of 12. I was always the first or second in any competition in my town because I was trained well to draw children drawings using pastel (Children drawing means sketching and filling up every single space using pastel in every object with bright and matching colours)

My bright drawing history had dimmed when I was 12 years old. Under the supervision of my father, all his students learn watercolour at the age of 12. So was I. However, no matter how hard my father tried to teach me, I cannot handle watercolour well. I had then lost interest in drawing because not only my father, my school teacher expected all students to use watercolour in art class. My favourite time was when my art teacher in school requested us to do pencil drawing as homework. Just like pastel drawing, I love pencil drawing, too. So I did well in my art homeworks. When I was in high school, I wanted to take art as my elective subject. But, my father warned me not to. His words are still vivid in my memory. "To do art, you need creativity. You don't have that with you. If you fail the exam, you'll ruin my reputation as a drawing teacher". Hurt and demotivated, I gave up on art at the age of 16.

Despite the harsh words from my dad, my interest for pencil and pastel drawing had never changed. I constantly did sketches using pencils on my drawing block whenever I was free. At 2003, when I was 19, I draw a poster using pastel for a national competition with title 'The Importance of Lady in our Society'. I didn't win. So, I thought to myself maybe my dad was right about my lack of creativity.

I gave up on drawing again until 2009 when I was 25 years old that I started to draw Van Gogh's Starry Night out of curiosity how Starry Night would look like in pastel because I think pastel looks pretty similar with oil painting. I loved the way pastel can replicate the impressionist techniques in oil painting (Click here to see my pastel Starry Night). When I showed the drawing to my parents, they were surprised. They didn't expect that I have the ability to replicate a famous artist masterpiece. Finally I had proven to them that I am not uncreative. I had used pastel to represent the bold impressionist strokes in Starry Night.

In 2011, seeing the Starry Night lying at the corner of the room, I posted a photo of the drawing on Facebook to show my friends. Suddenly, many friends pressed 'like' and there were demands to buy my drawings. This triggers me to continue pastel drawing. So here I am, at the beginning of my drawing collection at http://heaypaintingroom.blogspot.com/. I'm still learning to be more creative. I'm still struggling to make better impressionist strokes instead of filling up all the empty spaces in every object (Because I was taught to fill up all the spaces when I did children pastel drawing). I'm still copying drawings from Van Gogh, from photos, instead of creating my own drawing. There's lots of room for improvement.

This blog is not only a collection of my drawings, it will also show my progression (hopefully improvement) in drawing.