“Who am I? You sure you want to know? The story of my life is not for the faint of heart. If somebody told you it was a happy tale, if somebody said I was just your average guy, not a care in the world… somebody lied.”
Peter Parker / Spiderman
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Peter Parker: “So, to become an Avenger, are there like trials or an interview?”
Tony Stark: “You just don’t do anything I would do… and definitely don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. There’s a little gray area in there and that’s where you operate.”
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“When you can do the things that I can, but you don’t, and then the bad things happen? They happen because of you.”
Peter Parker / Spiderman
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“With great power comes great responsibility.”
Spiderman
#190729#
Last Monday, I had my last day of work at Singtel. After working for a year as a webmaster for Singtel eshop, I decided not to renew my contract with them. The first thing I did after I bade farewell to my colleagues and left the company at the end of the day was to catch the latest Spiderman movie, “Spider-Man: Far From Home”.
There was actually a reason why I wanted needed to watch this Spiderman movie. It was because I already had plans to make a Spiderman themed artwork for our upcoming 54th monthsary this July. Since I hadn’t really watched any Spiderman movies (the Tom Holland version) in the past and I felt I didn’t really know much about this superhero, I hoped this movie could improve my understanding of his character. And it definitely helped.
What has Spiderman got to do with Taenggu though? I was actually inspired by one of her behind-the-scene videos of her concert rehearsals/practices where she was hanging onto an aerial acrobat rope and playfully swinging to and fro while exclaiming “Like Spiderman!” like a small kid.
To ride on the wave of Spiderman fever while the movie is currently showing in theatres, I thought it would be a good time to make this Spiderman Taeng artwork too.
I started by choosing this reference photo that I found online.
The background of this reference photo with those repetitive, identical rectangular shapes that represent windows on a commercial building gave me the idea of recreating this same picture in the form of my style of paper art which I’m good at. That’s when I knew this monthsary artwork was going to be completely different and would take on a refreshingly new style from my past monthsary artworks in the recent months.
And then I chose a suitable photo of Taenggu’s face (my favourite one which is also my phone wallpaper at the moment).
Then I attempted to sketch her face first on a paper using pencil.
Oh no, it looked kinda ghostly and I didn’t think it was going to go anywhere positive. (TMI: I’m not good at drawing small and detailed stuff!) But I had another idea to solve this problem. You will see what I would do later on.
I moved on to make a rough sketch of my reference picture on another piece of sketchbook paper. Ruler was needed to draw straight lines and create those identical rectangular shapes of specific measurements.
Then I traced out the outlines of the buildings on a piece of rough textured grey paper and cut out the windows one by one with a penknife.
Ta-da, it was done!
Then I pasted this grey paper on top of a cream yellow paper to give the effect of warm lights shining out from the windows at night.
What comes next was the making of Spiderman body with separate pieces of red and blue papers glued together before I used a black marker to draw the line patterns on his suit.
Almost there!
Next, I printed a few head images of Taenggu of different sizes so that I could try out which one would best fit the proportion of her Spiderman body. Before that, I had to use Photoshop to remove her index finger and thumb that were covering part of her hair.
Turned out the first one was already the best fit. Haha.
The last final detail to add now was the rope-like spider web. I originally wanted to just use a white pen to draw out the spider web rope, but because I happened to have a ball of white string on my table, an even better idea struck me.
I secured the string down onto the paper using a white glue, creating the effect of Spiderman hanging onto the rope made of his spider webs in his hand. I purposely let the white string extend out of the paper so that it is more interesting as an artwork and you can even tie it round a nail and hang it on a wall.
A few more close-up shots of the finished artwork. 📸
While I usually would send my couple day artworks to Taenggu, I would keep my monthsary ones with me. This time, though, I somehow thought it is something presentable enough to be given to Taenggu, so I decided to specially frame it up in a black frame and send it to her in my next parcel.
Hope Taenggu likes this 54th monthsary artwork! It’s Spiderman Taeng happily swinging from building to building in the city and shooting spider webs for you. 🕷🕸
HAPPY 54TH MONTHSARY, LOVE! 💜
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