Book Review: Of Happiness by William Sim

Submitted by  Teoh Yi Chie on  December 4, 2018 - 12:13 am

Of Happiness by William Sim - 01

Of Happiness is the companion artbook of William Sim's 2018 Exhibition "Happiness Private Limited #10".

This huge 288-page paperback artbook collects 10 years worth of artworks from William, a freelance illustrator based in Singapore. He's also my friend from Urban Sketchers Singapore.

Of Happiness by William Sim - 05
The cover has a hole that lets you see through to a print, one of thirteen, behind.

Of Happiness by William Sim - 02

Of Happiness by William Sim - 03

Of Happiness by William Sim - 04
These prints are interchangeable and can be swapped to change the cover design. Each Chinese word shares a common character below which means wood. Together with other strokes, they make up different words.

Those prints are printed on high quality matte surface paper and they look great.

Of Happiness by William Sim - 06
The binding is the type that exposes the stitching and allows the pages to be opened flat.

Of Happiness by William Sim - 07
The artworks featured are from commissioned illustrations, personal sketches and paintings created for gallery sales.

In some of his illustrations, you may notice a little boy with a watermelon hat. The watermelon boy is always hiding somewhere waiting to be found.

Of Happiness by William Sim - 08

Of Happiness by William Sim - 09

Of Happiness by William Sim - 10
Some of the illustrations actually reminds me of Hayao Miyazaki's movies because of the elements of fantasy and creativity.

Of Happiness by William Sim - 11

Of Happiness by William Sim - 12

Of Happiness by William Sim - 13

Of Happiness by William Sim - 14
This is a huge painting on a single sheet of watercolour paper. There's actually a deeper meaning behind each artwork but unfortunately there are no captions explaining them.

You can learn more about the symbolism behind the works in this recent interview I had with him at his exhibition.

Of Happiness by William Sim - 15

Of Happiness by William Sim - 16

Of Happiness by William Sim - 17
Also in the book are pictures of hand-painting sculptures or models created by Lush Tan and William. I was told these delicate models are not easy to create and paint. The tiny areas behind are difficult to access and paint.

Of Happiness by William Sim - 18
That's Watermelon Boy again.

Of Happiness by William Sim - 19

Of Happiness by William Sim - 20
This is a wonderful artbook with lots of beautiful watercolour illustrations and sketches.

The artbook is priced at SGD $99 not inclusive of shipping. It's currently only sold at selected places, one of which is at Utterly Art.

These are the shipping cost to various countries:
US/Europe/Australia/Middle East - SGD $54 (air), $27 (ship)
Asia - SGD $39 (air), $18 (ship)
Malaysia/Brunei - SGD $16.50 (air)

If you're interested to get the book, you can contact William at his Instagram page:
https://www.instagram.com/merchantofhappiness/

Tags
william sim
art book reviews

Comments

Antoine (not verified) Mon, 24 Dec 2018 - 02:48

Marvelous. Too bad the author never answered on FB and Instagram to order his book

Add new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
About text formats

Filtered HTML

  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For Comment Notification, please choose "All comments". "Replies to my comment" does not work.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------