Last Friday, the 26th of June 2014, we were lucky to have the very first established Bruneian artist, Pg Dato Asmalee hold a motivational talk for our art department at PTEM. He explained his life’s journey through art, and his passion and commitment to painting and creating. He is 73 years old and still producing amazingly detailed work! He explained to us, a style he developed called "Zikirism", which is similar to Pointillism - a technique of painting by applying dots of pure colour, but with the firm remembrance of Allah, as he is very much motivated by his Islamic beliefs. A lot of his paintings are actually based on Islamic Ideology. Mind you, he only became a full time artist after retirement, but he managed to produce a significant amount of paintings during his years working for the Brunei government. So it was a real inspiration to hear someone who has paved such a successful career doing what he loves, still very much motivated and happy to share his work with others. Below are a few of his paintings (they are not full versions, and unfortunately I did not manage to take down the titles of the paintings).

Every painting he showed us included a story and a moral, and that his paintings served as a visual diary of his thoughts. 

The difference between Narwhal 2013 and Narwhal 2014.

Close-ups below...

New piece is up! I've finally completed this painting of Nadira at 5 months. I decided to add foliage to complete the piece (my typical pink lotus flowers, and a little bird). I tried to to make it look as realistic as possible. The arms were the most difficult aspects to paint - it took me hours and hours of repainting because I just couldn't get the tonal values right. It's not perfect, but I'm glad it's finally done! Click HERE to see previous entries on this work. 

Reference Photograph - I gave her a little more hair! :)

"Baby Bloom"
2014
50cm x 60cm
Acrylic & Enamel on Canvas

"Of Love & The Unknown"
20cm x 20cm
2014

Just a little illustrative piece I made for a friend who has an irrational fear of the open ocean. I love the effect of enamel paint as water as it really does look shiny and wet! I've been doing this quite a lot - maybe too much. Just be careful when using enamel paint as it smells quite toxic and can only be removed using thinner/turpentine (even more toxic!)