19 posts tagged creative collaboration

2012 is fast becoming a year full of creative collaborations. Was invited by Nike to paint on their Cortez sneakers recently in celebration of its 40th Anniversary (Nike Cortez 40/40 KL). I’ll let blogger @amischaheera (very cool chica lemme just say!) tell you about it here ! It’s also my first official painting gig in my new studio (post about that will come once all is together in the Nini’s Art Studio department). Anyhoo, amidst unpacking & setting up the studio AND my day job, I had to work on these sneakers, not that I’m complaining as I was curious to see what my painting would look like on shoes. The brief was fun anyways “Just do whatever you feel like”, which made it easier for me to find some time to get it done! I did it in 3 sessions in total. Below are some pics I took while painting.

Above: The initial sketch. Orchids was my subject. Just because I felt like painting some flowers (big surprise! LOL)

Session 1: The black and white Cortez turned white as soon as it was delivered to me. Painted (acrylics) the base white to help me visualize my design. It was at this point I thought “Dammit, this is not going to be easyyyyy” as the surface was not flat like my canvas! I also discovered that sneaker aritsts usually prep the surface before painting by rubing some alcohol over the sneakers. This helps paints to stick better and last longer. Good thing this is for display only!

session 2: Introducing gold & yellow into the palette. Layers are required to bring out the gold.

Session 3: All four sides are different…….painted in the lines, more layering, some dripping and straw blowing! Messaged this to a sneaker head who said “Dope, but you gotta make the swoosh pop, its important to the Cortez design”. Notedddd.

Later that night/morning, painted in the white swoosh but made it transparent.

:

Packed up for Nike!

Once again THANK YOU to Nike Malaysia and the team at MilkPR for inviting me for this wonderful profect. Happy to be a part of this global celebration!

Love,

Nini

#ARTFORLIFE

Everyone who knows me will support this fact: “Nini loves her berry”. So when  Popmyberry (Malaysian company dealing in blackberry accessories & servicing) invited me to collaborate with them to come up with a few designs for their new “sticker” service I said, “Hells yeah!!”

I really didn’t have a “concept” for the covers. One random night, I just sat myself down with some music and started “doodling” with my Indian Inks. 

I then sent them to my new friends at Popmyberry who in turn very kindly printed some samples out specially for my live painting cum solo exhibition yesterday.

These are the samples! The quality is pretty ON! It will go on sale this March so do follow @popmyberry on twitter for updates! (From left: Firebird, Peacock, Fishnet, Shells, Fleurs & Aeoki)

Aeoki above was a real favourite. Both samples were sold along with some other designs.

Soooo, anyway this is a quick post to update you. My #artforlife journey continues. I stand firm. Do what you love. Share. Collaborate and be happy doing it. 

Lots of love,

Nini

Last Sunday was AMAZING! 

As some of you might know, I did some live painting at the Levi’s® Pop-Up store last Sunday.

The whole point of the exercise was for me to share my love for art with as many people as possible; to show you how great it is to be free to create, to collaborate, to let your head relax and bask in colors and imagination. I invited people from tumblr, twitter and facebook to come paint with me and the response was BEAUTIFUL. About twenty people came, 13 of whom came from twitter and tumblr and the others were my “creative collective”/best friends! Thank you all for taking the time to come out on Sunday afternoon to paint. It was truly inspirational to see. Might I add, all who came were girls! GO girl power! #GoForth! Pictures below have been provided by my bestest, @chicarosa aka Rozy whose an amazing videographer/director. Thank you for taking the time to come support, work and paint with me Roses! Best times.

The wall was made out of canvas and measured 13 x11 ft. So my first stress was actually getting out my sketch on the canvas. I usually trace out my sketches with a projector but that wasn’t allowed on site so I had to freehand it. DIED when I heard I had to do that! So I decided to come a day early to lay it out before painting. It turned out pretty alright thankfully. I portrayed a woman (no tis not me) and her internal will to rise above herself, to GO FORTH in her mind and beyond. From fishscales morphing into droplets into waves, lines to signify direction and dynamism. She goes forth through colors and imagination. When your mind expands, so do you. GO FORTH.

Picture from @vpyp

Once I had her down on canvas, I couldn’t wait to start painting and neither could the girls who came to help. 

It was so exciting to meet them for the first time, these Tumblrettes and Twitterinas! We were literally on edge wanting to paint but the weather had other ideas. We had to wait an hour before the rain died down. 

The minute the rain stopped, we were out the door! First order of business, give the canvas a good wipe down!

Before painting, I shared with the girls the basic idea of where the colors would go. I have to plan due to the short time we had (2hours). I’m also a little bit of a control freakkkk LOL. There I said it! Boom! I get work done so there you go!

“Oh look at this!”…..my favourite part of the process. Mixing paint. Look at their faces, THEY ALL KNOW WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT. Love color! “Ooooo pretty painttttt, good enough to eat” (but please don’t try)

Marking spots with color for the rest to fill in.

Everyone had sections to look after. Wave painters, purple section, greens and orange gals.

Love this shot of everyone at work!

Picture by Melissa Indot : I love this shot. I remember chuckling over the fact that I had painters. Enjoy it while I can. =D Only for a coupla hours for me!

I tried to get input from the girls where possible. I like hearing ideas out during the process. Different eyes gives fresh paint!

Smiling faces through out is what I noticed. What a joy to see!

My “creative collective”/best friends came to visit. To observe initially, but that didn’t happen as they ended up helping me in the second half. 

I even got my little apprentice/nephew, Hakeem come make his mark!

In less than 2 hours, we had gotten most done. I was super happy at this point, we were on time and I saw the finish line….until it rained!

I wanted to die seeing the colors run while it rained. Luckily I had my friends to come help me cover the piece just before everything got washed away. I am blessed to have friends who care for art as much as me. They felt my painnnnn!

It rained for an hour…and all we could do was watch the paint go…..

I nearly died when we removed the tarp to see what the rain left us with. The waves that the girls had worked so hard on was all mush. I felt so bad for them. We took some towels to spread out the paint.

Saving as much of the paint work we could.

The rain didn’t do much damage actually, infact, she left some pretty cool texture for us to work with. I love the drip effect and decided to keep some in. 

After dinner, my best friends came in to help me finish the job. It was almost like a scene from some covert operation, you know when the support team comes in to save the day. We started at 830pm.

We even had some girls come back to help! Thanks Nabila & Dalila! (Dayang you took some great photos of us as work!)

All girl team working hard to finish the job (as if it were some kind of competition!)

We got ourselves into a very systematic way of working. There were paint passers, paint mixers, leg holders for those shaky on the stairs (me!).  Everyone just fell naturally into their roles. It was great.

It was nice to hear them almost state to me “I wanna paint! What can I paint?!”

These girls I’ve known for nearly 20+years. We used to paint together in school for plays, charity work etc. That night, it felt like school times again. And we have not changed lemme just say!

Picture by Dayang: Cecelia pictured in the centre said, “the last time i painted was in form 5!” (That’s far too long!!)

It was about 1ish in the morning. Still in good spirits because it was FUN to do this with friends!

By 230am the lights were out and were were touching up in darkness. At this point I was told by my anal friends (bless them) to clean up some line work to complete the paintin.

Finally were were done by 245am. What a way to start Monday morning!

The next day, Levi’s® fam sent me this photo to show me how it looked in the sun. :) 

I had a tremendous time painting on Sunday. I got to share my love for art with strangers I met online whom I now can call friends. I got to have a pretty special moment with my best friends painting on a Sunday which is a great rarity. I have to thank the Levi’s® family for this amazing opportunity. Thank you for setting it up for me!

To my painters and new friends (in no particular order) Rab, Dayang, Shereen, Dayang Siti Fazlina, Nur Hanis, Fatma, Raihan, Nazrah, Fatin Mastura, Nabilah & Dalila THANK YOU for your time! It was such a joy to work with you! I hope to call you out again to paint soon. I hope you all find time to Go Forth and free your mind to paint or create whenever you can! 

To sisters Suli, Sharina and Atika (Shikara in spirit), big hugs from Kakak Nini. I loved seeing you all out as a family. Hope to see you all again soon. :)

To my girls Rozy, Shuenn Kee, Julie, Jancy, Su Ann. Can’t say more than NINI LOVES YOU. A true gift it was to be able to share something like this with you. (let’s laugh inside) - Fray Fray, Ben & Si Siew the brotherhood of the sisterhood lives. HUG. 

Thank you also to my wonderful family & friends who came out to say hi even in the rain. Love you all. You know who you are. I feel like I’m writing an acceptance speech right now so I shall end it with…..

ART FOR LIFE peoples! To more.

Love and color. Nini

Full set of photos here!

I never imagined my doodles would amount to much but my  Levi’s® fam thought it would be fun to have them as stencils for their customize t-shirt station at their Pop-Up store in Pavillion, Kuala Lumpur. You can make your own Go Forth tee-shirt if you want. The store will be there from the 13th to the 28th August 2011. 

Follow @levisMY on twitter for updates.

I think they’re testing out the stencil here. I grabbed this from their twitter account! Heh.

Two Sundays ago I was invited by my girl Arabyrd aka Arafah to do some live painting for her hip hop event “Arabyrd’s T-Party”.  It was such a special experience for me as it was my first attempt at live painting. I came in with no expectations and came out totally blown away. First of all, it was really nice to share my painting process with friends. I also got to meet new people who came up to say hi whilst I was painting. Loved that! I even had an artist from Sawarak called Nico (hope I spelt that right) who helped me with some line work for a bit! Very cool. Super lovely vibes were seriously bouncing off everyone and I took it all in and projected it into the painting. It left me completely wiped out by the time I was done. Wiped out but very happy! What a perfect Sunday spent with friends, art and music. Enthralling. :) 

Here are some pictures taken by friends as I went. 

Above: Arafah and me posing before it rained and moved me inside. 

I kinda like the white bits but that day I really wanted a fully painted piece. I shall do one similar to this next time. :) 

It was fun to see pictures the next day of friends who posed in front of the painting while i was working on it. I was completely unaware of all activities surrounding me at the time.

Love this picture taken by Nadia. I had been painting for a long while without stepping back. So when she showed me this photo I was like “Wattttt?!” LOL. I hadn’t realised how much I had done at that point. The painting measured 6x8ft. Freehand with acrylics. “Colors inspired from the 80s”. FUN.

Thanks ww.junkonline.com for this picture (above)! Read about the party here. They captured some tweets on that day and posted it in a special write-up. Interesting. :) 

I can’t wait to do another painting. The canvas awaits. Maybe this weekend. Find time to do what you love innit? ;)

Hi everyone,

Just sharing some photos from the preview of dipped.two. For those of you who don’t know, I have a small jewelry line called dipped which is a collaboration between my friend and own of design label thirtyfour. You can read about it here (dipped). You can also check the various updates I’ve done in relation to dipped by clicking on my tab bar on the side or here.

We had a preview last Thursday, 23rd of June 2011 and all I can say is BLESSED! So many friends of ours  to preview the collection. It was quite a special moment for us.

dipped.two is a small line (18 in total) of one-off pieces that featured fancy cut stones set in silver and dipped in 18k gold (rose and yellow gold). It took us about four months or so to develop and produce the line in between our day jobs. We had no set rules for this designing dipped, it was all about what we wanted to do and what we wanted to “play” with. Surprisingly, many of our friends related to our designs and we even had some customers from dipped one returning to view. We were pleased to see a young crowd at the event too which was what we hope to achive - making fine jewelry slightly more accessible to the young ladies who aspire to own something special. Like I said, I feel Blessed. 

Here are some picture of the event posted on the thirtyfour facebook page.

Below are some blackberry behind the scenes pics I took as we went through the dipped.two journey right up to event day. 

(ABOVE) Many months ago: Planning

(ABOVE) Half way mark to preview date: Discussion day with  our goldsmith on settings and chains. Above is Shuenn Kee’s ‘Grace’. Measurements and placing.

(ABOVE) A week before the event our pieces came back to us : We were quite into ombre-ing everything. LOL. The gradient is so pretty and totally something that we thought our customers would appreciate.

Above: ‘Delight’ and ‘Trust’

I loved my ‘eternal’ with her dancing stones. I wore all of them before I parted with them. LOL

(ABOVE): Shuenn Kee looks so cute with her mini mouse gloves placing ‘eternal’ on the mirror for her photo session.

This never made it to the booklet as the shot wasn’t really working for us. (That’s my hand in the mirror :))

test shot for eternal.

That’s Jeff, our visualist, swirling around the necklace before shooting.

Above: The “cover girl” ‘JOY

She made it to the wall. :) 

Preview day: Jeff gets some shots in before the guest arrives

Shuenn Kee and I briefed the girls before the preview. Every box was customized to fit each piece.

‘Radiance’

‘Unity’

‘Promise’

‘Grace’

‘Poise’

Soleil 1 & 2 

‘Mystery’

I’m with the beautiful Miss Thanuja. You can see that  chronic blackberry person at work.

Deborah shows me how she would wear the ‘Trust’ necklace. She’s also got the ‘catalyst’ (knuckles duster) on Love

Sasi & Malini. Malini is wearing ‘Faith’.

‘Jubilant’

Last moments with ‘Eternal’ before she was sold. 

Shuenn Kee owner, designer of thirtyfour, my long time friend who is always game to play with me! Many thanks to everyone who came to support. Can’t wait to start on our third collection!  :)

#ladiestakingover

CUE Beyonce ‘Girls’ LOL

Happy vibes to all.

Nini x

p.s This turned out to be quite an entry. Sorry for the length!

You can follow thirtyfour on twitter @thirtyfourme

Will be launching the second collection of dipped soon. All I can say is, that I am counting my blessings even as I type this. I never thought I would be able to actualize this particular day dream. I love jewelry, didn’t think I would be able to design them in this way. I’m super thankful. Truly…..if you think it hard enough, it can happen! Also, always collaborate with like minded people, you never know where shared enthusiasm can take you! In this instance, a big thanks to my favorite local label www.thirtyfour.net for doing this with me and to Shuenn Kee (thirtyfour owner and designer), my friend and collaborator, here’s to “our soul”. dipped is us!

Will update more.

Love to all. Nini