2014 Final drawings

     My name is Mohd Farhan Bin Amir. I was born on 19^th of September 1992. I am just a simple normal person, a commoner, no one, nobody and NIP (Non Important Person). I have high interest on films, gadgets especially smartphone, facts and knowledge, photography, Rockabilly (Grease) and Pompadour culture and not to forget; Art. I love to collect band t-shirts, shoes, comic books, DVDs and books. Love to download illegal MP3s and new movies on the internet. I am still a simple normal person, nothing is changed. Move on if I have already made you bored.

     Doesn’t have a fair skin like Caucasian, doesn’t have the height of a Caucasian, cannot walk like one nor speak like one. This is because I am Asian. If it were a food pyramid, it will be somewhat in the middle or the bottom of the pyramid. Not really in any serious relationship or have anyone special in my life. You can call me “girlfriend-less”. Yet right now, still a simple normal person. Still, nothing is changed. At this moment, I already finished describing who I really am externally, but …

     Who am I really? That is the real question i often asked myself yet no legit answer has been given so far. It’s like a newborn robot questions about their existence and their purpose of being built. The family’s name that I bear since I was born cannot define who I really am.  It’s about who are we from the inside of our heart, our gut and our mind. You cannot ask other people to give explanation about yourself or who you really are. You are the one who is responsible to figure out who you really are. I found who I really am in art. I realized that I actually found solace whenever I draw or doodle something. It gives me unexplainable relaxing feeling. I feel calm and peaceful. From year to year, I changed my style of drawing in search for my own. Until now, I cannot find my own style. I often referred to someone else and applied it to my drawing, called it as my own.

     When my lecturer gave us this assignment and he said “draw whatever you want”, I don’t know what to draw. Brainstorming ideas is not that easy. You really need originality in your idea but somehow you will need to add references of other artwork into your works. It’s complicated yet I decided to take the challenge anyway. Alas, the process didn’t turn out like I was expected. I don’t know what to draw and I cannot draw any plain object. That’s like getting back to diploma.

The drawing process

     The environment was palpable. I stopped thinking for a while and I stared at the surface of my paper for hours. I bet my face was melancholy at that time. As I walk closer to my paper, I felt the sharp edgy paper. It is stiff yet still could be bent. With a little taste of emulsion paint on this paper, the surface of the paper is rough and almost dusty. I could feel my “hairs” standing up against the paper, it was magnetic. After that, I realized that I need to understand about the surface itself before I can understand the drawing. From what I could learn, the surface of the drawing played the most important role of the drawing. It will affect every inch of the drawing, from edge to another edge. As for an example, a technical pen with tiny tip cannot work well on a rough surface of canvas or on a thick paper with emulsion paint embedded on it. A marker pen or any ballpoint pen cannot work well on this surface too. It’s like the surface of the canvas is teeth and the tip of the given pen cannot reach its ‘cavity’.

     I grabbed my soft compressed charcoal and started to draw spontaneously. I don’t know what I was drawing. I just want to see and feel the effect of the drawing charcoal clashing against the rough surface. I could hear the compressed charcoal uttered high-pitched piercing sound as the image of the drawing slowly being made. I looked up and see the image. It was all nothing except for the black lines and my fingerprints all over the surface. After that, I started to blacken the surface as the charcoal residue slowly falling off the paper, creating new effect. I erased some part of the drawing and slowly I could see the image of an individual starting to emerge from the black surface. It was me. It was an image of me. Although, I did not set out to draw a self-portrait of me, an image of me appeared unintentionally from that surface which was pure white before it was stained with black and grey colors.

     I asked my colleagues concerning my drawing. They responded honestly with decent acceptable answer. One of my friends gave me a satirical form of answer and that make me thinking “why my image look so stiff and look very tactical like a mannequin?” I could not give a proper feedback. From there, I slowly developed my drawing. I refined all the drawing lines and carefully refurbished the tonal value of the image. I like my drawing to be as fine as possible. I used to be a fan of adding mix media into my drawing just to get the nice ‘accidental’ touch but then I realized that this method is too cliché. I prefer something that still can be considered as a legit drawing. A drawing is a drawing, using media such as pencil, soft pastel, charcoal, technical pen and sorts of dry media.

     This artwork acts as a mirror to my inner self because I often labeled myself as a disguised person. A person that is afraid to reveal himself. Why? This is due to my inability to speak normally like other people. I am shy at communicating or socializing. Some people called me freak, anti-social, and at one part of my life, my weakness hindered my self-esteem, my confidence, and my courage to speak in front of people. This led to a situation where I had no friend and often alone. I am that kind of boy who will sit alone in a cafeteria table during recess and people would look at me like I killed somebody. To be honest, my childhood wasn’t that great. I also got no courage to make the first move on a girl I liked. In the end, I was “girlfriend-less”.

     Despite my weakness, i tend to search for my strength. I’m not really good at calculus or at any educational subject that related to number. I hate numbers and I hate formulas. I don’t know to balance my checkbook and I don’t remember on how to solve simple mathematic equation. I’m suck at school and weird also. I always had these drunken monologues conversation with myself, hallucinating things that are abnormal for my age. This is my second self.

     Yet, I finally found my strength. I can draw very well and by this, I managed to stand out among my classmates in school. Besides my strength, I also found out that I have many skills in many fields. I can do many things but when it comes to do it greatly, that’s where I failed. I can do that one particular work, but to take it to the next level, I cannot. I am simply a jack of all trades, master of none. According to the Wikipedia (2013), the definition of “Jack of all trades, master of none” is a figure of speech used in reference to a person that is competent with many skills, but is not necessarily outstanding in any particular one.

     That’s how I define myself. I do not take my strength and make it as a definition that symbolizes me. I take my weaknesses and put that as my true definition. This is because I tend to remind myself about who I really am, and there’s always a greater one than me, not now but in the future. I also wanted to remind myself to always be down to the earth, be humble to the surrounding, whether to the nature or to the people and most importantly, to the mightiest of all creatures; The Creator Himself.

     When I started my progress on this drawing, I knew the outcome will be horrendous. I did not get ‘the feeling’ when I first start making big scale drawing. I wanted to draw a self-portrait of me but at the same time, I wanted people to look at me differently. I want people to accept me like I was someone else although I am still the same person inside out. This is the major reason why I portrayed myself as a Caucasian. Someone who is better from the way they look, fairer skin tone and the mesmerizing accent. Great wavy hair, decent height and decent body build.

    This is how I want to be looked at, as a Caucasian individual. Although we are naturally attracted to the opposite sex, we will somehow feel attracted to the same sex as us especially when we see someone who is much attractive than us but that does not mean that one particular person is homosexual. The image is also directed to emphasize the first impression of people toward us. First impression is always that important. This is because if you ruined the first impression, there’s nothing you can do to fix it. People will always look down on you.

     I am going to admit that this is the most ‘taken for granted’ drawing I have ever made. Why? Well this is because I did not put enough effort and time to make this drawing. From technical issue, only certain part of it is drawn using compressed charcoal while majority of the drawing is filled with Chinese ink. Busy and lack of time some people might say. Perhaps another reason is because I made this artwork only because it was an assignment not because I really wanted to do it.

This is what happened to me. This drawing is lack of educational technique and skill. The making process of this artwork was horrible which I would definitely forget about it if I got the slightest chance. If you watch carefully, the body figure look stiff and looks like mannequin doll. Most of the drawing is dark and black. Not much stories can be pulled from this image.

If you were an object, what object would you be? What object best describes the true self of you? Have you ever ask yourself that question?

“I would be a sponge because I can accept anything that comes to me but I got my own principles which I do not easy attract and follow them right away. Throw me anything and I can be steady and act like normal but deep inside who might know? Why sponge? It’s soft and I am soft hearted girl. I am very sensitive but I can bear the ‘weight of a liquid” N. Najihah Najmi, (2014)

“Mirror, because that’s where I can see someone’s real self. Everyone look at the mirror and being insecure about their flaws. “When we know our flaws, that is a proof that not everyone is perfect and imperfection is who they really are” N. Azlina Shah Alias Khoo, (2014)

     Different people have different opinion on what object best describe themselves. But for me, I have different thought. If I was an object that best describes me, I would be a Mule. Why? In numismatics, a mule is a coin or medal with ‘obverse and reverse’ designs not normally seen on the same piece. This can be produced by error and it is extremely rare for the coin minting machine to produce error coin. The name derives from the mule; the hybrid offspring of a horse and a donkey, due to such a coin having two sides intended for different coins, much as a mule has parents of two different species.

     Why a mule has got anything to do with me? I have been trying to put myself as an object that fit to my personality and see how it goes. Not too directly but not too excessively. To put it this way, imagine myself as an error coin. I am a mule in this life. I was minted back in 1992. I have been punched from sheet copper. My ridges have been rimmed and beveled but the making process was not perfect. I got flaws because i haven’t been stamped perfectly. I may be worth nothing if you want to use me for ‘bargaining’ but from a different perspective, I might be worth billions of dollar. For example, in August 2012, the highest sale price for Sacagawea Dollar with Washington State Quarter mule was paid for $155,250 at the American Numismatic Association meeting in Philadelphia. A one dollar coin is worth almost 160,000 times more expensive than its original value only because of its imperfection.

     Despite the rusty and dirty aging look of a 50 cent coin with scratches all over, the coin is still worth 50 cent. What I am trying to explain here is that I may not even worth a penny or one quid but I might be worth more than that from different perspective. We may feel worthless at some point but we do not realize that we are still worth something. Our imperfections have value that we can change that into our strength. Based on my experience, I think I managed to convert that flaw into something that really defines me and I am really proud of it. If you can be any object that best describes you, what yours would be?