Today marks the 7th time I’ve been to Kluang this year. It should have been more, but I was unable to travel for 3 months this year.
People like to ask me why I keep going to Kluang. There is nothing there, they say. It’s so boring, they say.
Perhaps that’s why I like it.
I was originally going to spend this year travelling to different towns in Malaysia and exploring them one by one.
The first town I visited was Kluang, and I fell in love with the place. I keep going back there. It was the second trip there that Kluang brought forth from me something I never knew existed.
My first day trip to Kluang was inspired by a blog post I read on how to do the same. It was intended to be a recce trip for a longer one.
“One day can finish seeing all of Kluang,” my dear friend told me. She would later tell me, after I spent 3 days there, “You have explored only 20% of Kluang.”
On my second trip there, I searched several shops, including the post office, for a post card. My plan was to send to myself a post card from every town I visit.
I still have received only one post card.
There were no postcards to be found in the many shops I visited. Or maybe it’s because I didn’t go to the touristy places.
“Nobody buys postcards anymore, that’s why we don’t sell them,” an elderly proprietor of an old school bookshop told me.
He was very nice to me, so I asked to buy a few pieces of art card, a black pen, and a green one. I cut them into post card size pieces using a knife I carried with me whenever I travel.
Sitting at a table in the back lane of Laman Kreatif Kluang, the alley of colourful murals, I sipped from a cup of iced lychee tea as I contemplated drawing the back lane.
Little did I know that the perspective was one of the hardest ones to draw.
I threw away the first draft, as I got the lines wrong. My second fared a little better, but it wasn’t good enough for a post card.
When the sun came overhead and cast its rays down onto the back lane, I shifted to another cafe. This was a cafe for youngsters, as it involved taking off my shoes and sitting cross-legged at a low table.
I would later learn it’s best to use one of the tables for adults, for those of us who are not as flexible anymore.
I have spent hours at this cafe, drawing different scenes from around Kluang. From this experience, I learned that I can draw.
It’s a revelation to me because throughout my life, I believed that I suck at art.
Standardised tests and exams at school taught me that it’s better not to pursue a hobby, much less a career, in art… not when a tomato looks like a badly spilt pool of blood.
But here, with no teacher to inspect my work, and only myself and the unfortunate postal worker to see my art, it comes alive.
I learn that the art I do is called ‘stippling’. It is a slow process that involves using dots or small shapes to fill a space.
The finer the pen, or the darker you want to make the space, the more time it takes.
Stippling teaches me patience. Fortunately, stippling is also kind to mistakes. I simply stipple over them, or change direction.
First I learn framing. Then I learn order, as in, which parts to draw first. Then I learn shading. I’m still learning. I’m still developing my style.
A proprietor at a cafe I spent a couple of hours drawing at in Kluang invited me to see the upper floor. It’s a studio where a regionally renowned artist works from, when he’s not in Singapore running his art studio in Orchard Road.
This is how I make my first friend in Kluang.
Unlike some of my other travel companions, I don’t easily make friends. I often don’t speak the language and am very self-conscious when I do, for language, like art, is another thing that 16 years of school life has taught me that I suck at. But I’m slowly learning that it’s not true.
Language barrier aside, I tend to keep to myself when I travel, relying on my other abilities and tendencies. Because I let people approach me instead of the other way around, I miss out on a lot of opportunities for adventure.
But it’s okay. I travel to find myself and be comfortable with who I am. Aspects of me that city life has crowded out.
Here in Kluang, I can spend a whole afternoon working on my art pieces, and not feel guilty about not having done something more productive with my time.
Here in Kluang, I can fully appreciate and enjoy the process of making my art without having someone leaning over my shoulder and asking, “Why don’t you find a way to monetise this skill of yours?”
Why does everything in Singapore have to be monetised?
To monetise something is commoditise our minds, bodies, and time to sell on the market for a pitiful fraction of what they are really worth.
“I don’t want Kluang to become like Melaka,” my first friend says. I’m not sure what he means by it, but I know I don’t want my art to become like Singapore, where everything must be commoditised in order to be of value.
I discovered my talent for stippling here in Kluang, and I find that it’s mainly in Kluang that I can continue to stipple in peace.
My first Kluang friend invites me to join a sketching workshop by the renowned artist. I consider it carefully, and then decline.
I’m too young in my art journey. I’m still discovering my style. I don’t want to learn from others yet. I want to play with what I have and develop my own style.
Learning from others now will stifle my creation. Maybe later.
People ask me why I keep going to Kluang. I come to Kluang to draw. I come to Kluang to find myself, to learn about myself.
It’s so boring in Kluang, they say.
Perhaps that’s why I like it.
Daniel Tay 