Bag Love
My cousins recently asked me to do designs for their children’s party giveaways. Their kids will be having their birthday parties and they thought of bags as giveaways (wow! free messenger bags). It was all for love and family so I agreed to do it. Unfortunately, they felt that the designs above didn’t fit their theme. So I had to do it all over again. In the end, they chose the designs below. Kind of ironic, because I spent more time doing the pattern for the first design than I did with the second batch.
Industrialization
New illustrations for the Asian Institute of Management’s Alumni Magazine. I love doing stuff for them because of the opportunity to get creative in illustrating the given article.
Here are the drawings prior to coloring. Both were done with ink and watercolor wash.
Placeholder
The first month of 2010 is almost over (just a week to go) and amazingly this is my first post. It seems like I’ve suddenly put my personal life on hold as I came back to my job in the advertising agency to pay off an over credit to my payroll account. Suddenly, just 2 days into my return, I’m pulling in late nights and squeezing every last bit of brain matter to think of an ad for the same project 3 weeks in a row. The very familiar change in directions in mid stream and the constant revisions are now all coming back to me. I certainly didn’t miss this. I don’t know who does.
But I can’t let this speed bump derail my goals for this year. I’ve set the targets early on and I’m monitoring my progress every week. I know how I can lose energy and enthusiam 6 months into the year, so I’m making sure that I keep a reign on whatever it is I’m doing. My goals range from losing weight, to making more artworks to reading a novel a month. I hope I meet them all this year. The weekly progress report helps a lot in making adjustments. I guess this all sounds very obsessive. But I have to try something.
As I’m writing this, I realize I’m sounding a bit more upbeat than I was feeling a couple of hours ago. Which is strange because I’m not upbeat. The job drains me and after coming from my sabbatical, I can’t imagine how people can work decades doing the same thing if they feel no joy in it.
I told my boss that I’ll be staying until April this year. What I do after is still vague. My reasons for leaving are pretty plain and can even be reduced to simple mathematics. In any human endeavor that one wants to master, approximately 10,000 hours must be invested in practice (at least according to Malcolm Gladwell’s book “The Outliers”). If I want to become a master in my craft, I have to work 10 hours a day, everyday for almost 3 years. That’s almost 3 years of day by day practice. In reality, I can only draw for a couple of hours at a time before it gets boring.
So given that there are only 24 hours a day, with 16 of those hours spent awake and a couple of hours spent for travelling, eating and all the necessary things a human body needs to stay alive, a person can only really master very few activities in his lifetime. Given that I spend 12 to 14 hours in the office, that doesn’t leave much time to do the other stuff that interests me: drawing, painting, making comics, writing.
So if I want to be really good at the stuff I’m passionate about, there really is no choice but to leave the corporate world and devote myself to practice. It’s almost too simple that the conclusion should be clear for everyone to see. We have only very little time in this world before we die, it would be a shame to waste that time doing something we complain about every morning.
>>Rommel
Wake Up
I was watching documentaries about World War II on the National Geographic Channel’s Military Monday while doing the piece below. I guess some of the depressing imagery seeped into the drawing.
New Year’s Resolutions
I belong to a little children’s illustration group called Ang InK (Illustrador ng Kabataan). Every Saturday, we have a little InK corner in the Manila Bulletin and an Inkee (as members are fondly called) is assigned a topic to illustrate.
Well, mine’s about New Year’s Resolutions. Here’s the bit I did.
Van Gogh Is Bipolar
Back (L-R): Pia, Kenikenken, Nawrus, Maurice / Front (L-R): Tin, Me, Abi, Molyn, Jay, Rosanne, Dani, Jetro
I had dinner with UP friends the other day at a little restaurant called Van Gogh is Bipolar owned by one of our friends – photographer Jetro Rafael. It was a bit of a double celebration as well as a little reunion by the Fine Arts people. It was Marvel colorist Jay David Ramos‘ belated birthday bash and our friend Tin Manasan also came home from Singapore for a vacation.
Van Gogh, tucked inside a yellow building along Maginhawa St., UP Village, is also Jetro’s residence which now doubles as a dining place open from 530pm to 1230am everyday (except Tuesdays).
Charming and quirky, the restaurant can probably serve around 15 people. With bric-a-brac purposefully left by patrons and artworks adorning the walls, the place is perfect for artist types who want an out-of-the ordinary eating and visual experience. There’s a lot of stuff to see and take in despite being a small cozy place. To the side of the entrance is President Laurel’s old cabinet and a little bookshelf cradling over a dozen books. Below the bookshelf is a little “sari-sari” store with jars of candy and sweets and a framed watercolor painting by Robert Alejandro which says “Honesty System”. A money box is ready and waiting to receive coins.
The baroque chairs in the main dining table are purposefully mismatched. One of the chairs is dressed in a cardigan. The walls around the dining area carry angry sketches and drawings made by Jason Moss during the 90s, supposedly during a hate-the-world phase. An old bureau sits just beside the dining table etched and carved with graffiti by patrons. On top of it are over a dozen different teapots patrons can choose to drink their tea from.
The menu is mostly organically grown with its dishes named after famous bipolar people (like Sting and Bill Clinton apparently). They serve delicious tea made to “alter one’s mood”, at least according to Jetro. White, fat, porcelain jars contain various tea leaves such as Spanish Plum and Ginger. The tea leaves were grown in Jetro’s farm in Isabela. Each jar is labelled with hand drawn lettering by Robert Alejandro.
I was the first to arrive at the place and while waiting, Jetro graciously served me tea in a pot of my own choosing. I picked a brown earthen pot with ceramic flowers. My host dropped a few spoonfulls of tea leaves into the pot and added a few teaspoons of mint before drowning them in boiling water from a white waterpot doodled with the interiors of the restaurant.
I drank my tea from a little white tea cup cradling peppermint leaves at the bottom. Honey was also served inside a tiny goblet and it sat atop the goblet’s stem like liquid gold.
Before everyone arrived I was drawing and doodling to pass the time. I remembered reading something about drawing the things one hates to draw, supposedly to get better at it. Well, I honestly hate drawing cars. I’m not a car buff like most guys (which is ironic since I won myself a brand new Toyota Vios 2 years ago from a contest).
So while waiting for everyone to arrive, I drew cars.
While drawing the Vitara above, some of the drivers noticed me doodling on my moleskine and asked what I was doing. I told them (a bit annoyed and wanting to be left alone). It still astounds me that drawing in public can be such an odd activity for a lot of people.
>>Rommel
Dad
That’s my dad on the left side of the spread, drawn on a Sunday dinner at a restaurant. I’ve never been comfortable showing my drawings to my Dad. Ironic, since I used to mail him my drawings when I was a kid and he was working in Saudi Arabia. But since returning over 20 years ago, I’ve found that criticism to a child ( even the “constructive” kind coming from one’s parents) is less important than encouragement. And more often I found his criticisms withering (though I’m sure he didn’t mean it) when what I wanted most was flattery and encouragement.
>>Rommel
Snow in Brussels, Sun in Bohol
After mentioning that I have never felt snow in my entire life, my friend Amélie Clement sent me snow pictures from Brussels. I wish I could send her beautiful pictures of my backyard but my neighborhood sucks. It really does.
Although, I did send her pics of sunny Bohol, which nothing to sneeze at either. 
People watching at Figaro Coffee Company
Picked up my mother from the church and we had coffee at Figaro. Food is always better at Figaro than at Starbucks. I ordered a cappuccino – something I’ve been drinking a lot lately ever since tasting the stuff they make at Cafe Breton. But the Figaro brew doesn’t hold a candle to the Breton cup with its creamy, creamy foam that tastes more like milk than air. Okay I’m thinking about it again.
Coffee shops are always nice for people watching and for drawing. I wonder if anybody who has ever done this ever made friends or picked up chicks for making sketches. Just wondering (waves to Abi).
At the other table are three middle-aged Chinese guys talking animatedly. There’s a large Chinese community in the Banawe Avenue area, a lot of nondescript looking people that you wouldn’t think were rich as Scrooge McDuck (I find my references perplexing, but I’m rambling to fill the space). This reminds me of my friend Jefferson (which, incidentally sounds like a typical “Chinese” name. Hehe.) who also lives in the area. On the way to his house, we passed by a tall concrete wall that almost looked like a block wide. Apparently it was their compound wall. Entering the place, you wouldn’t think that there were several houses inside. It was all hiding in plain sight.
Okay, back to work. Back to work.
>>Rommel
