It’s important that I went with Songbird, instead of just “bird”. The Adarna song is an important element in the book since it is what cures illnesses and petrifies people into stone. I felt that the echo would make a good visual touch. For the bird itself, I took inspiration from paintings by Imao for the shapes. My idea for an Adarna bird is less phoenix like and more of the “sarimanok variant”.

Details of the sleeping princes under the diamond tree, and the youngest prince in pursuit.

The dusty texture is something I learned from my professor and he’s so amazing at rusticating the look of his artworks. I feel that the geometric nature of some of my elements is something I’ve gotten from looking at Sir Dan Matutina’s work. My professor chimed in that my treatment of the mountains reminds him of how Mark English treats his landscapes with geometric shapes.

I really am happy with how this turned out and it feels different from what I usually do. There is always room for more improvement in some areas but in a whole, I am content. Much love for Bianca Lesaca and Sandra Dans who have helped immensely while I was working on this.

Blooms and Bounds Redux
Colored leads on A2 Drawing Paper

I am posting this drawing as my way of bidding yesterday goodbye. This is a redo of an old sketch I have kept a couple years ago. I wanted to see how far I have come since I have started focusing more in training as an illustrator.

Some details of the mark making:

With this I am temporarily saying goodbye to doing purely pencil work. On a related note, I had the privilege of meeting Harvey Chan the other day, and WOW what a crazy talented fellow. I felt very small compared to his immense experience in drawing from life. His sketchbooks were so amazing! I was so inspired by his versatility with media while all I had was this vague claim to being good with graphite.

At the time he visited I was working on a children’s book illustration in acrylic and the quality of the painting was very shoddy. I asked if he could look at my older work to give me advice. I was half delighted and a bit disheartened when he exclaimed. “How can you draw like THAT, but paint like THAT.”. I could only nervously laugh and reply that I really need to take my chances and paint as much as I can from now on.  At the very least, I felt humbled that he somehow liked how I drew. He gave me a number of painting and sketchbook tips in our short time of consultation. I will never forget him berating me for my bad habit of glazing my colors.

After this, I will be posting more experimental (and probably a bit more amateur) work- some ink drawings, my first attempts at drawing interior spaces, sketchbook work, digital, and traditional paintings.

The Orchid Artist
Black and white pencils and conte on brown craft paper.

This was my first drawing project for my illustration majors, and the goal was to create a self portrait that talked more about who we were.

It had taken far too many tries to get to the end of this journey. I have never done so many studies for one piece in my life! The process here is very difficult and yet it makes sense. Sometimes you find yourself stuck on a drawing but that’s mostly because things were not planned completely before hand. In this case, I had to redo my idea several times because I had to figure out about what I wanted to say about myself.

Self portraits of this purpose are hard to make. I suppose that in creating something with more illustrative depth, I started to find myself as well.

Orchids mean a lot to me, as they are delicate things that remind me of the imagery I tend to create. They grow in several places, and I see them often in the countries I call my home. It seemed to be the uniting element that brought together the different fragments of my identity, geography, and aesthetic.

But this self-portrait has lead me to believe that all of the travelling and being cut off from the people I grew up with has been a confusing ordeal. It was hard for me to collect my bearings in regards to my identity. Despite all that, what remains true is that I know I am an artist. I am a very good one at that. But in order to become a great one, I have to take down the barriers that I limit myself with.

I admit to not making personal work for weeks now. It has troubled me so much that most of my time is devoted into part time work and art studies. There has been so much happening here and I know so MUCH that sometimes it’s hard to sleep at night.  What do I do with all of this new knowledge? How do I combine that with the ‘style’ I already had going? But now that I know so much, I feel like my old ‘style’ is so antiquated. There’s nothing much from it I can salvage.

My professor told me something very comforting the other day, he saw me working and remarked on how different the look seems to be from what I usually do. I told him that I end up changing up the styles of my assignments because I am always in conflict between “the look I want to put in a cohesive portfolio” versus “do the look you have to do in order to solve the visual problem the best way possible”. I had to always unlearn the way I do things in order to learn the new. It’s really taking a toll on my esteem sometimes.

His reply on the matter: “Don’t have a style. You’re not supposed to have that sort of thing right now. I know people who were great artists when they came into this school and left not much better than the level they entered. You’re here to learn and do the things you are not comfortable in doing. That’s the only way for you to get better at what you do.”

Somehow I can be at peace with that. If the things I post seem out of trend or disjointed, I hope that this doesn’t throw you, dear reader, off too much. With all this worrying about ‘style’, I forget that I am a student. Experiment, succeed, fail, repeat… I will figure all of this out eventually in my life.

It was about time that I seriously taught myself how to paint with watercolors and I started off my education with learning the different combinations I could get with the color sets I own. Here I’ve listen down the default colors from my Windsor and Newton Sketcher’s Box and did color swatches with them. As you can see my painting application feels a bit shoddy. But discovering the new colors makes me very happy indeed.

I also attempted to mix my Windsor and Newton set with my Prang paints. You’d be surprised with the consistency that you could get when mixing brands.

Still not used to it, but this was an attempt on doing a wet on dry technique. Not so happy with my values but the colors are starting to shape up into my preferred aesthetic.

A roundup of my materials: Prang Oval Pan Watercolor Set, Windsor and Newton Pocket Plus Traveller set, Pink Pentel watercolor tube gifted to me by Sandra Dans, metallic mixing plate, and cheap chinese calligraphy brush for rendering.

It’s a great honor to have been asked to collaborate with The Ringmaster after having worked with Francis Lorenzo and the rest of the creative team involved in organizing the album art for Sleepwalk Circus. Above are previews to a special art project that should be unveiled soon this year. Hope you could watch out for it!

For those who haven’t discovered their music, please do check out their facebook pages. I can’t for the life of me begin to gush over the surreal and otherwordly quality of their music. It’s sumptuous for the ears.

I don’t remember if I have mentioned this before, but the reason why I’ve gotten into Illustration at all was mostly due to my work with Sleepwalk Circus. It was 2010, and I was invited at a dark time of my life when I’ve hit a bad midlife crisis. It was also during that week when my computer decided to die along with everything I’ve ever made since the 7th grade. Even my college thesis was completely erased. It was during this trying time that I decided that I wanted to draw above all things and that life was too short to compromise.

Learning has been a painful process lately. When I say painful, I mean it in an impatient way that there is so much to digest and absorbing everything requires a lot of experience which you cannot cram. I look back into my life and wonder, “Why didn’t I work as hard as I should have?” or “Why haven’t I done this before?” The best thing we can do is make the most out of the situation we’re in and give it as much heart as we can.

Studies have been preoccupying my time as of late. It’s truly inevitable. I was faced with the grim reality that as an illustrator, I have a terribly limited visual vocabulary that needed expanding. The next entries should have bits on that and I hope that all of my entries on my studies aren’t getting too tedious. New work will be added soon enough. I’m just enjoying the creative process more and more, no matter how slow I seem to be and have realized my full passion late in life- it truly is better late than never.

The size of these pieces are of a2 dimensions with the exception with the first drawing which was more cropped from the sides. The charcoal drawing on the bottom was photo referenced. I’m unhappy with a number of proportional issues, but generally pleased with how I’ve been learning with the media, and how I’ve been getting better at sighting and measuring.

Right now I’m enjoying my ten day spring break in sunny Manila. My skin feels lovely and revels on the warmth and humidity. It’s been an emotional week so today’s day of rest would do me some good. I have also bought a new watercolor pad to start on my color diary. Hopefully this would breed more painted works in the future.

The Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery (Man Fat Tsz), located Po Fook Hill at Pai Tau Village, Shatin in the New Territories is one of Hong Kong’s most famous Buddhist temples and popular tourist attractions. The temple was founded in 1949 by the Reverend Yuet Kai and completed in 1957.  (source)

The body encased in class in the center of the altar is the embalmed body of the Monastery’s founder, Yue Kai

A quick thank you for all of your lovely support. I know that the updates have been crawling along but thanks for sticking with me nonetheless. Happy Valentines everyone! You have my unending love and gratitude.

Here are a few drawings from half of the quarter. All of them are referenced from life and are drawn in an A2 size paper (420 x 594 mm). I’ve also taken the liberty of taken on a Mannerist style for some of these but I do hope you all would enjoy them :)

This week’s studies for life drawing include an assortment of skulls drawn in different angles. I just purchased these wonderful Faber Castell Polychromos pencils (White, Walnut Brown, Indian Red, and Ivory) and took them for a test run.The rendering was done in craft paper which I precut from a large roll I own back in Manila. Backgrounds were finished with a black Muji pencil, and compressed charcoal.

I am very happy with the end result! Somehow my frontal skull seems to pop out well from the paper. For those who are looking to purchase the materials at Hong Kong, you can buy the pencils individually at Cheung Nam Stationary store at 503 Nathan Road, Yao Ma Tei.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has been so kind as to support me for the Florence + The Machine contest at talenthouse. :) The response has been so overwhelming and I can’t thank you all enough. I’m just awaiting the results at this point and am hoping for the best.

There’s more art to follow in the coming weeks. In the off chance that I hit a dry spell, I have a photo set coming up with my trip to the Ten Thousand Buddhas monastery. Getting through that trip is admittedly one of my more challenging feats to date!