What is the best way to represent KL on canvas? Some might say food, people, scenarios, or even buildings. I’m going with the map of KL.

I like to blend data and art, because I believe data is beautiful and it can be represented in an artistic form. While dabbling with ideas on how I should represent KL on canvas, I was thinking of people in bit-art, food collage, even skyline of KL, but sadly those ideas are not beautiful enough (at least to me) to trully represent this city.

One thing that strikes me the most when it comes to elements of KL is the roads and the routes. If you stop driving in KL for at least 6 months, you’ll find that your usual route has changed, diverted,  or doesn’t exist anymore! So I thought I should use this element as my subject; the roads of KL.

I chose the Golden Triangle of KL as my focus. I started off with some masking tape to mask the main roads and paint the background in a mild and soft manner.

Once done, I added some blocks to iron out the smaller roads, alleys, and gaps in between buildings. 

Then, I added some characters on certain part of the city. I used strokes and colour contrasts to describe my perceptions on each parts of the city, for instance Bukit Bintang, Jalan P.Ramlee, KLCC area, and so forth. Each areas is represented with different treatment by the brush.

Once some detailings are done, the painting is ready to be hanged on my living room!