Crafting the compositions is perhaps the phase I always find the most daunting: no more room for fun exploration and play and only seriousness is allowed in this period. Creating the compositions was to me always the point that sealed the deal – it was the final culmination of all the studies and research, and one had to somehow find a way to portray everything one had learnt and gathered into a single image. As such, I felt so much inertia embarking on this phase, but my upcoming meeting with Professor Chagoya and Professor Barton encouraged me to persevere on and pick up my pencil to draft out the compositions.
Mandai Crematorium and Bukit Merah Swimming Complex were easy tasks – I was satisfied with the watercolour studies I had previously made during my site visits and chose to use one of the studies from each of the sites as the final composition. Professor Barton and Professor Chagoya agreed with my decision, their only suggestions being to take greater notice of the proportions of Mandai Crematorium and ensure that I fully capture the elongated building and not shorten its dimension, and for Bukit Merah Swimming Complex to capture the entirety of the space and not cut off the edge of the pool. As Professor Chagoya commented, to fully capture the narrative of the space my grandfather had designed.
Yishun Stadium and the MND Building had a similar approach to compilation, whereby I merged images from my sketches and watercolour studies to form the composition. I faced a few moments of debate in attempting to create these images, for it involved quite a fair amount of curating – having to decide which aspects and features of the buildings to include (and vice versa exclude) from the composition. In my desire to fully represent the space, I attempted to include as many angles as possible within the painting. However, such an approach only served to make the composition confusing and unnecessarily complicated.
For Yishun Stadium, Professor Barton advised me to reflect on the narrative of the space I was hoping to portray within the architecture – from there I realised that my hope to bring forth the element of elevation and tension was counteracted by the poles and roofs I had filled within the sky, for they interrupted the cantilever structure, subduing its magnificence set against the sky. Similarly for the MND Building, drawing the composition foregrounded the attention I had to pay when painting the canvas, ensuring the superimposed layers were distinguishable and not unintentionally misrepresent the shape of the building.
Bishan was quite the struggle, to the extent that I scrambled out a composition I was not even half convinced by, to which Dr Barton helped to shift my perspective when revising the composition – to consider instead how to abstract the town plan as opposed to feeling a need to take on the impossible task of capture all nooks and crannies of the town. Drafting the composition made me wonder about the insurmountable task my grandfather had to take on in planning the town, and I came to respect the time and effort he spent in taking in such a large number of considerations to build a functional and liveable space. In some ways, I feel that my eventual composition still does not do justice to the complexities that lay behind the actual planning of Bishan, and my composition concedes to my inability to reach such a level of mastery within the architectural field.
Katong Swimming Complex was an absolute delight to compose, as I delved into a somewhat surrealist mode of drawing in my desire to emulate the childlike wonder of the space. Inspired by the rabbit hole from Alice in Wonderland, I attempted to create a sense of escape to a fantastical realm, where one encounters the numerous props within the space. Professor Chagoya advised me to pay close attention to the colours employed within the space, for I initially intended to paint with highly saturated colours but this may in effect betray the more pastel colours of the actual landscape. As such, I endeavoured to paint the features of wonder in with more saturated colours, but keep to the more reserved palette within the architectural facade, the more sepia and brown scheme perhaps an ode to the nostalgia that has been built over the years within the space.
Concluding this phase of the project lifted a huge weight off my shoulders, for I felt I had overcome the greatest task of deciding the layout. All that remained was transferring these compositions to the canvas, and painting them in full.
