AMIRASOLO and Other Essays

 

       

 Preface

"All men who have accomplished anything worthwhile should set down the story of their lives with their own hands. But they should wait before undertaking so delicate an enterprise until they have passed the age of forty."

The quotation above was what Benvenuto Cellini, the renowned Italian goldsmith and sculptor and contemporary of Michelangelo, wrote in the opening chapter of his autobiography.

Well, I'm now in my sixties and I supposed it's high time for me to write mine. My artistic achievements, I know, cannot equal those of Cellini and other notable foreign artists past and present, nor even of dozens upon dozens of Filipino artists active today and in the past. 

But no matter. There is no tragedy more tragic for an artist than to die and afterwards be forgotten for good. Leaving a mark is what art making is all about. Artworks---visual, literary, musical, etc.---are the footprints artists leave on this Earth. They are proofs that they, once upon a time, existed.

- June 15, 2019

Part one: Tondo on my mind

AMIRASOLO

I was called Amirasolo by my UST High School classmate Paterno Mendoza. Fernando Amorsolo is the most popular painter in the Philippines at that time, and perhaps even up to today---the one most known to the public, art-lovers and non-art lovers alike. I don't recall exactly what prompted Pat to call me Amirasolo, but I guess it was because he wanted to get on my good side. He was perhaps flattering me because he had an art project to do and submit and he wanted me to do it for him. 

Not one to turn down a request 'laced' with praise, I'm sure I readily did it for him. Anyway, he was not the only classmate who'd requested me that. There were several. I only remember Pat because of that memorable utterance of his, which I confess truly flattered me.

I remember another classmate, Reynaldo Catiis, who cajoled me to draw Batman in my notebook. We were in grade four then at Holy Child Catholic School. No problem with his request. But the trouble was he made that while we were seated at front row, and at a time when our teacher Miss Lolita Flores had already began her lecture. But being a bit of a show-off that I was who can't resist an opportunity to display my talent, I readily gave in to Rey's request.

Miss Flores, of course, noticed what we're up to. She asked for my notebook and when she saw my Batman drawing there, she frowned and shook her head. She ordered me to ask my mother to sign it to let her know what I'm busy with while a class was in progress. I was afraid of the scolding I'll get, so, I just signed the drawing myself with my mother's signature. 

Miss Flores readily saw my attempt at forgery. She asked me to go outside the classroom, and while we were there, she pulled my right 'patilya' upwards saying, "Ang bata-bata mo pa, sinungaling ka na." ("So young, and you're a liar already.")

Drawing was a compulsion since my early childhood. My earliest memory of being fascinated by an artwork was when I saw a pen and ink cartoon by Jose Rizal in an old Reading textbook. That cartoon was of the monkey and the tortoise. I haven't entered school at that time, and I remember myself afterwards trying to do a similar drawing which was still beyond me. The drawings I religiously did with a measure of competence, though still in a childish way, were images of fire engines with firemen on board and war jeeps.

My artistic talent was discovered when I was in grade one. Our teacher, Miss Mercy Ramos, asked us her pupils to draw, as our art project, an animal on a whole sheet of cartolina. I drew a blue bird. Miss Ramos was impressed. She couldn't believe that a boy so young could draw a bird so convincingly. I was sent with my drawing to the office of the Assistant Principal, Mrs. Manuel, to receive encouraging words and praise, which were given me. I was told to "Keep it up."---which were words of high praise to a boy of seven like me.

It was in the class of our art and workshop teacher and scoutmaster Mr. Joe that my artistic skill was thoroughly honed. I learned from him the basics of perspective and isometric drawings, which were being taught us boys to prepare us for an engineering or architecture course in college. We were also trained in woodworking, especially in the use of coping saw. Other crafts-projects taught us were parol (Christmas lantern)-making, the fashioning of flower vases and ladles using bamboo and coconut shells, and even  soap carving!

But I wasn't interested in those. I'm only interested in drawing---not the technical kind of drawing, but fine art drawing. So, what excited me most was the album we were required to compile of colored pencil drawings of different flowers, fruits, trees, fishes, and mammals. 

For our final artwork, we were allowed to choose the subject matter and the medium we'll use. I chose to copy an image of Christ the King and used watercolor to paint it. Although it was my first time to use watercolor in painting a subject as complicated as Christ the King, I believe I painted a convincing likeness of the image because the grade I got for it was 99%, which Mr. Joe said was the highest grade he gives. 

It would've been great if I still have that album for me to show around. But unfortunately, it was lost in a fire that burned down our neighborhood in April 1969, just a month after our graduation from grade seven. That was tragic---losing a year-long effort for good in just a few hours.

Another teacher, Sir Benjamin Roda, kind of pushed me towards really learning how to paint in oil. He was our English Literature teacher at USTHS, a brilliant one I must say, my favorite. Sir Benjie is also an art enthusiast, who, I presume, was into art making part time during  his years as a teacher. It was from him that I bought my first Grumbacher how-to-paint book from which I learned the rudiments of oil painting.

Sir Benjie asked me one time to do a visual depiction of a stanza from Thomas Gray's poem, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard". What I did was a painting of an ox-drawn cart on a country road which leads towards a church. Although I used watercolor in tubes in making that painting, I applied the colors using oil painting techniques, that is I applied them opaque and in thick impastos. A mistake. I should've done the painting using the traditional wash or transparent method, because watercolor will definitely flake off if applied thick.

My mother bought me my first oil paint set when I was thirteen. Before that, the coloring tools I used were crayons, colored pencils, and watercolors. I can't wait to try those tubes of oil paints that I hastened forthwith, without thinking, and by force of habit, to thin the paint with water, to no avail of course. I realized my mistake when I saw that the water won't dissolve the paint. Because it was oil paint, I saw, a bit belated though it was, that what I need to thin the paint was oil. So, I got what    So, I got what was at hand and used edible oil which thinned the paint all right. Never mind the durability issue---I didn't know yet what linseed oil is. 

We have a new house then, the one that replaced the burnt one. This new house had a room, a small third storey room from which I can slip easily into the second storey roof. It was on this roof that I did my first oil painting which I painted directly on raw plywood (without latex or gesso primer). My subject matter, the mountains of Bataan which can be seen beyond Manila Bay from the roof.

When I was young, I never dreamt of becoming a professional painter of easel-sized works. My ambition then was to be a painter of 'cartelon' or giant movie posters or billboards. A relative of my father, Noy Mancio, was the one who encouraged me to aspire to become a cartelon painter. Noy Mancio was movie star Fernando Poe jr.'s personal driver. He promised that he'll introduce me to Mr. Poe the moment I am ready to do professional painting jobs. The idea was for me to work directly for him as cartelon painter for his movies. 

That dream was boosted further when I was in high school. The Marikina and Antipolo-bound bus I used to take in going to UST High School regularly passed by the Sagmit Advertising Studio at the corner of Antonio Rivera and Bambang Streets in Tondo. I could see from the window of the bus the giant white cloths stretched on giant wood frames, and the painters all busy working on the billboards which were in varying degrees of completion. 

I used to think to myself how marvelously skilled those cartelon painters were. I marveled at how easy it was for them to copy pictures magnified dozens of times over when I had the most difficulty doing portraits which were just life-sized.

My dream of becoming a painter of giant cartelons didn't come true. I was 'reduced' instead to being an illustrator of textbooks and picture books, for which I did early in my career illustrations that were almost miniaturist in scale. 

Also, I never became a disciple of Amorsolo. My painting style was in no way similar to his. Idyllic rural landscapes, likewise, were not for me. And I'm not really good in portraiture for which Amorsolo is considered as one of if not its best practitioner. My brushwork too---with its smooth luminist quality or absence of visible brushworks and impasto---is the polar opposite of Amorsolo's looser bravura strokes, a style so dear to the magnificent Cebuano masters like Romulo Galicano and Orley Ypon. 

Needless to say, Amorsolo doesn't top my list of great Filipino painters. Botong Francisco does. But Amorsolo is a close second.

FROM PAANG BUNDOK TO TUNDO

Paang Bundok is not some remote barrio nestled at the foot of some remote mountain. It is a barangay in La Loma, Quezon City bounded on the North and South by Gen.Tinio and Blumentritt Streets respectively, and on the East and West by Amoranto Street and Bonifacio Avenue. My father and mother met there.

Paang Bundok was where my mother Mama Ninay grew up, in a house at Isarog Street. Although the house no longer looked good in the 1950s, it must have been a nice house before the war, maybe the only big and sturdily  built house in the area. The other houses there may have been just nipa huts. That's perhaps the reason their house was used as garrison by the Japanese soldiers during World War 2. 

The house had a small door near the side of the stairs which I learned later led to a bomb-shelter dug by the Japanese. I never saw that shelter because its door was always locked, and we kids were never invited to see it. We never wanted to see it anyway because we were told that there might be snakes lurking down there. 

According to my mother, my Lola Berta and Lolo Nano bought their land from the Araneta family for only 1000 pesos. That land was part of the vast Araneta estate that extended then from Malabon to Cubao.

My father Papa Nene was born in Iloilo City. But my Lolo Elpidio and Lola Angela were truly from Oslob, Cebu. They only happened to be in Iloilo in the late 1920s because Lolo Elpid worked there for a time as telegraph cable installer. 

My father was twelve years old when the war broke out in 1941. He took refuge on a mountain barrio of Oslob with his Tia Pacia who looked after him for the duration of the war. Tia Pacia was the younger sister of my Lola Angela who stayed with the USAFFE unit Lolo Elpidio was attached to. Lolo Elpidio was the radioman of that unit, which operated on the same mountain where my father and her Tia Pacia and other relatives were hiding. Lola Angela and Lolo Elpidio therefore had the chance to check on my father frequently.

After the war, seeing that the opportunities for a better life were concentrated in Manila, Lolo Elpidio and Lola Angela decided to migrate here. They rented a room at Isarog, just a few houses away from where my mother lived. My grandparents and my father later on moved to Tondo because a relative's company that was located there needed a bookkeeper. My father applied for and was hired for the job. My mother left Isarog when she married my father and lived with him in Tondo, where I and all of my siblings grew up.

I was given the name Arnaldo. They considered naming me Arnold at first, but my father said the name didn't suit me, because I don't looked like a fair-skinned mestizo. "Hindi raw bagay." 

But why Arnaldo? My mother explained that they planned to have five children, the initials of whose names will spell EARTH. The oldest among us is Esterlina. The second was Augusto, because he was born in August. But he died. It's not clear to me if my mother had a miscarriage, or if Augusto died right after birth. Anyway, since I followed Augusto and thus became the second child, the letter A initial was assigned to me and I was named Arnaldo. Rodolfo followed, and then Teresa. 

But my mother stopped giving birth after Teresa, so the EARTH acronym for their children wasn't completed. The fifth child who would have been named Helen failed to be born. My sons joked once that had not their Uncle Augusto died, I, their father, would have taken on the name Rodolfo, and their Uncle Rudy will therefore not be Rodolfo anymore but Tereso.

I have no quarrel with my name. I like it. My affection for my name became especially strong when I learned what it meant. The dictionary says Arnaldo means power of the eagle, an attribute that is, though imaginary, truly likeable. But my family tried during my toddler years to call me, in jest perhaps, by a nickname I didn't like---Anot. That is a despicable name. I expressed my displeasure of that name very early on. Everytime they call me Anot I showed my irritation at once by emitting snarl-like sounds. So, they just called me Arnel for short, a name I also like.

Growing up, we weren`t exactly destitute like many of our neighbors, because my father was already working overseas as a marine mechanic. That is why my siblings and I were all able to go to college. I and my two sisters studied at the University of Santo Tomas, while our brother went to the University of Manila. Our eldest, Esterlina, finished Commerce, my younger brother Rodolfo, Industrial  Engineering, and our youngest, Teresa, Nursing. I took up Fine Arts. We kids were lucky, because unlike our father, we don`t have to struggle hard for our education. 

My father came here to Manila with his parents to study. Being poor, he had to work as janitor and later on as clerk at Feati University, where he finished high school and took up mechanical engineering. Although he reached only third year in engineering, my father managed, seven years after he got married, to get hired by an international shipping company as engine crew. Those were lax times, and crewing agencies then didn't require college diplomas from seamen applicants. That shipping company was Eastern Shipping Lines and the first ocean-going ship he rode was Eastern Planet. That was in 1960. Papa Nene rose to the rank of chief engineer.

LOS TONDEÑOS

The Tondo of my childhood was well-known all right, but not for things law-abiding Tondeños can be proud of. Many people from other places in Manila and elsewhere would think twice first before going to Tondo because of the perceived peace and order problem here. Taxi drivers especially, who often hesitate to take on passengers whose destination was Tondo. What the taxi drivers feared then were the holduppers, which they assumed Tondo had plenty of. 

Their attitude haven't changed. Today, what prevents taxi drivers from taking on Tondo-bound passengers cheerfully, aside from their fear of holduppers, is their perception of the roads here as chaotic and congested. That is true, but only of streets in the Divisoria and North Harbor area, where tricycles, pedicabs, cars, and humans jostle for what space remains on the crowded streets. 

I supposed no other place in the Philippines, with approximately the same land area as Tondo could 'boast' of a bigger population. Tondo is so densely packed with people, that it needs two congressmen to represent its residents in Congress---the same number as the whole of Makati City.

On that rumor about Tondo being a haven of holduppers, there is some truth to it. Most Tondeños are decent and law-abiding.  It's just that the notorious elements were the ones who were high-profile and got to land in the news and in the movies.

Law-breakers can thrive anywhere. If Tondo had its Asiong Salonga, Cavite had its Nardong Putik, and Malabon its Ben Tumbling. The formula is simple. All the law-breaker has to do, if he is a big-time thief, is just spread the loot around, to the poor mainly, and voila!---the dreaded character who was formerly tagged as notorious is no longer notorious. He is now famous. A folk hero, even. A modern-day Robinhood!

But those were the big-timers. There were petty ones too, like those bad boys of long ago of Isla Puting Bato. My group of friends, my barkada, once went swimming at that breakwater fronting the North Harbor. That was in the late 1970s I think, when I was in my early twenties. I was not with them for some reason.

When they came back, all of them looked amused. 

They narrated what happened in between laughter. They said that when they were through swimming and were about to dress up to go home, they discovered some of their clothing missing, including the short pants of Freddie Adina who was my age. Also missing was the wallet of Rodie Hamor, another friend my age, who was into rock music, yoga, and the martial arts. The thieves showed themselves up, with one of them holding the wallet.

"Kanino, to? (Who owns this?)" The one holding the wallet asked.

"Akin yan. (That's mine.)" Rodie answered.

The thief opened the wallet and inside it was a picture of Rodie in karate pose and attire. "Ikaw ba 'to? Karatista ka ba? (Is this you? Are you a karate expert?)" 

"Hindi ah. Hindi ako yan. (Ah, no. That's not me.)" Rodie again answered, while rapidly and vigorously shaking his head.

Ramir Dela Cruz, who was with them, told me that they wanted to laugh at Rodie's reaction and blanched face, but could not, because those thieves, aside from outnumbering them, were also holding mean-looking knives. And they were in their territory. 

Ramir added that the thieves were also teen-agers like him, aged from around 13 to 18 years old---a commonplace thing in that neighborhood, where boys are taught to be tough and bad, and started young on a life of crime.

Here"s more. Since Freddie was only wearing his briefs, he forced Bobot Altar, who was just a boy, to take off his short pants so Freddie can use them. And the pants of course was ill-fitting, very tight. But no matter. Freddie was a thin guy anyway, and was able after much effort to get into the pants. And poor Bobot, blushing red with embarrassment, had to walk all the way home without briefs, and without pants. Hahaha.... 

Besides Rodie, Freddie, Bobot, and Ramir, also with them on that hilarious misadventure were my brother Rudy,  Bobot's brothers Tony and Fede Altar, Rody Ollegue, Erning Lobaton, Ariel Doguiles, and Tandy Jimenez. I don't know if my retelling is accurate, but that's how I remember their story

Tondo wasn't crowded during my growing-up years. Vehicles, including wide garbage trucks can pass with ease even through the narrower streets then. There was a lesser number of people, that's why there were fewer "istambays" or out-of-work men huddled on the streets. There were also fewer vehicles moving on the road and parked along the gutters. 

Our place during the 1950s, looked rather rustic, with people from the provinces bringing their rural ways to the city. We have neighbors who raised not only the usual pets like dogs and cats, but also chickens, geese, pigs, and goats. I even remember seeing a turkey once. 

Plenty of edible plants can also be seen around. The third house we lived in was almost like a farmhouse. It's caretaker, who was from Palawan, turned the front yard into a vegetable garden, with rows of plots planted to pechay, lettuce, cabbage, eggplants, and tomatos. The backyard in turn had trelisses from which hanged upos, patolas, and ampalayas. The yard adjacent to ours was a kankungan. There was also a vacant lot covered entirely with grass, which the "zacateros" or grass-cutters gathered as feed for the horses pulling the calesas and caretelas.

I was born at the Mary Johnston Hospital, and raised on that bit of land that was originally sea called the Tondo Foreshore. An old-timer to our place said that the original Manila Bay shoreline was at Asuncion Street, which is three streets away from the Sto. Niño de Tondo Church, and just behind the Mary Johnston Hospital. The land from Asuncion up to the piers was land reclaimed from the sea. Its proximity to the original shore was the reason, some say, why the church is elevated---to keep out the seawater during high tides and the floods during typhoons. You need to climb up more than ten steps, I think,  before you can enter the church.

We were truly squatters then because our properties don't have any titles. The land where our houses stood was all government property. But those old-timers who have the foresight to settle on that reclaimed land were lucky. Because, although they can't claim the  property as truly their own, they were awarded the right to live on it, and decades later, to formally buy it from the government at a very low price. That's why our place today is no longer squatters area, and properties here can now sell for millions of pesos.

It was said that at that time, the migrants from the provinces only need to fence the vacant land they want for themselves, and that would be theirs. No one else could claim it, and they even have the option to sell even if it had no title yet. Many did sell the land. And that's how my grandparents Lolo Elpidio and Lola Angela got to buy our first property.

LITTLE PAMPANGA

The first house we owned was located at Kagitingan Street, which is just two streets away from North Harbor. Although my paternal relatives are Cebuano-Visayans, we found ourselves residing in a street teeming with people from Pampanga---the Kapampangans.

Kagitingan Street was truly Little Pampanga then, with almost all of our neighbors coming from that province. The only exception was the family whose house was in front of ours. They we're from Bicol, and the head of their family, Mang Pulen Malayo, became my parents' compadre when my mother stood as sponsor during the baptism of Mang Pulen's youngest child Henry. 

The next street going to the piers, on the other hand, was Little Visayas, where the Visayans, Warays from Samar and Leyte mostly, chose to settle on. Their street is Tagumpay Street.

I have a little theory. It seems to me now that the very names of the streets, Kagitingan (courage) and Tagumpay (victory), may have contributed to the arousing of ethnic pride and passion, so much so that the hotheads from each street often resorted to riots and raids to settle once and for all the question of which tribe truly was tougher. 

That's the time when criminal gangs sprouted. The Kapampangans had their Sigue-sigue Sputnik gang and the Visayans their Oxo gang. My father Papa Nene once told me of an incident where the Sigue-sigues of Kagitingan Street raided Tagumpay. It had dismal results apparently, because when the raiders came back, one of them was missing an arm which was chopped off by a bolo.

My Cebuano father got along very well with our Kapampangan neighbors. His Kapampangan friends embraced him as one of their own. One even became his compadre, my Ninong Guido Lalu of Candaba, Pampanga. He is my one and only ninong, because it wasn't customary then, in the 1950s, to name several godfathers and godmothers for a child's christening. Ninong Guido's youngest son Nilo later on became my compadre too, when he chose me to be one of the godfathers of his eldest daughter Shiela.

Those days were what I would call the Post-Asiong Salonga era, when the life of that murdered Tondo crime kingpin was made into a movie, which cleansed his image and turned him from a notorious gangster into a much-lamented folk hero. As a result, many criminally-inclined toughies sought to emulate him and organized their own gangs. 

One such character was a certain Mario Cortez of Arayat, Pampanga. Seeing how friendly and humble my father was, Mario Cortez took a liking to him, and they became friends. One time, Mario Cortez, brought his group and my father to Cavite, to meet someone. My father said that he was handed a gun by Mario, in anticipation perhaps of some trouble that might ensue. My father wanted to refuse, but he rode along because he didn't want to antagonize Mario. Luckily, nothing untoward happened, and Mario Cortez later on was murdered too. It's good that he was, because if not, my father would have continued being a friend of that toughie, who'd surely be a bad influence on him.

Our all-wood house wasn't along the main road. It was located in the interior, in the so-called 'looban'---whose only access was through an 'eskinita'. To go to our house, you have to walk on a wooden foot-bridge built on top of wet mud---or murky waters after a heavy rain. 

The surroundings are so, because our place, Tondo Foreshore, being reclaimed land, was 'swampy'. Many houses were built on low stilt-posts, that's why those houses really have no ground floors. Underneath the houses' floorings were pools of dirty water, where water creatures like very small fish and daphnia (water fleas) thrived.

But growing up, I see nothing miserable in my surroundings. Compare to what our place is today, I won't hesitate to describe what it was then as idyllic. Its ambience almost rural. My childhood was the perfect childhood for a boy.

I remember that I had so much fun then romping about the flooded streets, and even beneath the houses, trying to catch small fishes and daphnia with improvised nets. We boys, always had clear jars with us when we waded through the waters. Those jars were our improvised aquariums where we tried to raise the fish we caught. We called the daphnia, dapya. They are minute water creatures, colored light brown, and were said to be food for the fish. We caught the fishes and daphnia with nets made from worn-out ladies' stockings and wires. But no matter how diligent we were in feeding the fish, every fish we caught lived for only a day or two.

We lived in that house on Kagitingan until 1963, I think. Or, 1964. I can't remember now the exact year. We had to leave the house because it was sinking into the mud. The flooring of one room was no longer level, with one end elevated like a slide. We asked close relatives from Cebu to live there for a while until the time when we were able to sell it.

I get to see that house again in 1976, when I was already twenty years old. It was the same house I knew, but it was so sunk in the mud that the second storey flooring was only about two feet off the ground. That house is gone now. It was burned down in a fire that razed a big swath of Tondo Foreshore in 1978. The fire, said to be the biggest fire yet in post-war Manila, lasted 11 hours.

NAZARENOS DE TONDO 

We rented rooms for the next two years. We stayed in a house on Pavia Street after leaving our Kagitingan house. The house which is  near the Pavia Market still exists, though very much renovated. I think my mother planned to stay there for a long time, because she applied for and was given a stall for selling groceries inside the market. 

But things didn't go well. I don't know exactly what happened. Mama Ninay just hinted that Lolo Elpid had a quarrel with the market master. A serious one I supposed, because I saw him preparing his gun. To avoid trouble, Mama decided to leave the place, taking with us the dozens of cartons of canned goods and other grocery items which she intended to sell in the market.

It's a pity that we were forced to leave Pavia $treet. I liked it there. Being a marketplace, there were always treats that can be bought just outside the house, like banana cues, turons, and ice cream. There was a small ice cream factory nearby, at the corner of Pavia and Franco Streets, which was owned, I learned just recently, by the family of an elementary schoolmate. I was in grade two when we lived in Pavia, and I used to buy buko ice cream from that factory on my way home from school. My school, the Holy Child Catholic School, is just walking distance from Pavia.

We next rented rooms in a house at Tagumpay Street. This was the house I described before as almost like a farmhouse. It was pleasant living in that house, because it is quite big and airy, and seemed cooler because of the plants planted outside. Another thing I liked about that house was its nearness to the piers. The street next to ours was Mabuhay, and after that, if you cross the wide road is Pier 8 of the North Harbor. Although my mother forbade it, I often sneak out to go to the piers to have a look at the sea and the ships docked there. But our life there turned nasty when Typhoon Dading struck. Not only did the second floor got all wet with rainwater, the ground floor was also flooded almost knee-high. So, we have to relocate again.

We next moved to Leandro Ibarra Street, where we rented rooms on the ground floor of an old house. Just in front of that house was the residence of the Nazareno family---a big compound with a big house. My father, before he became a mechanic for a fishing boat, and my grandfather worked for the family as paymasters for the company they owned, the Banahaw Labor Stevedoring and Arrastre Services, whose office was in that compound. 

The Nazarenos, who were originally from Oslob, Cebu are our relatives. The company owner, Claudio Nazareno was the husband of Gregoria Mirasol, a relative of my Lolo Elpid. We called them Manong Kalaw and Manang Goring. 

The Nazarenos were the richest family in our neighborhood during that time. Not only did they owned deep-sea fishing boats, they also won a contract to provide stevedores for many of the ships docked at the North Harbor. 

Ship cargoes weren't packed in containers in those days, that's why stevedores were needed to do the job of loading and unloading bales and other cargos that can be carried manually. The stevedores Manong Kalaw hired were mostly Oslobanons. Aside from their wages, they were also provided board and lodging inside the big house. The room assigned to them was pretty expansive with teheras (canvas folding beds) and double-decker bunks arranged in rows. Some stevedores chose to stay in Tondo for good because here was where they found wives. 

Me and my brother Rudy, and our boy relatives, who were about the same age as us, found the Nazareno compound an ideal place to play. Not only was it spacious, there was also a lot of metal junk dumped at the back of the yard, where we boys convened, imagining the space or hole beneath the heap of scrap metal as some sort of war command post or bunker. The whole compound, including the ground floor rooms of the house itself, was our playground where we were free to play hide-and-seek and other boys' games, like 'gera-gerahan' or mock war.

The compound was our imaginary battlefield, where we acted like soldiers armed with wooden Thompson submachineguns. Those make-believe Thompsons were made for us by Ite Roger, the only son of Manong Kalaw and Manang Goring. Ite Roger used a circular power saw in cutting the pieces of scrap wood and shaping them into those toy guns. 

Although Ite Roger was genuinely fond of us, we were considered nuisance by the resident cook, whom we called, but just among ourselves, asTunying Bayot. Whenever we got too noisy and rowdy, Tunying would chase us wielding a dustpan and broom. And we naughty kids would run out of the compound laughing.

I cannot help now but look back with affection at the Nazareno family who was so tolerant of us unruly and sun-smelling boys. We were a privileged lot. We were allowed to watch  television shows upstairs at several times of the day. We watched Darigold Jamboree or Student Canteen at noon, then around 3 pm, cartoons like Popeye, Space Ghost, Betty Boop, Tom and Jerry, The Impossibles, and Mighty Mouse. Then, during the early evening, we get to watch Oras Ng Ligaya and the  tv show we liked best, Combat. It was Ite Roger's sister, Inday Alice, and his wife Inday Linda who allowed us upstairs and opened the television for us. 

In those days, the Sto.Niño fiesta every third Sunday of January was always the event to look forward to. Fiesta celebrations at the Nazareno compound were truly 'en grande' affairs with lots of guests, food, and drinks--- which were, in a manner of speaking, overflowing. One image etched in my mind up to now, are the several stacks of San Miguel Beer cases higher than the wall of the compound. And the stink of beer leftovers gone stale in the bottles was a distinct odor permeating the compound in those days. 

In all fairness to Tunying, his cooking didn't disappoint. It was splendid. I remember to this day his morcon and embutido. 

Another much-awaited event was the Nazareno family's Thanksgiving Prayer in May, during  harvest time. After the prayer, various fruits from their farm in Bataan were distributed to the workers and their families. 

Now, that farm also stirred fond memories of summers past. It was planted not only to rice, but also to mangoes, watermelons, avocados, and many other fruits. Although our families were all from Cebu, Bataan, because it's nearer Manila, became the province we spent a few summer vacations in. 

My father told me that it was he who accompanied Manong Kalaw to Bataan to pay for the farmland the latter bought. He said that he and Manong Kalaw rode a taxi from the bank in Manila all the way to Bataan with, if I remember correctly, 120 thousand pesos cash stashed inside a traveling bag. That amount may seem small today, but it surely was substantial then, because Manong Kalaw was able to buy with it that 60-hectare farmland. 

I asked my father if the rumor about Manong Kalaw winning in the sweepstakes was true. "Hindi," my father answered.  "Ipon talaga nya yon. Meron silang negosyo."  ( "No. That was truly his savings. They have a business.")

So, it was really unfair for the Marcos government, in the guise of land reform, to confiscate 53 hectares of the Nazarenos' farmland and just leave them with seven hectares. A grave injustice was done the Nazarenos by that Martial Law regime. Not only was his land confiscated, Manong Kalaw was also jailed in Camp Crame for refusing to give up his property. And why would he, when he bought that land with money he earned through hard work and thrift?  That farmland was not a birthright. It was not land he just inherited without sweating from some rich ancestors.

Manong Kalaw was eventually released only after, I presume, yielding the land he worked hard for to the martial law government. It was fruitless holding on. With the judiciary, police, and military under the dictator's thumb, and  Congress abolished, Manong Kalaw must have felt powerless, and realized that no one can rescue him from his plight. 

So, he did what any sane man would do, and thought it best to just surrender his property. His freedom and his life were far more valuable than any material possessions. I don't know if the confiscated 53 hectares were truly distributed to the farmers to score "pogi points" for the government. But that was immaterial. The government acted there like the modern-day Robinhoods of the movies, the big time thieves who robbed the rich to distribute part of the loot to the poor.

THE BOY TOYMAKER

The second property we owned was just three houses away from the Nazareno compound. Mama Ninay bought it in1966. She said that she bought the house and lot for just two-thousand pesos, which wasn't surprising because it wasn't titled yet and the two-storey house was only made of wood all throughout.

But come to think of it, two thousand pesos was already a lot of money in 1966. It came from my father's extra earnings as marine engineer on a ship plying the Philippines- Vietnam route. The Vietnam war was already heating up and the extra money he was getting was war hazard pay.

It was in that house that I discovered another of my talent, the talent for making toys. My other talent, my aptitude for drawing, I already knew I had even before I began going to school. I loved to draw. That's what I did day in and day out. I was almost always doodling during the years when we still lived in our Kagitingan house. What I remember I was very fond of drawing then were images of firefighters aboard firetrucks on their way to put out fires somewhere, and Japanese and USAFFE soldiers too, on board their respective war vehicles: the Japanese on their trucks and the USAFFEs on their jeeps mounted with 50-caliber machine guns. 

Papa Nene began working aboard ocean-going vessels in 1960. It was thus routine for him to buy toys abroad for me and my siblings. What he bought for us boys were battery-operated cars, tanks, and aircrafts, and pistols and air-powered rifles.

Those rifles were cowboy rifles, the sort you bend in the middle, looking like you're breaking them, and then straightening them up again before pulling the triggers. The act of bending the rifle put air in its mechanism so that a cork inserted in its muzzle will be expelled forcefully like a bullet when you pull the trigger. 

Unfortunately, one of those rifles was almost broken in two by Noy Jose when he exerted too much force in bending the rifle. But we weren't saddened much by that because we knew that Papa Nene can always buy us another one.

We played with those pistols and rifle for a long time. But the cars, tanks, and aircrafts were just stored in the glass cabinet after they ran out of batteries.Those battery-operated toys were not for play for long. They have become just for show---things we showed to our playmates whenever we feel like bragging. 

I therefore have to resort to making toys with my own hands to keep myself amused, and to have variety. With only the pistols and rifles as toys, all l and my brother can play with our playmates, aside from hide-and-seek, skipping rope, and other sissy games, were mock Western shoot-outs and Second World War combat, which will bore us all sooner or later.

There was a digging at the intersection of Leandro Ibarra and Lualhati Streets which was never refilled with soil. The streets in our neighborhood then were all soil and gravel. Not one road was asphalted yet. That digging turned into a pond in time because of the rains. Grasses grew along its edge, and aquatic creatures like tadpoles soon made their appearance. That pond opened new opportunities for games for us city boys. We saw that what the pond lacked were toy boats, so I put myself to work and began making boats. 

The first boat I sailed on that pond were made of old rubber slippers without straps on top of which I stuck banana-cue sticks as masts for the sail. I soon made an innovation, and found a way to add a propeller to it. The propeller was just a piece of flat popsicle stick cut less than half, and inserted in-between a stretched rubber band at the tail of the boat which I twisted many many times. When I stopped twisting and laid the boat on the water, and then released the popsicle stick propeller, this propeller will revolve rapidly and thrust the boat forward. The longer I twisted the rubber band, the longer will be the run of the boat. 

I later on levelled up, when I got hold of a chisel, to making real wood-carved toy boats. I remember that the last wooden boat I made even had a name lettered on its bow. The name was Vaya con Dios.

Our youngest sister Teresa was being groomed even then to be a nurse. So, I took it upon myself to provide her with improvised medical gadgets like a stethoscope made from wire, a length of rope, and soda bottle cap; a syringe made from clear ballpen tubes and needle made from wire; a nurse' cap made of white cardboard on which I drew a red cross using a crayon, and even a medical worker's bag made of cardboard to put those toys in. Nursing was truly her calling, She became one. She graduated from UST, and when she took the professional board exams for nurses, she placed sixth. She's now a nurse in California. A very successful one, I must say.

I even 'invented' a television set. It was a discarded shoe box, the front of which I cut open to imitate a tv screen. Behind the screen was a long scroll rolled around two cardboard cylinders on which I pasted drawings and colorful cut-outs from magazines. The ends of the cylinders protruding on the side of the box  served as dials. If you want to 'change channel' or see different pictures, you just roll the dials either up or down, and the scroll will also roll up or down. 

There were many other toys I made during those years, like bamboo swords with coconut-shell and wire knuckle-guards, and futuristic-looking ray guns made up of dozens of popsicle sticks. I also made my own kites, on some of which I pasted the longest tails ever.

November was when the winds became just right for flying kites. During that month and on until December, almost all of us boys deserted the streets and climbed the rooftops where we can be seen flying kites of different sizes and shapes. I was very agile and quite adept in climbing rooftops then, sometimes using the septic tank exhaust pipe at the side of our house as means of hoisting myself to the top. The way I climbed that pipe was like the way a boy would climb the bamboo pole in palo sebo. But most of the time I just climbed out of the little window at the back room on the second floor of our house. From that window, I stepped on to the roof of our neighbor's house and from there transfer to our own roof. 

The gap between houses then was so narrow, or even nil, that we boys could run from one roof to another without missing a beat to catch descending loose kites. Those were stressful days indeed for house owners whose roofs became playground for kite flyers.

There were three kinds of kites boys of our time flew. They were the boka-boka, the fighter kite, and the gurion. The gurion was the least flown in Tondo. I saw one flying only once or twice. The gurion resembles the Malaysian kite 'wau bulan'. I made a gurion one time, but I couldn't make it fly, maybe because of its weight. 

Papa Nene said that gurions were the type of kites they flew in his hometown, Oslob, Cebu. Gurions were the popular kites, or perhaps the only kind of kites being flown, during the pre-war era, especially in the provinces where there are plenty of wide spaces---like rice paddies and hills--- ideal for flying those big ponderous kites. 

The boka-boka was the poor boy's kite. It was just a rectangular piece of paper folded twice on either end where the cross string is tied. The string wound around the milkcan-spool was then tied to a loop at the exact middle of the cross string. Boys during our time practiced flying kites using boka-boka, after which they graduated to flying real kites.

The real kites I refer to were called fighters. They were made preferably from papel de hapon or Japanese rice paper. But any thin paper will do. There were even kites made of thin transparent plastic sheets. Fighter-kites were diamond-shaped, with strips of fin-like  triangular papers pasted on both sides. They seldom have tails because these will lessen their maneuverability. The perfect fighter-kite was one which a flyer could make dive, soar, turn left, or turn right swiftly, which a fighter kite with tail can't do. And why were they called fighter-kites? Well, that's because they were flown to engage precisely in duels with other kites. 

The strings connected to these kites, through which signals to dive, soar, and turn were communicated to the kites were abrasive. The strings were capable of cutting the strings of other kites. And that was the objective of those aerial duel, to cut the string of your opponent's kite so that it will float away loose and descend to the ground. We described those loose losing kites as 'umalagwa'.

Neophyte kite flyers who were only into boka-bokas as of yet made their strings seemed abrasive by rubbing cooked rice paste on them, which when dried would make the strings feel gritty and sharp to the touch. But they were not abrasive of course, and can't really cut other strings. On the other hand, the paste applied to their strings by the bonafide fighter-kite flyers were a mixture of kola (glue) and powdered flourescent tubes or incandescent light bulbs boiled in water.

In all my years of kite flying I have won an aerial duel only once. What a flyer should do when the string of his kite gets in contact with that of another kite was to let loose or unwind his string from the spool faster than his opponent can. The friction of the abrasive string sliding over the opponent's string will do the job of cutting it. It is a must therefore that one's kite and it's string should be the one above. That's why the dive maneuver was very important.  One's kite should always be the one diving to engage it's opponent. 

I was in high spirits after that duel which took a while to finish. I almost run out of string. I remember my and my opponent's kites as way way up in the air and very very far and very very small. I was congratulated afterwards by Pate Pangan, who was also on the roof a few houses away watching the duel. Pate was the foremost and best fighter kite flyer and kite-maker in our neighborhood. A true master. Compliments coming from him were worth a lot to us aspiring fighter-kite flyers.

Now, about that longest kite tail. Although tails on kites make them less responsive to tugs on the strings to make them dive or swerve, it somehow made it easier to fly them. I don't know why, but that's what I discovered. I wasn't really a top-notch fighter-kite flyer, so I just did an odd thing to my kite to get noticed. 

I don't know how I came up with the idea, but I just found myself one day cutting the leaves from our used notebooks into strips about an inch wide. I pasted this strips end to end to I don't know what exact length. But it was very long indeed. Trying now to recall its length with my mind's eye, I presume that it could be more than thirty feet. 

Flying a kite with a tail that long can be cumbersome because the tail could get entangled with itself. I therefore asked a playmate to assist me. That playmate was Rody Ollegue or Rody Tuko. We didn't call him that in derision. It's just our joking way of distinguishing him from our other playmates also named Rodolfo. 

They are four, in fact. One was Rodie Hamor, with the 'bansag' or monicker Rodie Lapad, because the back of his head was quite flat. He was the one I mentioned in the robbery incident at Isla Puting Bato who owned the wallet with a snapshot of a boy in karate pose and attire. Another was Rhody Valiente or Rhody Popo. Popo was derived from the repetition of the last syllable of his name Rodolfo. But behind his back, we refer to Rhody Popo, again jokingly of course, as Rody Hika. (Oh, how judgmental we were then! Hahaha....)

Both of them have passed away---Rodie Hamor when he was just 26 years old and Rhody Valiente when he was in his forties. Another Rodolfo is my brother Rudy. But that's not how we called him. All of us his childhood friends called him Buding, which must be a variation of Ruding. 

Back to my collaboration with Rody Tuko. As I've said, he was the one who assisted me in flying those long-tailed kite. His task was to gradually and gently let go of the kite's tail, and make sure that it didn't get entangled with itself. Other kite flyers upon seeing my kite, were amazed and amused by it's very long tail. First time they saw one. The kite was already way up high in the air, yet several feet's length of its tail was still lying on the roof waiting to be pulled up by the slowly rising kite. It was exciting for a while. But before long, the novelty wore off. I stopped flying long-tailed kites altogether because nobody was amazed and amused anymore.

WATER AND FIRE

There was one more game we loved to play when we were kids. That was the annual "basaan" or dousing with water on the feast day of St. John the Baptist every June 24. A practice that seems to be on the wane, in our neighborhood at least, because when last we went on that day to eat out, there were no longer anyone on the streets with dippers of water for dousing passers-by. It must be the lure of the internet. The kids nowadays would rather spend time playing computer games than prowling the streets and dousing people with water. 

St. John was the one who baptized Jesus at the Jordan River. I don't know when or who originated this practice, but it was said that what the water-dousers were doing was just a reenactment of that biblical event. 

Biblical though it may be, June 24 was a day most dreaded by office workers who have to go to work in the morning, because they know that there is a line of boys and 'istambays' (bums or out-of-work men) waiting along the sides of the streets with water-filled dippers. 

Just for fun, that's what the water-dousers would say to justify their actions. This is the tradition, they would add. So, the only thing all those doused with water could do was cast hateful looks at the culprits. Nothing more, because those istambays were capable of doing something worse---hurl expletives at them for example, or pick up a fight.

But I confess that I and my childhood friends truly considered June 24 a fun day. It was a day we all look forward to. A day or two before, all of us will be buying water guns and water grenades which we'll use on that day for our water-spraying battles. 

But what we did was but child's play compared to what the teenage boys of Lualhati Street did. We boys did the water-spraying for fun. We were all laughing while we're at it. But those teen-agers played that water-spraying battle with intensity and real animosity. 

There were two teen-age 'gangs' on Lualhati Street. They were not criminal gangs---just two 'barkadas' or peer groups who weren't friends and who were rivals for I don't know what. The name of the gang whose members lived on the south end of Lualhati Street before Lakandula was Vhoraks. The other gang who hanged out on the north end before Sandico was called Sophists.

The boundary between their respective territories was the digging at the intersection of Leandro Ibarra and Lualhati Streets. The two gangs might have arranged the night before for them to do 'battle' in the morning, because we saw them early the next day lined up on either side of the road-digging with their respective water-spraying weapons. But perhaps, the battle might have been impromptu, with the challenge hurled and accepted on the very day and hour. 

The water in their water guns and grenades was not clean water. Not only was the water not clean, it was also laced with ground siling labuyo and urine. Their target were the eyes of their opponents and their objective to inflict pain on those eyes. 

Ha ha ha....That truly showed how much they hate each other.  

As I said, they fought with intensity and genuine animosity. They kept on spraying each other for several minutes, and would have kept on doing so until their water run out. But it so happened that a boy from each side fell into the digging, and both, upon bumping into each other, promptly exchanged fist blows. It's good that there were men watching who proceeded forthwith to stop the fistfight between the two boys, and who prevented the other boys from each side from coming into blows themselves.

It was a spectacle we younger boys enjoyed watching. We never imagined that we could be as intense and belligerent as them in playing that silly though fun game.

I don't know why or how June 24 was selected to be St. John the Baptist's feast day because  no one could have  known when he was born or what the exact day of Christ's baptism was. But June was a very apt month indeed for events connected with the pouring of or dousing with water, because the wet season starts on this month. The Philippines has two seasons only, the wet and the dry season. The dry season is our so-called summer which begins in March, or even as early as the third week of February, when the cool air drastically becomes warm.

If June is the start of the watery months, March is the start of the fiery ones. That's why we in the Philippines designate March as Fire Prevention Month. But our fire, the fire that gutted our neighborhood in 1969, occurred in April, on April 9 to be exact, about a month after I graduated from elementary.

It was around 12 midnight when we were awakened by cries of "Sunog! Sunog! (Fire! Fire!). I scrambled out of our double-decked bed. I was on the bottom bunk and my brother at the top. I shaked his shoulder to wake him up. It was panic time. When we looked out the window, a most frightening sight greeted us. The scene outside was all orange, gray, and black. Orange flames blazed and gray smoke billowed against the black sky just a few houses away from us. Aside from my mother, my brother, and my two sisters, we have living with us a female cousin of my father and a housemaid. My father was abroad at the time.

We lost all of our possessions on that fire, except for a few bundles of clothes, several photographs, and important documents. The television set, refrigerator, and other appliances and furnitures we just left behind, because aside from having no big men to carry them, our house was insured anyway and those furnishings can eventually be replaced after the insurance company paid us out. What I really regret losing were our toys and the album of artworks I did for the art class of Mr. Joe Mortera who was also our scoutmaster at the Holy Child Catholic School.

We were lucky, because my mother had our house insured one week before the fire. What prompted her to do so was the fire that occured earlier. That fire raged just one block away from our place. It so alarmed my mother that she got in touch a few days after with a fire insurance agent. 

I don't know the name of the insurance company, but I know where its office was. That's because I was the one my mother brought along with her when she claimed the money paid by the insurance company. The office was on the ground floor of a building at Ayala Avenue corner Herrera Street in Makati. The name of the building was Rufino Building (now Rufino Pacific Tower), which is owned by the family of my future publisher Reni Rufino Roxas, owner of Tahanan Books for Young Readers. The insurance payment was 10 thousand pesos which is very small these days, but enough then to start building a house.

I heard that a woman died in that fire which started on the second floor of a grocery store. That grocery store was along Lakandula street, the street next to where we live. The woman was a live-in sales girl, most likely from the province, who was said to have placed a burning katol (mosquito coil) beside her kulambo (mosquito net). 

The story seems dubious to me now, although I admit that I believed it then. Because why would you still use katol when you can already sleep inside your kulambo without those pesky mosquitos buzzing around and biting you. But we never know. There were perhaps others sleeping outside the mosquito net. 

That 1969 fire was just a minor fire. It razed only about two blocks of houses. The major fire that lasted eleven hours was still to come nine years later, in the summer of 1978, again on the month of April. But thank God, a miracle happened then. Our house, and the whole two blocks that were gutted in the 1969 fire, were spared. You can just imagine our relief and joy upon seeing our and our neighbors' houses still standing. The wind must have danced. It must have shifted or changed direction everytime the flames were about to lick our neighborhood.

THE LEGEND OF MR. JOE

All of us Holy Child Catholic School students called him Mr. Joe. He was our shop and art teacher, and scoutmaster. Mr. Joe told us that his full name is Joe R.R. Mortera. The first R stands for Rustico. I don't know what the second R (his middle initial) is. Rustico is actually his first name, most probably the name of a saint picked up from the calendar whose feast day fell on the the day Mr. Joe was born. Jose was just added to it to conform to the practice of many Catholics of affixing Jose and Maria to the names of children about to be baptized. 

I remember an old movie I watched on television in the 1960s. The title of the movie is "Troop 11". Starring are Manding Claro and Nenita Vidal. The name of the scoutmaster character in that movie is Mr. Joe. Just a guess, Mr. Joe must have adopted the name of the HCCS drum and bugle corps, Troop 11, and his moniker from that movie. Nothing wrong or misleading with his use of the Mr. Joe name because after all, one of his given names is Jose, which is Joseph or its diminutive Joe to the Americans.

But it could be the other way around too. The movie and its scoutmaster character must have  been inspired by the exploits of our scoutmaster. We HCCS scouts tend to believe that because Mr. Joe, even then, is already a legend to us.

We saw him as an expert in many things. Not only was Mr. Joe our shop and art teacher, he also organized, trained, and molded our school's drum and bugle corps, the ARAMAC Ship 11, into the consistent first-prize winning marching band it became. True, the PTA president, industrialist Manuel Camara, also played a great part in the success of the marching band by sponsoring it, but all the money in the world would be money down the drain if the bandleader was incompetent. ARAMAC (reverse of Camara) Ship 11 was the pride of HCCS in the early 1960s.

Mr. Joe was a stern master. He would never brook tardy, lousy, and crybaby scouts. If a scout arrived late, he would be ordered either to face the wall for several minutes without moving, or do push-ups. For heavier violations, the offender had to pass the line. Passing the line was when one has to crawl between the spread legs of fellow scouts strung out in a very long line, with each boy allowed the liberty to whack one's behind with their hands as hard as they like. But if a boy committed a very serious offense, Mr. Joe would give that boy a short stiff jab at his abdomen.

"Sisikmuraan sya ni Mr. Joe," was how  batchmate Rey Noble put it.

There was even a time during formation after the Sunday mass, when a strong rain fell. We thought that he'd order us to break ranks and seek a roofed refuge. We all thought wrong.  He didn't do it, and just let everyone of us scouts who were standing at attention, and himself, too, got drenched with rain. All that sternness may seem like overdone and suitable only for young men undergoing real military training. We were only boys after all. But the irony was we liked it, and were truly proud to have experienced it. We felt as if we were truly grown-up men being subjected to real military discipline.

I became a boy scout when I was in grade five, the same year when we boys had a shop and art class under Mr. Joe. Application forms were handed to those who wanted to become scouts which a parent should sign if he or she approve of their boy's joining. My mother asked me, "Gusto mo ba talagang sumali? (Do you really want to join?)" I nodded. 

Next step for me was to buy the collar-less khaki boy scout upper uniform and short pants, navy-blue neckerchief with the HCCS Sto. Niño seal, and the olive-green knee-high boy scout socks. To complete the look, we also bought khaki oversea cap, traffic whistle, white gloves, and the embroidered Lion Patrol and Troop 11 patches. 

Confident of being admired, I went out of our house the first day of our formation, a Sunday, attired in complete boy scout uniform and strutted along Leandro Ibarra Street on the way to school. But to my dismay, when I was about to reach the intersection at Wagas Street, boys standing by chanted, "Boy scout lamon, pambala sa kanyon, boy scout lamon, pambala sa kanyon...! (Boy scout glutton, fodder for cannon...!)" And all my enthusiasm was doused right then and there.

Well, not all. I was still excited with my joining the boy scouts, and looked forward to all the scout activities still to come, especially the camping trip to Mt. Makiling in Laguna. Campings were  scheduled every October, at the height of the typhoon season. I used to wonder why not in January and February, when days are cool and rainless. Why subject us little boys to spending early evenings huddled up in tents while a thunderstorm rages outside? 

I realized later on that it was part of the training. We were supposed to be boy soldiers, and all the synchronized marchings, standings at attention and parade rests while in formation, flurry of salutes, and the yes sirring all around were all preparations for the military training we will undergo later in life. We were being taught to be tough and resilient, and not be upset by adverse situations like mere downpours. And that's the reason why we were taught the proper way of pitching tents, especially the need to dig a canal around the perimeter of each tent to prevent flooding inside. That canal was for catching rainwater pouring down the sloping sides of tents.

I belong to Lion Patrol. With me were Hugolino Quintano and his brother. Ramon, Alex Manalang, the late Reynaldo Abuedo, Rodolfo Cinco, and Jose Busquit. Our patrol leader the first year was Sir Flores. Just Sir Flores because I don't remember us fellow patrol members knowing his first name even then.. Although I was appointed patrol leader the next year, when I was in grade six, an officer was still above me, our patrol adviser. He was Sir Jesse Tuazon, who was a graduating high school student.

Those camping trips were the biggest and most exciting event in our life as boy scouts. I remember us, all energetic boys, loading the two buses with our knapsacks, and camping paraphernalia and equipment. We loaded the bus with tents, ropes, bamboo poles, giant pots and pans, patrol flags, and totem poles. Totem poles were long wooden boards about 8 feet tall, a foot wide, and half-inch thick, on the topmost part of which the animals after which the patrols were named were painted. Filling up the totem poles' surfaces were pictures, usually of cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse, Superman, Batman, etc. Each patrol were required to have a  totem pole which should be planted on the ground of their fenced area. The names of the patrols I remember, aside from Lion, were Deer, Fox, Hawk, Tiger, Python, Horse, and Eagle. 

There were many outside the bus who were sending us off---like our mothers or fathers, teachers, and girl classmates (whose crushes may be among those going to camp, ha ha ha), all with concerned or worried looks on their faces. But we little boys, feeling like big men, showed no signs of worry whatsoever. We acted like true soldiers going off to war, or boot camp, or wherever soldiers go on their operations.

Our camping ground was up a foothill of Mt. Makiling on a grassy flat land at the edge of a bushy ravine. That place was the site of the 10th World Scout Jamboree in 1959 attended by more than 12 thousand boy scouts from around the world. It was dubbed the "Bamboo Jamboree" because of the prevalence of bamboo and nipa structures on the site. 

The first task of each patrol  upon arriving at the camping site was to choose and fence with bamboo poles and ropes the area where they will pitch their tents. There were two tents allowed each patrol. The tents should be pitched erect and stiff, without any sagging. Demerits shall be slapped a patrol if tents sagged and if the patrol area wasn't neat. 

I have joined only two camping trips, the first when I was in grade five, and the second when I was in grade seven. The first time I joined a camping trip it rained two consecutive nights. That's why the camp bonfire and demonstration which were scheduled on the second night were cancelled. But at the next year's camp, the weather was clear the second night, so all the driftwoods gathered and the branches cut from trees were all put to use. 

A demonstration was a performance competition, held not only during camp nights but also monthly at school after the Sunday mass, where patrols did their numbers like singing scouting songs, chanting patrol yells, and acting skits whose scripts they themselves wrote. The prizes were pennants or banners which the winning patrols proudly hanged on their poles below their patrol flags. There would be patrols who'd be selected as Best In Yell, Best in Song, and Most Outstanding Patrol. I don't know who garnered the first two prizes, or if ever such were selected, but I do know that Deer Patrol won the Most Outstanding Patrol prize that night. Two of my classmates in grade seven were part of that patrol---Efren Tila and his cousin Barcissus Santiago.

Taps were always sounded by a bugler at exactly 10 o'clock every night. We were all required to go to sleep after that, to observe silence and put all lights out, as there would be roving senior officers who'll see to it that regulations are followed. But boys being boys, we never really followed that rule. Stories of ghosts and other frightful entities, and sometimes humorous stories too, were told in whispers. The reveille or wake-up call by the bugler was at 6 o'clock. But not on Sunday morning, when we were roused from our sleep at 4 to troop to and hear mass at a small church on Mt. Makiling just several minutes walk downhill from our camp.

Before the demonstration and bonfire on Saturday night, all the scouts went trailing first just after lunch, where they followed their leaders down ravines with the aid of ropes, then across a brook dotted with giant boulders, and  clambered up again the opposite slope towards flat ground. There was also that game where a patrol would plant its flag along a slope with one patrol member defending the flag against the 'enemies' who would try to capture it. The enemies were all hidden behind trees and bushes and can't be seen by the defender. A try was made to capture the flag of one patrol by a courageous fellow who made a dash for the flag by sliding fast along the steep slope and pulling forcefully the flag pole planted deep in the soil. He succeeded in capturing the flag but his downward momentum broke the pole when he grabbed it, and the lower half remained embedded in the soil. Poor fellow. He was forced by the patrol who owned the flag to pay for the pole he broke.  

The culminating event of our camp was swimming. That's on Sunday morning. The resort is perhaps less than a half-kilometer walk from our camp. I don't know if that resort still exists today, but it was in pretty good condition in 1968, the second year of my joining a camp. It has two levels. The pool on the first level has a depth of from 2 to 4 feet. The second level, which can be accessed by going down a steep stair, is deeper. I don't know the maximum depth of the second pool but it must be 6 feet or more.  

Mr. Joe first gave us tips on swimming followed by a demo on how to rescue a drowning person, which was beyond me because I don't even know how to do the handstrokes properly. After the demo, Mr. Joe gave us permission to swim on whichever pool we choose. To my embarrassment, everyone except me and my close buddy Eric Antonio, rushed below to the second and deeper pool.  Eric and I remained on the pool which must be meant for kids and tried the floating tips and handstrokes just taught us by Mr. Joe in water three feet deep.

That Sunday was the day we broke camp. We began dismantling our tents and cleaned up our campsite after lunch. The buses came before 3 pm. There was a last minute flurry of buying pasalubongs or take-home goodies like chicos, espasols, and buco pies from vendors who gathered at our campsite before the buses rolled off. We arrived in Manila at around past 5 pm, and there waiting for us with happy relieved faces were our fathers or mothers. I can't remember if there were teachers and girl classmates also waiting for us because all I thought of and wanted to do then was to go home fast, and eat again steamed rice cooked just right---not "hilaw" or "malata" (undercooked or soggy)---which was our regular mealtime fare at the camp, and sleep again on my soft-mattressed bunk which I have all to myself.

PSYCHEDELIC NECKTIES

(Shown above is our 4th year class photo. We were Section 421. I'm on the second row, fifth from left. Arnel de Guzman is fourth from left on the top row.)

I don't know if today's boy students of UST High School still wear neckties as part of their uniform. We did in our time and were quite proud of it. I entered high school in 1969. My first necktie was thin and black, a real match for my straight-cut black pants. 

Those times of the early 1970s was the tail-end of the hippie era, when bell-bottom pants, both printed and plain, were in vogue. But we were still boys when we were in first year, that's why we weren't concerned much with being 'in' with the trend. We were contented with our thin black pants.

But the succeeding years saw us gradually trying to emulate the dominant fashion of the time. What the hippies wore, we students would try our best to wear even if it didn't look good on us. 

I guess that's what I liked most about the USTHS administration. They're quite lenient and considerate when it comes to what the boys wore. The official uniform of the boys was supposed to be white short or long-sleeved polo shirt, black or dark pants, and neckties, which I presumed should also be black or dark-colored, and either plain or striped. But we followed this rule less and less each year that we progressed in high school.

The patience of the school administration must have been pushed to the limit when we boys began showing up at school wearing bell-bottom pants of different colors, like orange, red, violet, yellow, and cream---and with patterns like vertical stripes and plaid. There was a shift too in necktie preference. The conservative thin and dark-colored or striped neckties gave way to broad neckties with psychedelic designs of different colors.

The length of the necktie was also of no matter anymore. We had a playful classmate who, to get attention and distinguish himself from us, wore his necktie very short. He wound the necktie knot so many times that the tip of it reached only down to just below his chest, not down to his waist as should be the case. That guy was Arnel de Guzman.

Arnel de Guzman was a sociologist. He succumbed to an illness many years ago. He  was active in NGO causes, particularly those involving migrant workers. I remember seeing him once being interviewed on tv.

There are two things concerning Arnel I regret not doing. First was when I ignored his  invitation, in a letter he sent me, for us to meet up and reminisce about the old times over bottles of beer. That was in 1987 when I was still working for Joe Burgos' We Forum Publications as editorial cartoonist. 

I wrote at that time a letter to the editor of the Philippines Daily Inquirer commenting on a recent article by Manuel Quezon III. Arnel must have come across that letter and got my address from it. I don't remember exactly the reason why I chose not to see him. One reason must be the tight schedule I follow at that time. I didn't work mornings in the newspaper. I go to work beginning 4 pm and come home around 3 or 4 am. I spent much of the daylight hours sleeping. But the more plausible reason was my embarrassment at my poor financial position. I already had two kids at the time, but my salary was still just a little above minimum.

The second cause for regret concerned Arnel's book, "The Goddesses of the Lust Triangle". I first learned about the book from a review in the Philippine Daily Inquirer written by Rinna Jimenez-David, where she panned it for being quite explicit at times. The book is about  the research Arnel did on the lives and work of female dancers in beerhouses and other girlie bars in the South Triangle area.

I'm not exactly looking for that book, but one time I was at the National Bookstore, I saw a copy of it on sale. It was the only copy on display and could perhaps be the last---yet I decided against buying it. A mistake.

I googled that book weeks ago. Copies are still available and can be bought online. Unfortunately, the book has become pricey. It now sells for $32, or around 1600 pesos. Still beyond my purchasing capacity: much more so, in fact. Anyway, the National Bookstore or Powerbooks, or perhaps Bookmark's The Filipino Bookstore, may still have copies of it. I'll go and visit them one of these days to find that book.

Let's go back to neckties. I wrote earlier that I was proud that neckties were part of our uniform. Neckties separated us from other high-schoolers who don't wear neckties in school. That feeling of superiority lasted until one recess time when we were in fourth year.

Our room overlooked a sidewalk inside the campus going to the Dapitan Street gate

 University regulations regarding outsiders weren't strict and guards allowed even those without IDs to go inside the campus. What happened was this. A group of boys, who looked like outsiders because they were just wearing sandos and old t-shirts, passed by our room and saw a few of us gathered by the window. 

One of them asked: "Bakit kayo nakakurbata? Mga waiter ba kayo? (Why are you wearing neckties? Are you waiters?)"

Although embarrassed, we still managed to laugh at that remark. That was the ultimate put-down. I know that that isn't a nice thing for me to say. It's so politically-incorrect. But I really felt then, immature that I was, that it was degrading for us to be confused with waiters. That was why  from that moment on, neckties lost their snobbish appeal to me.

TRY-HARD POET

(Photo collage above shows myself when I was in fourth year high school, the facade and lobby of the USTHS building, and the cover of the Aquinian)

On the beach we play,

on a sunny day.

To the sea we go,

On a skiff we row.

The sky is blue,

the clouds are few.

A lobster and a crab

On the rocks above.

I wrote that poem when I was in grade seven, during our English Reading class. That was my first attempt at writing poetry. If I remember correctly, our Reading class teacher was Miss Caday, One day, she asked us her pupils to write poems, not as homework, but as class work. Meaning---we have to write our poems on the spot. She liked what I wrote and asked me to write another. I did and came up with a few more.

I remember myself being amazed at the time at the ease with which I composed those rhymes. I've never done it before. Laughable though that poem is to me now, it gave me at least the first inkling that I perhaps could write.

That's why I readily applied and took the competitive test when calls came for us 4th year boys of UST High School to vie for editorship positions in our school magazine, The Aquinian. I chose to compete for the Pilipino Editor position because I thought I had a better chance of winning that post. The test was impromptu. We were asked to write on the spot anything we fancy, on any topic, in prose or in poetry. I chose poetry. I can't recall now what exactly I wrote, but it is about something historical, I think.

I learned the result of the test when the Aquinian adviser, Miss Milagros Hernandez, dropped by our classroom one day and asked me if I really was the one who wrote that poem, and if I really wrote it impromptu. I answered yes. So, I became that day, officially,  the Pilipino Editor of the Aquinian. Eric Gamalinda is Editor-in-Chief and Arnel Dioso English Editor. I was also appointed Chief Artist of the magazine.

The magazine changed format during Eric's watch. The magazine switched from one that features stories and photos of events in our school to a purely literary compilation. Only short stories, poems, and essays will be published from that time on. That's commendable, because it will provide a platform for those students who were into creative writing.

But the problem was there weren't many writers of that sort among us. Despite repeated calls from us editors requesting contributions for our magazine only a few did submit their writings. We found it difficult therefore to fill up the pages of the magazine. What I did to solve that was to write Tagalog poems of four lines each, quatrains, and have them published under different names. I also submitted full-length English poems using my real name which were duly published.

I thought then my idea of writing poems myself with different pseudonyms as bylines was smart. It was an easy task for me. No sweat, some would say. After all, I used to do that as a twelve year old boy---whip out words that rhyme from the top of my head and composing them into poems. 

But our eagle-eyed magazine adviser would have none of that. Miss Hernandez summoned me and asked if I was the one who wrote those Tagalog quatrains. I replied yes, I did write those. Shaking her head in disapproval, she said that it's easy to see that they were written by just one person despite being bylined with different pseudonyms. She added that what I did is just not done. She advised me not to do it again.

She's right of course. I understood. I obeyed and refrained from then on from filling up the Pilipino section of the magazine with my writings. Nevermind if the pages did look 'spacious' afterwards because of the dearth of submitted materials. 

I mentioned earlier that I also contributed English poems to our magazine, love poems mostly. These poems appeared regularly in every issue of the Aquinian. Seeing my English poems published so propped up my confidence that I thought it high time to try my hand too in writing prose in English. I wrote an essay and submitted it to Eric. After some time I asked Eric what happened to my essay. He answered that he just can't published it. "Marami namang mali. (There are lots of error.)" he said. 

That stung. Hahaha....

But Eric was right, I'm sure. I am his fan. I have lots of respect for him as a writer. He is one of the greatest Filipino writer of our generation ---or even perhaps of all time. Last I heard, he is a professor in a University in New York, and is active in the theater circle there as a playwright. He had written several books of poetry, and novels---one of which won the one-million peso Grand Prize in the 1998 Centennial Literary Competition. That novel is "My Sad Republic", which I hastened to seek and buy the moment I learned that it's already available in bookstores.

One memorable moment in my stint as an editor and try-hard English language poet was the time I received a letter, just a short note actually, from five girl batchmates. They weren't our classmates, because girls attend classes in the morning, while we boys in the afternoon. The note was some sort of 'fan mail' where they expressed admiration for my love poems. I was thrilled of course, that being the first time I was admired by girls. The letter was signed by them with two acronyms, using just the first syllables of their first and last names. I still remember the acronyms to this day. But I will never reveal them.  Promise. 

SOCCER PHOTOGRAPH AND MEMORIES

The top image in the photo collage above is the original unedited photo. Shown here are, front row from left, Roger Manuel, Len Manansala, Art Marquez, and Jet Bautista; and second row from left, myself, Rommel Belmonte, Mr. Cordero, Mandy Constantino, and Edward Tan. Our three goalkeepers, Pat Manalo, Pol Bruselas, and Benjie Deang are not in the photo.)

I now remember who took and gave me the picture of our winning soccer team: our  goalkeeper Patricio Manalo. That explains why he is not in the photo.

Pat was our full-time goalkeeper. He had two  alternates, Pol Bruselas and Benjie Deang. All of them were efficient goalkeepers who've frustrated many times the attempts by strikers of the opposing teams to score a goal.

Our forwards or strikers, prolific scorers all,, were Art Marquez, Edward Tan, and our sometimes goalkeeper Pol Bruselas. Len Manansala, our toughest defender, was fullback. The rest--myself, Jet Bautista, Mandy Constantino, Roger Manuel, the late Rommel Belmonte, and our other alternate goalie Benjie Deang--were the halfbacks.

Len 'invented' his own original defensive move to force an opponent to lose the ball he was dribbling. What he often did was slide down fast to the ground with both legs extended, using both of his feet to kick the ball away from the player dribbling it. That maneuver was effective most of the time, and spared the increasingly tense goalkeeper from the nasty situation of facing the opposing team's striker one on one.

Our team, Section 321, was the soccer intramural champion in 1972. The games weren't the regulatory soccer games where eleven players from each opposing teams faced each other on the field. In our version of soccer only seven players per team were fielded at the same time during each game. 

Unfortunately, we weren't able to hold on to the championship the next year which was won by Section 424. I don't remember the final score, but I'm sure that it was more than 1-0. One thing I realized during that game was that the referee, Mr. Cordero, wanted us to win, because he kept on urging us halfbacks to leave our defensive line and go to the offense.

I played barefooted during games because I ran swifter without shoes. Seeing me playing sans shoes must have moved our goalkeeper Pat Manalo to pity. He might have thought that I don't have a proper pair of athletic rubber shoes to use because he appeared one day on the soccer field with a pair of soccer shoes in hand which he said he was lending me. I of course accepted his offer quickly.

I was able to use the shoes in several games and then promptly lost it. I've left them inadvertently in the shower room where we players troop to after every game because we never stay neat after all the sliding and rolling we did on the grassy and sometimes muddy field. The guy who have picked them up was very lucky because the shoes were original Adidas soccer shoes, with studs and all. 

When I confessed the lost to Pat, he just nodded and showed no signs of disappointment or dismay whatsoever. Pat acted there like a true friend---a real cool friend who won't permit a 'little' carelessness like that on my part to upset him. I used to wonder what happened to Pat after high school, but just recently, another high school classmate, Judge Joe Lim of Washington DC, told us that Pat works as an accountant in the US, and has a Caucasian wife. 

Come to think of it, my soccer teammates, have all become successful professionals. Pol Bruselas became an appellate court judge. Two teammates, Jet Bautista and Edward Tan were first placers in the Mechanical and Civil Engineering exams respectively. Len Manansala founded his own advertising company in Pennsylvania, I think. Art Marquez was a chemical engineer who built his fortune working for Shell in the Middle East. Roger Manuel, an economist, worked for many years in Malacañang, at the Department of Budget Management, from the time of President Marcos up to the time of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Benjie Deang was with PLDT. I don't know what is his designation there, but I'm sure that he must have occupied a high managerial position.

I never knew what had become of Mandy Constantino and the late Rommel Belmonte after we left high school, but I presume that they must have achieved a lot too in their chosen careers, because after all, we all belong to section one, a class whose members were all supposed to excel in academics. 

Before I wrap up, let me ask you this: Do I and our PE instructor and soccer referee, Mr. Cordero, have any physical resemblance to each other? 

I asked because a much younger fellow artist, Rigor Esguerra of Baler, who I've met once in an artists' gathering, asked me after seeing our soccer team photo if I am the man in yellow.

I was taken aback by his question because the man in yellow is Mr. Cordero who must be in his forties at the time this picture was taken.

I was baffled and didn't know if should feel insulted or not. But being the polite person that I truly am, I chose to believe that he just made an honest mistake and didn't really mean to offend. I therefore answered him good-naturedly.

Here's the thread of our conversation that happened around two years ago:

Rigor: Kayo po ba yung naka dilaw?

Me: Naku ha! Hahaha.... 1972 pa yang pic, pre. Ako yung nasa dulong kaliwa, second row. PE instructor namin yung naka-yellow. Si Mr. Cordero. Hindi pa ko ganyan katanda noong 1972, hahaha....

Rigor: Akaw ka pogie talaga ni idol nga bataan bagay kahit naman ngayon idol parin

Me: Hahaha.... Salamat, pre.

Rigor: Alam ko naman ikaw ang kilabot pag dating sa chick iba karisma pre

Me: Ah, yan ang hindi totoo. Tanders na. 62 na ko.

So, there. It's good that you reversed gear, Rigor. I would have deleted you from my Facebook friends list if you didn't.

THE ORIGINAL ISLA PUTING BATO

(The top image in the photo collage above

is of myself and my Tondo barkada during an outing at the Balara Resort in 1975. The bottom photos shows me and my cycling buddy, Isko Dela Cruz at the north bank.of the Pasig River.)

Beyond the piers is the breakwater, a long line of gigantic white rocks dropped into the sea just off the Manila North Harbor. The breakwater serves as a wall that prevents the big waves from rocking the docked ships too much during typhoons. We called that breakwater, Isla Puting Bato. That is the original Isla Puting Bato. Original because I learned recently that there is now another Isla Puting Bato around one kilometer farther north.

The Isla Puting Bato of my youth was the poor man's beach resort. My father Papa Nene used to bring me and my brother Rudy there when he was on vacation. He was a seaman. Isla Puting Bato was still detached from the mainland during the 1960s. You need to ride a banca to get there. 

The first time we rode a banca to go to Isla Puting Bato I got very scared and almost panicked. The banca was overloaded and only about seven inches of the boat's hull remained above water.

It was only in the 1970s that an effort was made to connect Isla Puting Bato to the mainland. The resulting reclaimed or extra land became another squatter community, the so-called Luzviminda Village. Luzviminda Village was squatters area all right, but it was not slum. It looked more like any sleepy fishing village in the province. A few residents have boats. They made a living fishing and gathering talaba (oyster), tahong (mussel), and bilakong. Bilakong resembles tahong, but its shell is brownish and is very much bigger. 

One time Papa Nene bought a bagful of bilakong at Isla Puting Bato which Mama Ninay cooked adobo style with lots of chillis. That was the first time I tasted that dish. I came to like it so much that years ago, whenever my wife Carina saw bilakong being sold in the market, she would buy an ample quantity right away, so that she can cook for me the dish she knew I like so much. But that as I said was years ago. Bilakong seems scarce nowadays. I hadn't tasted that for a long time now.

Isla Puting Bato was the cheapest beach resort there was during my growing up years. No entrance fee and no commuting expenses. All we had to do to get there was walk. And no need to bring much food either. My barkada and I only had to bring boiled rice and drinking water. And yes, we also brought salt and a bottle of spicy vinegar, the "sawsawan" or dip for the tahong and talaba we could pry from underneath the rocks. Although those shellfish were our only 'ulam' (viand), it was always happy eating for us. We were never dismayed by the meagerness of our fare. What mattered most was our camaraderie.

And that camaraderie, that bond, was put to a test one time when I nearly drowned. Although I can't swim well yet, I had no fear of deep water and was bold enough to dive into it time and again. We had with us an inflated car tire inner-tube which we used as "salbabida" or lifebuoy. When I saw it on the water floating farther and farther away from the rocks, I jumped after it to retrieve it. But what happened was each time I made a hand-stroke to get nearer and grab it, the farther the salbabida floated away. When I looked back, I realized that I was already very far from the rocks and in really deeper water. I was no longer confident that I can swim back on my own, so I swallowed my pride and waved at my friends and called for help. And they, like one man, jumped into the water to rescue me.

I was fascinated by swimming from when I was a kid. Ever since my father brought me and my brother to the breakwater, ostensibly to teach us to swim, I've always kept in my heart the longing to really learn to swim. But teaching someone to swim right is a rigorous process that can't be accomplished in an hour or two. So, I can say that it wasn't my father who taught me how to swim. I learned swimming by hanging out at swimming pools where there would be almost always swimming classes going on. I listened closely and committed to memory the swimming tips, and practiced on my own the drills the swimming teachers' made their pupils do.

Proof of my obsession with swimming was the naughty act I did when I was in grade six, when our maid Nora caught me inside our drum filled up with water. I was practicing floating. When she saw me doing that, she warned me that she's going to tell my mother. "Sumbong kita sa Mama mo, " she threatened. But she apparently never told my mother because I never heard from her. My mother never scolded me.

It was in 2018, I think, when I, with my cycling buddy Isko dela Cruz, tried to revisit Isla Puting Bato. We were on our routine tour of what I call Manila's storied places when we happened to passed by Pier 2. Isko knows of Isla Puting Bato because I've told him stories of my youthful escapades there with my barkada. He grew curious and insisted that we go to that place. But the entrance to Isla Puting Bato was so different now from what it was then. While it was still open space before, with no structures in sight, today, the place is so cramped with container vans and barung-barongs (hovels), inhabited maybe by a few people who are up to no good. 

When we asked a security guard we saw there if it was all right for us to proceed further to see the breakwater, he dissuaded us. He said: "Naku! huwag, brod. Baka pagkamalan kayo. (Oh! Don't, brother. You might be mistaken for someone else.)" We take that to mean that the thugs living there might suspect us to be undercover cops or informers. I readily believed him because forty years ago, when the place still looked rural, my teen-age friends were robbed there at knifepoint by boys just about their age.

THE FAMILY THAT SWIMS TOGETHER

I am a Tondo Boy through and through. It is my father, Edmundo, who is a full-blooded Cebuano. My mother Regina, who grew up in La Loma, is Tagalog.

During the mid 1960s, when my father was just into a few years of working overseas as a seaman, he suggested to my mother that we relocate to Oslob, Cebu. My mother apparently vetoed the idea; and we siblings went along with her, not only because we were only minors then, but also because we already led a comfortable life in Tondo.

I was only a year old when my parents took me and my older sister to Oslob for a visit. It was only in 1981, when I was already 24, that I returned there. What I saw impressed me for I have always loved the sea. There is no sea near Metro Manila that would equal the pristine quality of the sea of Oslob 

Beginning 1987, I and my wife Carina, and our two kids, Bahgee and Kai, went to Oslob whenever my father was home from his trips abroad and brought us along with him for a vacation. Since our house there is only about a hundred meters away from the beach, our visits there were always bliss for us. My kids also learned to love the sea. They became good swimmers, having learned the rudiments of swimming from me way back when they were in grade school.

They were lucky. I was a diligent swimming tutor. My father never taught me how to swim. But I truly love the sea that I persisted in going on sea outings with my childhood friends, mostly at the breakwater just off the Manila North Harbor, where I almost drowned on two occasions during the mid-1970s. I almost  drowned again in 1988, in Oslob, while snorkeling with my compadre Rolly San Mateo. Rolly saved me by tapping my elbow upwards from to time to time until my feet found a tall rock on which to stand.

After that near-mishap in Oslob , I seriously tried to learn what the lifeguards called scientific swimming. I hanged out at swimming pools to watch and get tips from the truly adept swimmers like the lifeguards and other swimming.instructors. I even enrolled in a one-hour butterfly-stroke course with Mang Pons, a lifeguard in Malabon. From then on, to show off, I always make it a point to do butterfly whenever I was at the swimming pool, which was often.

That was in the late 1980s up to the 1990s, when I still had a trimmed body with no excess fat whatsoever. But my body deteriorated. I grew a belly. Gradually, I find swimming more of a chore. That's why today I always use fins when swimming---to offset the drag caused by my belly, and to make me look the same efficient swimmer I was before.

My near-drowning experiences pushed me to thoroughly teach my sons how to swim. Swimming pools were our haunts when they were in grade school. We held our swimming classes in the swimming pools of the  Rizal Memorial Coliseum,  the Pope Pius XII Center, the Tondo Sports Complex, the Palaisdaan Resort in Malabon, the Sarreal and Abad Resorts in Imus, the Student Canteen in Quiapo, and the so-called 'Kaharian' in Caloocan, which is owned by the family of my former UE Fine Arts classmate and compadre Arnel Dolatre.

The swimming stroke I taught my sons---and also their playmates incidentally---is American crawl. The American crawl is popularly called freestyle, because that is the name of the swimming event where that stroke is used. Actually, swimmers competing in the freestyle event are free to use any stroke they like, but since the American crawl is the fastest and most efficient swimming stroke, all swimmers uniformly use that when competing in the said event.

Today, my sons are better freestyle swimmers than me. They slice through the water more neatly, executing their arm and leg strokes with lesser extraneous or unnecessary moves. But they still can't do that most dashing of swimming strokes---the butterfly. Not my fault. I didn't taught them  the 'fly' because they have shown no interest in learning it anyway.

TO THE SEA, OF COURSE

We won't forget the summer of 2010. By we,  I mean us, close friends and compadres, who were classmates at the University of the East School of Music and Fine Arts in the 1980s. It was that year that we again saw Pareng Arnel Dolatre who left for the US unannounced nineteen years ago.

The whole time he was there, we never got word from him on how he was doing. It was only around 2008 that we learned that he is already a nurse in New York. That was the year I learned how to use the computer and created my Facebook account. When I discovered his email address, I excitedly sent him a message. He responded. After exchanging a flurry of emails, Pareng Arnel finally made up his mind to come home and meet us once more.

Pareng Arnel loves snorkeling. We all do. He was my snorkeling buddy when we went to Mompong and Maniwaya Islands in Marinduque in the summer of 1991, during their Holy Week break from animation work, and just a few months before he left for the US. That was a long time ago, when only sleepy fishing villages were on the two islands we visited, and they're not yet the fully-developed tourist destinations they are today.

So, after the initial welcome dinner in a restaurant, where else would our group go to, pronto? To the sea, of course!

Bert Falsis invited us to their beach house in Cabangan, Zambales, which would served as our base for our trip to Capones Island. After staying overnight in Cabangan, we left early by car for San Antonio, where the boats shuttling back and forth to Capones and other nearby islands are.

Since there were eleven of us in the group---Bert Falsis, Arnel Dolatre, Jerry Dean, Mandy, Oca Magos, Jojo Garcia, Isko dela Cruz, my sons Bahgee and Kai, Ryan Pagao, and me--- we have to rent three boats. That's because only four passengers are allowed per boat. The trip to Capones took about twenty minutes. Capones is a big rocky island. It looks forbidding, because what you'll see are mostly rocky hills with little or no vegetation at all. 

My sons, Bahgee and Kai, together with their friend, Ryan, did a little trekking and explored the other side of the island, which they reported as being a bit wooded. They also told us that there is an abandoned concrete structure, a ruin, on that part of the island, This ruin was perhaps the lodging house for an aborted resort project. 

The tide was very low. It was difficult going to the deeper part because the water near the shore was clogged with yellow-colored succulent-looking sea weeds. Traversing that patch was the tricky part for those of us not wearing fins, surf shoes, or flip-flops, because there was the risk that they may step on sea creatures that may sting. Anyway, none of us got stung, and all of us got around to the aquarium-like deep part where the water is so clear, and where multicolored reef fishes abound. There is a long underwater trench there, where we tried to chase fishes.

We ate lunch after an hour or two of snorkeling, and after eating we proceeded to the other highlight of the trip, which was drinking. We held our drinking session under a cave-like rock formation. There, protected from the heat of the sun by the overhanging rocks, we passed around shots of Fundador Brandy. There was great merriment, of course, and much bantering too. We left Capones at around 3 pm. 

Something unusual happened when we were back at the resort in San Antonio to take our shower and change clothing. At the shower,  I tried to start a conversation with Isko dela Cruz, who was my buddy that time. But he just nodded and made hand signals. It took me a little while to realize what happened. Isko lost his voice for we knew not what reason. He was therefore silent throughout the whole trip back to Manila. He told me days later that his voice only came back the day after our trip. 

Pareng Arnel came home again in 2014. . Now, where do you think our group went to, pronto, to savor the delights of the summer of that year?

To the sea, of course, to swim and snorkel---and to Abe's Farm, to eat!

SANTUARIO DE TAKLOBO

Boston Gallery's Andy Estella must have read the essay I wrote about my group's sea outing to Capones Island. I have expressed there my extreme enthusiasm for the sea around the island and the marine creatures inhabiting it.

Sensing our passion for snorkeling, Andy did us a favor and mentioned to me a superior snorkeling site in Masinloc Bay, Zambales. Andy said that the place is rich not only in corals and reef fishes, but also in giant clams, or taklobo---it being a giant clam sanctuary.

When I relayed this information to my compadre and former UE Fine Arts classmate, Bert Falsis, he immediately scheduled a trip to Masinloc. It was May 2010. Bert took only three with him, since it was just a reconnaissance trip: his son John, John's former classmate, and myself. 

The boats that took passengers to and from San Salvador Island, which the locals called Pulo, are moored at the dock just beside the market. Bert rented a boat that can accommodate more than ten persons for 600 pesos. The trip to the clam sanctuary, which is just off San Salvador Island, took less that ten minutes.  

After notifying and getting permission from the caretakers of the sanctuary staying on San Salvador Island, our boat went back and dropped anchor at a place where the boatman thought the clams are. The place indeed, is rich in corals of all types. There are tabletop corals, staghorn corals, star corals, and brain corals, among others. There are also schools of different reef fishes cruising back and forth. 

But no giant clams. We have anchored at the wrong place. Cautious snorkelers that we were, we dared not venture very far from the boat to search for the clams. I think the farthest I snorkeled from and around the boat was about fifty meters only. It was near noontime when we gave up our search. We were hungry. 

There is in the middle of the sea, near the island, a big cottage on stilts built by Masinloc Mayor Fidel Edora. Excursionists can use it for free the boatman told us. That cottage looks interesting from afar, nicely designed and constructed, and is equivalent to a three storey structure if standing on land. We decided to eat our lunch there. So, we instructed the boatman to steer the boat toward the cottage.

Although we didn't see any giant clam, I'd say that we'd had a worthwhile trip. The corals and the colorful fishes alone, and the cottage on stilts in the middle of the sea certainly deserve a revisit.

Added bonus of our trip was my being able to take home a bunch of ripe Pulo mangos, which were bruited about by the Masinloc locals as the sweetest mangoes in the whole of Zambales. I don't know what another compadre, a former classmate from UST Fine Arts, Jun Diaz, would say to that. Jun hails from Sta. Cruz, the northernmost town of Zambales.  I know that Jun is very proud of and sure of the unrivaled sweetness of their mangos. He might not readily concede to the claims of other towns of Zambales that their mangos are the sweetest. I've tasted Pulo mangos and the mangos from Sta. Cruz, but I won't dare hazard an opinion on which of the two is sweeter. Both of them tasted similarly sweet to me. 

Which brings to mind an incident during a later trip from Zambales on our way home to Manila. When our car passed the highway in San Antonio, we saw several stalls of mango vendors. Our group bought several kilos of "manibalang" or nearly-riped mangos which we divided among us when we arrived in Manila  We had high expectations because the mangos we bought are Zambales mangos after all. But to our disappointment and regret, the mangos, even when fully riped, still tasted sour. We've been had. A friend explained that the mangos were either "kinalburo lang" - or, not really from Zambales, but just "imported" from any of the nearby provinces. 

It would be great if I'll have on my table one day one or two mangos each from Guimaras, Zambales, Cebu, and other provinces for tasting. Only in that way could I judge with some semblance of accuracy which province produces the sweetest mango.

FIRST  SCUBA DIVE

My first and only scuba dive was at Anilao.

I thank my UST High School classmate Vince Tabirara for making that possible. Vince invited me to join him for what he called a neophyte diving expedition at Anilao. That was way back in February 2011. I accepted with alacrity not only because I'm a certified sea freak, but also because he further sweetened his invitation with an '"all expenses paid" offer. An impecunious artist like me would be a fool to turn down an invitation like that.

Vince chose me to be his dive buddy because he knew that I'm quite adept at snorkeling, and he implied that he needed my experience and supposed confidence in deep waters to prop up his own confidence and courage. But he was wrong there. I was not that fearless. He was quite taken aback therefore, when I confessed to feelings of anxiety and fear just before our dive.

But anyway, all such feelings vanished minutes after I made my plunge, when I noticed that the only discomfort I felt was a feeling of dryness in my mouth. Everything else was pure bliss, because what greeted us was the most magnificent underwater scenery I've seen yet. All snorkeling sites I've dived in paled in comparison.

Anilao, a marine sanctuary facing Balayan Bay, is a barangay in Mabini, Batangas. Our dive master bragged that Anilao is the second best diving destination in the Philippine after Tubbataha Reef. It wasn't an empty boast, for I saw underwater not only reef fishes like clownfish, moorish idols, and butterfly and angel fishes,  but also a school of jacks (talakitok), corals, sponges, sea anemones, giant clams, and even a sea turtle. We were also told that a small shark was once seen cruising there.

The resort we checked into was Planet Dive. It was strategically located because the most visited diving landmarks in Anilao like the Twin Rocks and the Cathedral are just a few meters away from the shoreline fronting the resort. We enjoyed our stay there, especially Vince, who so marveled at the delicious food on the buffet table, that he asked to be introduced to the chef to congratulate her.

I mentioned earlier that previous snorkeling sites I've been to paled in comparison with Anilao. That's true. And that's not good. I say that because when I went back after Anilao to the other snorkeling sites I frequented before, I noticed a diminished enthusiasm on my part for the old underwater sights they offer.

Cebu, Mindoro, Zambales, and Marinduque entice me no more. Only Tubbataha beckons. But a trip there is too expensive. I cannot afford it. Besides, Tubbataha I think is for scuba divers, not for mere snorkelers like me. It is in the middle of the Sulu Sea and I've read that the average depth of the water in the area is 65 feet. Now, now, not only is the budget way beyond my means, but that depth also. Because only exceptionally-skilled and champion freedivers with capacious lungs can dive somewhere near that depth on a single breath of air. 

Which brings to mind what Norman said to me after our evening meal.

He said: "Sabi ni Vince, kaya mo raw sumisid hanggang 200 feet." (Vince said that you can dive up to 200 feet.)

"Ha? Sinabi nya yon?" I asked surprised - and amused.  "Hahaha.... Nagbibiro lang yon. Hanggang 10 feet lang ang kaya kong sisirin."  (He said that? Hahaha.... He's just kidding. I can dive up to only 10 feet.)

In this photo, clockwise from left, Norman Legazpi, Dr. Froilan Ocampo, myself, and Vince Tabirara

STORM AND STRESS AT iSLA BALAKI

The exuberance of the young amazes me. Despite the lightning that stitched the night sky during the thunderstorm, they still found reasons to whoop up and do a joyful rain dance, while we four oldies (me, Jun Diaz, Bert Falsis, and Isko dela Cruz) just huddled under our so-called tent brooding. 

The day started pleasantly enough. Although the sun shone hotly, the camping site we chose under a talisay tree was well-shaded and cool. A few hours after lunch the kids went snorkeling. We followed them an hour after.

But near dusk, I had a foreboding of the rough time ahead of us when I saw above a gigantic mass of black rain clouds that seemed about to envelop us. And sure enough, when darkness fell, the rains fell too, punctuated now and then by thunder and lightning. This got me worried especially when the two girls with us started to complain of the cold. 

Now, I have always been aware of how dangerous hypothermia, or loss of body heat, is. It can be fatal, if the person who's soaking wet doesn't get the chance to change into dry clothing at once---and stay dry afterwards. I know of one such case involving a mountaineer from San Beda, who died of hypothermia at the summit of Mt. Halcon, in Mindoro, during heavy rains.

Fortunately, the rain stopped around twelve midnight, which gave us the chance to light the bonfire. The blazing fire lifted our spirits, which prodded the kids who previously did a rain dance to next do some sort of thanksgiving dance around the bonfire. We went to sleep, deeply, around two a.m., and if I hadn't woke and urged them to break camp just before sunrise, they would have slept well on until the sun is high.

So, what's my verdict on Isla Balaki. Well, the island is scenic enough, with beige colored sands finer, as Tonton Tornea said, than Boracay's. Talisay trees which provide good shade abound, although thorny aroma bushes are plentiful, too. Therefore, the natural beauty of the place should be reason enough for us to celebrate our stay there. 

I have also seen that the waters around the island is indeed rich with fishes, because there were several spear-fishermen with good catches to show.

But a few mistakes were made. Our spirits wouldn't have been dampened even by heavy rains had the boys (my sons Bahgee and Kai, Topher Buerano, Isra Lamsen, Ryan Pagao, and Jose Yu) brought with them large waterproof sheets which we can use as improvised tents.

But the lack of a large waterproof sheet wouldn't have been much of a problem had Isko followed my suggestion that he assembled his dome tent, which could house six people or more in cozy comfort, on higher grounds, instead of near the edge of the water. 

But Isko is hard-headed. He won't listen to reason and ignored my advice. He also didn't allow me to help him assemble his tent. I don't know why. Perhaps he thought that I would just ruin the job because of my natural clumsiness.

As it happened, when the water rose during high tide he had to relocate his tent to higher ground. But he had to dismantle it first.  In his haste, because it was also already raining, and perhaps because of his natural clumsiness, he broke one or two of the tent's flexi-rods, which made it impossible for him to assemble the tent again as a dome. So, he just folded the tent flat and tied the four corners to the bushes with ropes. It was under this leaking so-called tent, which hardly provided us shelter from the rain, that the four of us oldies huddled, depressed. 

So again, what's my verdict? As I said earlier, the natural beauty of the island and the abundance of fishes should have made it deserving of a revisit. But no---I'm not returning to Balaki to snorkel, simply because there is no good snorkeling to be done there. Snorkeling is best among the corals, and not among the sea grasses which seem to surround the island. The coral growths are about half a kilometer away, in rough waves, where I wouldn't dare venture. 

I'm certain too, that Jun Diaz won't return. His first words to me when he woke up were, "Survive tayo." (We survived.")  Jun said that it was the first time he had an experience as frightful as that. He added that he'd take Stresstabs once we had return home. 

Bert, too. won't be returning. He said that his idea of outing is one where you sleep in air-conditioned comfort in a nice rain-proofed cottage. Bert even proposed that we return that very night to the Zambales mainland. I didn't concur of course. I reasoned that it was risky business. Many things can happen to the boat and us if we risk crossing the rough sea at night, with all the bolts of lightning being hurled around.

I'm not sure about the sentiment of Isko 'the tent-master'. Because during the time when the rain was falling the hardest, he kept on muttering the words, "Ang saya-saya. Ang saya-saya..." (This is fun. This is fun...)

His silly though cheerful attitude prompted Jun to say that it's good to have Isko around in times of crisis because he is a positive thinker.

THE BUTANDINGS' PICNIC ZONE

The painting at the top of the photo collage above is a composite where I used as references several pictures taken at different locations and occasions. I wasn't even at sea when my picture was taken. I was inside our house and wasn't wearing around my head any 'antipara' or wood-carved goggles at all. The rocky island behind is Sumilon, way back when it was still undeveloped and hasn't become the high-end tourist destination it is now. The distant mountains and the white shoreline at left is Oslob, Cebu, where our branch of the Mirasol clan hails from. The characters of course are me and Carina with our two sons, and their cousins and friends. I painted Bahgee into this picture thrice and Kai twice.

The event depicted in this painting happened in 1994, when whale sharks as tourist attraction were still unheard of. The sea behind Sumilon Island became famous as the whale sharks' "picnic zone" beginning 2010. From that time on, Oslob experienced a steady rise in the number of tourists visiting it. The tourists, both local and foreign, arrived in droves to experience for themselves how it was to watch and swim in close proximity with the giant yet gentle fish. I was one of them. 

Below is "The Butanding Eyeball Report", the essay I wrote the day after I went swimming with the whale sharks in 2014:

"Well, it finally happened---my close encounter with the whale sharks or butandings, that is. I am writing in Oslob, Cebu. I and my Papa Nene were in Barangay Tan-awan early yesterday morning. We went straight to the briefing area for the short lecture on the dos and don'ts of whaleshark watching. The briefing was conducted by a girl who looks like only a high schooler to me, but who to my surprise delivered her spiel in straight and correctly-accented English. 

"After paying the 500 pesos snorkeling fee, I was handed my life-vest and was ushered to the boat which will take me to the whale shark watching area about two hundred meters away. I didn't ask for a pair of diving fins because  I brought my own Scubapro Seawing fins with me. Visitors are required to wear life-vests while on the boat, which the competent swimmers can remove when they want to snorkel.

"I wasn't able to take pictures underwater because I don't have an underwater camera. You could rent one, but I chose not to because I find the 500 pesos camera rental rather steep. I don't know about the others, but I also feel short-changed every time I think of the 500 pesos I paid for the mere 30-minutes I spent snorkeling there. That amount of time was too short for a sea freak like me, who can spent hours snorkeling without getting bored. Some whale shark watchers and snorkelers may have felt short-changed, too, especially those who've come all the way from Western Europe, Russia, Korea, and other foreign countries, who are being charged 1000 pesos each. 

"But then again, perhaps, it was only the penny-pincher in me speaking. It's possible that the other snorkelers actually found the snorkeling fee cheap: and if ever they find 30-minutes too short, well, no problem they might say, we'll pay another 500 pesos, or even one thousand, for another 30-minutes of snorkeling time.

"Although I was only about two hundred meters away from shore, I can see that I was in deep waters. It was at least 20 feet deep there. I saw in the area where I snorkeled at least four different butandings. There are others circling the other boats. The butandings looked juvenile, because they are just about 10 feet in length. Big Mama, who's said to be as big as a bus, and who is probably the matriarch of this group of whale sharks, wasn't in sight. 

"The butandings are gentle all right. They didn't mind the snorkelers swarming about and only focused on eating the baby shrimps (uyap) provided them.

"Brief though it may be, my close encounter with those would-be leviathans was an unforgettable experience all in all for a sea freak, to whom the experience of seeing even tiny aquarium fishes in their natural habitat is already worth the hours spent at sea.

CEBU CITY AT NIGHT, MANILA AT SUNRISE

(Photo shows the port of Manila at sunrise as seen from our approaching ship,)

My failure to take pictures of the city myself when our ship approached the Port of Cebu around 10 pm of March 22 was very disappointing. My cellphone needed to be recharged by then, but all the charging stations on the ship were full with passengers charging theirs. 

There are several photos of Cebu City on the internet, both during daytime and at night. Although they are perfect in every way, still, the awesomeness of the sight of the Cebu City coastline at night as seen by my eyes  wasn't quite captured. Missing in those night time photos are the hills of the city aglow with the lights from the numerous towers and condominium buildings that dot those hills. 

I, a native Manileño, was amazed. I never knew that Cebu City is now that modern and prosperous. It is Manila, Makati, and Baguio all rolled into one. But more amazed, I'm sure was my cycling buddy, Isko Dela Cruz, a 'genuine batang Hagonoy', who could only uttered the words, "Talaga palang progresibo ang Cebu." Isko, a 'super cyclist', brought his bicycle with him, and just rode it from Oslob to Cebu City on his trip home---a  distance of around 118  kilometers. That was to better explore perhaps the island and savor the city that had so dazzled him. 

On our return home, our ship arrived in Manila this time at daybreak. I last saw the port of Manila on board a ship in 2002. It wasn't at sunrise though. Maybe it was around late afternoon. 2002 to the present is a pretty long time. Sixteen years to be exact. Manila's skyline had undergone change. Where only low-rise buildings had stood before at the Tondo and San Nicolas areas---now, clusters of towers or high-rise condominiums can be seen beyond Manila's North Harbor. 

Those towers were a most telling counterpoint to the charmingly quaint art deco buildings of pre-war Manila. Escolta, Avenida Rizal, and Quezon Boulevard, are dotted with those buildings---reasons why, and witnesses to a time when Manila was being bragged about as the Paris of the Orient. Those art deco buildings are jewels that other Philippine cities don't have. They are reminders of Manila's storied past as the Philippines' premier city.

The North Harbor, among all ports I've been to, is dearest to me. Our first  house was just two streets away from the piers. My father and other Oslobanon relatives often took me to the piers on their way to the ships and boats where they worked. I was fascinated by the place, especially.by the ships docked there, all abuzz with stevedores scurrying on wooden gangplanks carrying loads. But I was scared too. I can't help but feel anxious everytime a forklift with oversized two-prong lifting-fork approached.

North Harbor is now called.North Port. No mere cosmetic change, because things had drastically changed since last I was there. Everything seemed streamlined. Check-in procedures now resemble those being implemented at the airports---with all the x-rays, cameras, and security personnel being put to use. There was a time long ago when just about anyone can enter piers and board ships even without boarding passes. They just posed as companions of ship passengers. Vendors and even stow-aways can climb ships at will then. Nowadays, anyone who has no business in the place can no longer enter and linger inside the pier compound. Which is good.

A friend who was with us in Cebu remarked that Cebu City is not pretty. He was commenting on the Plaza Independencia area---just outside Cebu City's equivalent of the Manila North Harbor---and Colon Street. Well, Plaza Independencia and its vicinity is 'Old Cebu', where the city's historic sites are, while Colon Street is recognized as the country's oldest street, comparable in its ambience to Rizal Avenue in Sta. Cruz, Manila. Not being uptowns, one should expect to see there outmoded structures grimy with age and sometimes neglect. If one wants the modernity and antiseptic neatness of Ayala and Ortigas Centers, Cebu City's Business Park is the place to go to.  

It was way off the mark therefore to describe Cebu's​ old port area as not pretty, especially when compared to what would greet ship passengers when they go out the gates of Manila's North Port. They'll be appalled I'm sure by the not-so-pretty dwellings that lined the road in front of the port up to this day. Even though the houses are concrete all right with many having three storeys or more, still, I don't consider them pretty. 

But there had been an improvement of sorts. Years back, there used to be a street just across North Harbor. That was Mabuhay Street. The block of houses on the western side of Mabuhay were all demolished to give way to the widening of Radial Road-10 (R-10). Mabuhay Street is no more. It is today just the easternmost lane of R-10. 

Now, that was truly an improvement because most of the houses demolished were definitely ramshackle. Just barung-barongs or hovels that may or may not be home to petty thieves. Anyway, the land on which these houses previously stood were all government property which the squatters had to vacate sooner or later in the name of progress. 

And that's what motorists driving along R-10 will see: a place bereft of squatters. Because lining the east side of the road are concrete houses that are definitely better looking than the 'barung-barongs' of old. My Tondo, the Tondo I grew up in is still overcrowded. But it is no longer squalid. It is slum no more.

Part Two: My Trip Around the Art World

NUDITY IN ART

(The bottom photo at right of the photo collage shows noted painter Jonahmar Salvosa and his model movie star Myrna Castillo. The other two photos are of myself and my UST Fine Arts classmates at the venue of our nude sketching session.)

There were six of us, UST Fine Arts classmates, who went to Cubao for our first ever nude sketching session---me, Arsenio Isidro Yap, Antonio Tejado, Renato Ricanor, Albino Dancel, and Salvador Diaz Jr. The venue was a cozy bungalow in Cubao, whose foreigner owner was momentarily out of the house. The guy who ushered us in was Tony Tejado's friend. He worked as a boy in the house. I forgot his name, but he was the one who took care of getting the girls who would pose nude for us. 

The girls, aged 14 and 20, were dancers in a nearby cocktail lounge. I don't remember the exact year, but this could be in early 1974, when we were but a bunch of Fine Arts freshmen out to see for ourselves how it was to be face to face with girls willing to pose naked for us. Life sketching classes weren't offered to freshmen. We have to wait one or two years more before we can enroll in that class. That's why one of us---I don't remember who---came up with that bright idea of holding our own 'extra-curricular nude sketching class'. The sketching session didn't turned out well, because not one among us came out with a finished sketch. We were either truly still sketching neophytes, or were just plain awestruck by the beauties before us.

A female artist once remarked that she pities women nude models. For her, disrobing for a living, even before artists, is shameful. That would be true in many cases. The models we had who worked as bar dancers, especially the fourteen year old girl, were surely among the pathetic ones. But there are the lucky ones also, who earn big money for a job that would take just a few hours to accomplish. An artist friend, Frank Cruzet, who lives in Canada, even claimed that nude models there are a pampered lot. They are fetched  from their homes in a car, are made to pose nude for only a few hours, and then brought home again in the same car, with several hundred, or even a thousand, dollars in their pockets. Filipino artists, of course, cannot match the fees being paid by their Canadian counterparts, but I'm sure they are substantial enough,

Misconceptions abound about what goes on behind closed doors between artists and their nude models. I assure you that most of them are not true, especially if the sketching is being done by a group. When artists sit in front of their easels, their concerns are narrowed down to a single all-encompassing objective, which is to translate into lines and colors the naked form they see before them. Libido issues are set aside. The only thing that matters is how to come out with a sketch that would compare favorably with those done by their fellows.

But artists are humans too, and aberrations do occur. If the session is one-on-one, romantic ideas may come up. There was the well-publicized case of a painter who, overly aroused by the sight of his pubescent girl model, set aside his sketching materials and proceeded instead to molest her. He was jailed for it---a not very positive outcome I would say for a painter who would have made his mark in the Philippine art scene had he not allowed his nether lascivious side to dominate him.

But that only prove that character is destiny, because this painter once took pride in styling himself as the 'Father of Philippine Erotic Art'. Living up to that tag, this painter had the temerity one time to gift himself with a kinky cake during one of his birthday celebrations. This cake was adorned by a single lighted candle in the shape of a prick, which two rather reluctant children were prodded to blow.

That's not all. He also cooked up the idea of holding nude sketching sessions in a restaurant in Makati. This brought him into trouble with the alert citizens of the city. After receiving complaints from the moral guardians and church people, then Makati Mayor Nemesio Yabut put his foot down, and ordered the 'immoral activity' stopped. The said painter disregarded an unwritten rule which disallows kibitzers or onlookers in a room where a nude sketching session is taking place. That's the reason why I found it difficult to agree to suggestions by former classmates who are not painters, that we hold a nude sketching session with me as the only sketching artist. 

I also remember a story where a famous painter once talked to a female painter---a new recruit to their art group--- who refused or was hesitant to sketch, because she was not yet confident of her sketching skills. He said that in their group, women can only do two things- they can either draw, or pose nude. The lady painter of course chose draw, and today, she is one of the revered masters of the female form in the Philippine art scene. 

Painters are celebrities all right. Many of them became famous for their paintings of female nudes. Botticelli, Titian, Francisco de Goya, and Edouard Manet, were prime examples. But the models for their paintings, who would have died unheard and unsung if they haven't posed nude, became famous too. Who would have remembered Simonetta Vespucci, the Duchess of Urbino, the Duchess of Alba, and Victorine Meurent, if they haven't modeled for the paintings "The Birth of Venus", "Venus of Urbino", "La Maja Desnuda", and "Olympia" respectively?  There was also Gabrielle, or Ga, who worked as a bonne (maid) in the Renoir household. She was Pierre-Auguste Renoir's model for many of his paintings of  overly voluptuous female nudes.

Why am I saying these? Well, I just want to further propagate the notion that nude modeling could be a respectable profession. No reason to be embarrassed by it. Celebrities have posed in the nude. There are two that easily came to mind. I saw in FHM Magazine the feature on erstwhile Pu3Ska vocalist Myra Ruaro (a.k.a. Skarlet), who posed nude for a group of painters. Another one was Myrna Castillo. I don't know if you remember that 1980s sexy star---but I first became aware of her when I read in a movie magazine an item about her posing nude for painter Jonahmar Salvosa. Myrna and Jonahmar were just starting then. That nude sketching session was the first in their series of stepping-stones to fame. Myrna Castillo's star may have dimmed for good, but many I'm sure could still recall the name. Especially Jonahmar, who is still at it, creating sketches that would confirm his status as one of the Philippines' finest painters of female nudes.

GREATEST FILIPINO PAINTER ON MY LIST

I and my close buddies from the UST College of Architecture and Fine Arts first saw Carlos Botong Francisco's masterpiece, "History of Manila", in 1974. There were four us---myself, Jun Diaz, Rene Ricanor, and Tony Tejado---who trooped  to the Manila City Hall one morning expressly to see the masterpiece displayed at the Bulwagang Katipunan, the anteroom of the Mayor's office. 

But we didn't stay there long. We can't, because in the hall were employees busy working. We feel that we'll be interfering with their work if we prolong our stay there. So, we contented ourselves with just casting cursory glances at each painting panel from afar because the panels were arranged at the upper half of the high walls. We were hesitant to go nearer the walls because we might disturb the employees' whose desks were lined up along them, so we just stood by the door from where we can't see the paintings clearly. That visit to the Manila City Hall to view Botong's masterpiece was a disappointment.

That's why I was overjoyed when I learned last year that that monumental work was installed and can already be viewed at the National Museum of Fine Arts. I and my fellow artists and cyclists Henry Braulio and Francisco Dela Cruz hastened there on our bikes to see it. We weren't disappointed, because the paintings were positioned low, almost flushed to the floor, where we can gazed at and study them closely. Taking photos of the artworks are also allowed provided that no flash is use.

"The History of Manila" (now titled "Filipino Struggles Through History") was commissioned by then Manila Mayor Gatpuno Antonio Villegas in 1968. It was completed by Botong just before he died in 1969, at the age of 57. 

In 2012, during the term of Mayor Alfredo Lim, it was discovered that the artworks were deteriorating due to the leaking pipes from the upper floor. After receiving funding from the Department of Tourism, Mayor Lim sent the paintings to the National Museum for restoration. And there they stayed. 

It was former Mayor Erap Estrada and the then Manila City Council who signed the agreement authorizing the loan of the paintings to the National Museum. That was a generous and patriotic move, because that masterpiece by Botong, which was declared a National Cultural Treasure in 1996, can now be viewed to their hearts content, not only by Filipinos but foreign tourists as well, all year round and free of charge. 

If Paris has its Louvre, Madrid its Prado, London its Tate, Florence it's Uffizi, and New York it's Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manila has its National Museum of Fine Arts---a museum we all could be proud of, the repository and showcase of the artistic talent of our nation's sons and daughters.

I also learned lately that the four large-scale paintings by Botong displayed at the main foyer of the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) were also loaned by the University of the Philippines to the National Museum, where they will be more appreciated. 

I've seen those paintings, collectively titled "The Progress of Medicine in the Philippines", up close at the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) when I went there for an eye check-up. Two painting panels were placed on each wall of the foyer facing each other. There were benches and chairs lined up along those walls. While sitting there with my wife Carina, I observed that I was the only person eyeing and keenly interested in those paintings. All the others were oblivious of those masterpieces, occupied perhaps with thoughts of their ailments and other mundane matters, or perhaps just plain ignorant of the significance of the  cultural treasures behind them. Anyway, those four Botong paintings from the PGH now on view at the National Museum are definitely worth another visit.

I mentioned in one of my writings that I ranked Botong first on my list of great Filipino painters, with Amorsolo coming in a close second. I still hold that opinion to this day. I've seen a lot of original Botong paintings and photographs of them that I supposed I can distinguish the fake ones done by painters with mediocre skills  from the authentic. And I've seen two examples of what I suspect are fake Botong sketches posted in Facebook years ago. The amateurishness of whoever painted them are so evident that I dismissed them outright as probable fakes.

The late great art critic Leonidas Benesa, in a review he wrote in 1979, said it best: 

"Botong would probably be the most difficult to fake or mimic in paint. Beside the works of the Angono master, those of his followers look awkward in figuration, or garish in coloration. His watercolors were done spontaneously, and where the brush hesitates, or stops in places, resumes, stops again, etc., you have some reason to wonder whether or not the work is authentic."

But people change. Those amateurish forgers might have improved a lot, or perhaps painters who are better skilled from the start might have joined that lucrative racket. There could be fake Botongs hidden in some collection somewhere painted by forgers of exceptional skill which can avoid detection. "Caveat emptor", therefore. Buyers beware!

Essay 3. MY SURREALIST EVOLUTION

(The black and white photos show the original members of the UST surrealist group. The founder of the group, Professor Glory Crumb-Rogers, is the mestiza wearing a striped vest. The colored images were a few samples of my surrealist paintings from 1981 to 2005)

In 1974, news about a surrealist group being formed spread in the atelier of the University of Santo Tomas College of Architecture and Fine Arts (USTCAFA). Spearheading the organizing effort was Instructor Glory Crumb-Rogers. The group she formed then held a series of art exhibits. Titled "Message of a Surrealist", those shows were the first concerted thrusts to popularize surrealism in the Philippines.

The exhibiting artists were mostly students, and among the names I remember as founding members of that group were Robert Villanueva, Ricardo Laxamana, Edwin Diamante, Aton Roxas, Crispin Villafria, jr., Merit Evangelista, Jacinto Titus Cura, and Salvador Jun Diaz. Aside from Glory Crumb-Rogers, another instructor who was an active participant in the surrealist exhibits was Roda Recto. There were others who joined the group later - like Bobby Romero, who remains a staunch adherent of surrealism to this day.

An invitation for the opening of their first exhibit was shared with me by Jun Diaz, and while reading it, I discovered that I missed listing among the founding members four names: Raquel Lazaro, Ramon Agapay, Daro Galvan, and Lito Mayo. The event, held at the lobby of the UST Main Building, ran from January 20 to 29, 1975.

These USTCAFA surrealists appeared in the Philippine art scene years after Galo Ocampo painted "Nuclear Ecce Homo", which, according to an article I've read decades ago, was considered to be the first Filipino surrealist painting. The most celebrated member of that group was Robert Villanueva, who later on, in the guise of an Igorot shaman, made his mark as a conceptual and installation artist. His 1989 installation, "Archetypes: Cordillera Labyrinth", installed on the Cultural Center of the Philippines grounds earned him wide critical acclaim.

My earliest memory of Villanueva was of him doing a painting of a man which looked to me like the crucified Christ. My memory of that painting is already hazy, but I remember seeing there a string with a carpenter's plumb bob at its end hanging from one arm of what I vaguely remember as a cross. The cross is planted on barren soil that stretches to infinity, very much similar to the landscapes that Salvador Dali loved to paint. 

My close buddy Jun Diaz, suggested that we join the surrealist group. Jun joined together with another classmate, Aton Roxas. I didn't. 

A precocious boy, Roxas was already deep into surrealism even while we were only college sophomores. While we his painting neophyte classmates are still groping for a style, Aton was already painting large-scale surrealist works strongly reminiscent of the works of Dali, Magritte, and Miro.

One reason I avoided joining the surrealist group was because I was not yet hooked on surrealism then. The paintings I admired most at that time were those of Michelangelo and Botong Francisco. Although Villanueva's painting of the crucified Christ amazed me no end, it was to Lito Balagtas' Botong-inspired Angono genres that I gravitated.

Another reason was this: surrealism was formerly anathema to me. I first learned of surrealism in 1970. That was after the Bolivian painter Benjamin Mendoza attempted to kill Pope Paul VI with a knife during a Papal visit here. Interviewed years later, Mendoza said that his true motive was just to gain attention, which he definitely got. If not for that one act that earned him global notoriety, Mendoza would have remained obscure, a surrealist painter known only in his home country. 

A painting by Mendoza I still remember to this day depicts a skewered naked woman intertwined with a snake being roasted. That painting was repulsive to me then, it still is repulsive to me now.

It was only in 1981, when I saw in a book Salvador Dali's painting "Sea-Shade-Dog", that surrealism caught my fancy. I never thought that a surrealist painting can be that charming. The painting depicts a naked girl lifting the edge of a blanket that doubles as the sea, and underneath which lies a sleeping dog. I was so enthralled by that painting that I decided, right then and there, to become a surrealist. 

I wanted to buy the book, but I didn't have enough money that day. When I returned weeks later to buy the book, it was no longer there. In its stead was a thicker more expensive book costing around 500 pesos, which was a lot of money in 1981. Luckily, I have more than enough money that time to buy that thicker Dali book. That book, "The World of Salvador Dali" by Robert Descharnes, became my painting bible of sorts throughout the 1980s. 

Surrealism is a no-holds-barred style that flaunts it's irreverence and smashes icons left and right, a style that suits both the angry and the libidinous young men just fine. I thus find it useful in depicting not only my fantasies but also my political advocacy as well. 

I'm admitting now that all of my supposedly surrealist paintings weren't strictly surrealist, because for a painting to be considered as such, it shouldn't be the product of a conscious creative process. That is, true surrealist artworks should be woven in the subconscious---in  dreams---and created by chance and other 'automatist' and non-deliberate art-making processes.

My paintings from that period were nothing of the sort. Nothing accidental or dream-induced was involved in their creation. My paintings from 1980 to 1990 belong more to the social realist movement with their angry tone and overt proletarian slant. But I did used surrealist iconography in heaps. Images of levitating bodies, mutating forms, and incongruously juxtaposed objects were staples of my art then.

When I returned to serious painting in 2002, I still managed to come up with a painting that is social realist in tone and surrealist in imagery. That painting, "Happy Man", is a portrait of an obese man. Supposedly a corrupt bureaucrat attired in barong Tagalog, the man is depicted with his head zipped open exposing a brain that is nothing more than a clump of naked women. He holds a rooster in his massive hands to symbolize his other vice, gambling. Although also a commentary on social issues, Happy Man is already watered-down social realism. The anger is no longer there. 

It was in 2008 when a change, in both theme, form, and technique occurred in my art. That was the time when I eschewed political themes altogether and just focused mostly on depicting myths, musicians, and the fantasies which any healthy male would indulge in from time to time. I've lost my appetite for engaging in political discourse via my paintings, choosing instead to tackle themes that are inoffensive and likeable to most.

The present day social realists and their hardcore counterparts of the 1980s may accuse me of selling out, of chucking off the ideals of protest art for more personal or worldly concerns---like one's libido for example. My answer to that is, that's true. But who cares? It's more fun to be naughty from time to time than to be angry forever anyway.

As painter Monnar Baldemor said: "Ganyan dapat mga artist. Kailangan flexible ka. Hindi puro angst. Meron din naman tayong lighter side." (Artists should be like that. You should be flexible. Not all angst. We also have our lighter side.)

We'll said, Monnar.

MY FIFTEEN MINUTES OF FAME

Wikipedia describes 15 minutes of fame as a "...short-lived media publicity or celebrity of an individual or phenomenon. The expression was inspired by Andy Warhol's words 'In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes', which appeared in the program for a 1968 exhibition of his work at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden. Photographer Nat Finkelstein claimed credit for the expression, stating that he was photographing Warhol in 1966 for a proposed book. A crowd gathered trying to get into the pictures and Warhol supposedly remarked that everyone wants to be famous, to which Finkelstein replied, 'yeah, for about fifteen minutes, Andy.'

Well, I got to taste that proverbial fifteen minutes of fame on September 5, 1984, during the awarding ceremony of the First Metrobank Annual Painting Competition. My entry to the competition, "Hungry Child Dissected", won one of the three Best Entry Awards.

The other two Best Entry winners were the paintings "August 6" by Roberto Feleo and "Mga Batang Pag-asa" by Joel Marayag Ferrer. The competition format then did away with the usual First, Second, and Third Prizes. All of us three Best Entry winners received ten thousand pesos and a medal each.

Ten thousand pesos may look measly compare to the more than two-hundred thousand pesos being awarded these days to the first prize winners. But to the aspiring young painters of the nineteen-eighties, that was a lot of money, perhaps equivalent now to a hundred thousand pesos more or less. By the way, the ten thousand pesos prize money we received were not purchase prizes. We winners retained ownership of our prize-winning works.

The competition format also called for another round of competition among us three Best Entry winners to determine the recipient of the Grand Prize---an educational scholarship worth twenty-thousand pesos. We three were asked to submit another five paintings each for judging. 

There was a tie. Feleo and I both got the judges nod. The twenty-thousand pesos educational scholarship was split between me and Feleo. But I never availed of it because I've decided that I had enough of schooling already. I got married too less than seven months later,  pushing me to put a priority on getting a job. What I availed of was the thirty thousand pesos-exhibit grant Metrobank gives each major-prize winners which I used to cover the expenses in my 2007 solo art exhibit at the Crucible Gallery.

I had difficulty choosing which of the two paintings I considered as my best at that time to enter in the competition. Aside from Hungry Child Dissected, I also considered "Lupa" as my entry. Close friends I consulted chose Lupa (Land), but I decided on Hungry Child because I saw it as more innovative. Lupa was painted rather conservatively. The technique I used in that work followed closely the classical realist way of crafting a painting

Hungry Child Dissected was part of a series of paintings I did where I began experimenting with new composition formats, painting techniques, and materials. There were lots of straight lines in those paintings, and materials like ink, silver tempera, acrylic, and modeling paste were used freely. Magazine cut-outs and photographs were also incorporated into the paintings as collages. The most telling innovation, however, was my use of real fish-bones as collage material.

After the triumph of Hungry Child Dissected, other painters were inspired to also glue fishbones onto their paintings, including another Metrobank Best Entry winner, the late Lito Lopez, who was a fellow fine arts student at the University of the East (UE). Lopez won in the second edition of the competition in 1985. His fellow winners were the late Gabriel Barredo and Michael Tan

I bid goodbye to Hungry Child Dissected just a few years ago. That's because after keeping it in my possession for 15 years, and in the Metrobank Foundation office for another 11 years, I've finally decided to let it go. After pulling it out from Metrobank, I offered Hungry Child to a UE Fine Arts schoolmate, Elvira "Vheng" Gonzaga, who didn't hesitate to buy it. This was her third purchase from me. Veng had already bought two of my paintings--- "Supremacy of Eve" and "Music is a Magic Carpet". 

Vheng is among my several UE friends who made good in life. She tops my list of successful Fine Arts friends because painters like me hold art collectors in high-esteem.

Art collectors decide the fate of artists. They get to choose which artist will flourish and which artist will starve. Since we owe them our living, art collectors are like gods to us. I thank God therefore for art collectors.

I also thank the Metrobank Foundation for giving me and other young artists the chance to shine. That fame I basked in three decades ago may have lasted for only fifteen minutes, but I sure will remember it for one or two decades more.

POLITICAL CARTOONING IN THE TIME OF COUPS

 

My first dream job was to be an editorial or political cartoonist. After leaving fine arts school---without graduating I must add---I applied for that job at the Bulletin Today. That was in January 1978,  when it's editor-in-chief was Ben Rodriguez, and Marcos was at the height of his power as ruler of an authoritarian regime. The relatively recent news stories then were the ascension of Menachem Begin to the Premiership of Israel and the capture of Communist Party of the Philippines Chairman Joma Sison. I chose therefore to draw cartoons that dealt with those two events.

The first cartoon showed Menachem Begin in the guise of Jesus Christ astride a donkey entering Jerusalem to the acclaim of a hosanna-chanting populace. The other showed Marcos as an angler catching with his rod and line a big fish with the face of Joma Sison. Mr. Rodriguez creased his forehead upon seeing the Marcos cartoon. I don't remember his exact words, but he said something to the effect that I shouldn't draw pictures of the President that would put him in a funny light. I seemed to remember him adding that it was dangerous.

I understood. I didn't take that against him. I in fact gained a lesson, an insight, from his advice. I realized that doing editorial cartoons entails some risks too, especially under a dictatorship. 

I finally landed that job in 1981 when I was hired by Gus Villanueva, editor-in-chief of People's Journal Tonight, to be their editorial cartoonist. Although the pay wasn't lucrative, being on a per piece basis only, I supposed I can say that my stay there had been worth my while. What a thrill it had been for me to see my cartoons appearing daily in a newspaper. 

I worked at the People's Journal for just less than a year. I returned to art school, got married, and worked as gallery assistant. I went back to editorial cartooning in 1987. I applied for and got that job in Joe Burgos' We Forum Publications. Joe Burgos was the founder of Ang Pahayagang Malaya, one of the two courageous mainstream newspapers that dared criticized the establishment during Marcos' time. The other one was the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Those two newspapers played a crucial role in hastening Marcos' eventual downfall.

Although Malaya did extremely well, Joe decided to sell it, for a very good price I was told, which enabled him to buy a big farm in San Miguel, Bulacan. Before founding Ang Pahayagang Malaya, a broadsheet, Joe used to published a tabloid, the We Forum, which before the coming of Malaya and the Inquirer was the sole newspaper critical of Marcos. The We Forum was, to borrow Shakespeare's words, little but fierce. The first news about Marcos' wartime medals being fake came out on We Forum. Joe Burgos tasted prison for publishing that.

I joined We Forum in 1987. By this time, We Forum Publications had grown into a group of tabloids all owned by Joe, like We Forum, Ang Bagong Masa, and an evening edition newspaper whose name I forgot. I drew all the editorial and spot cartoons for these newspapers. I also moonlighted later on, for extra income, as a free lance editorial cartoonist for the People's Journal.

Cory Aquino had assumed the presidency then. Her rule was shaky from the start being challenged time and again by coup plotters envious of a 'mere housewife' acquiring power. There was a total of seven coup attempts if I counted right, one by the Marcos Loyalists led by Col. Rolly Cabauatan, and the two nearly successful ones by RAM (Reform the Armed Forces Movement) led by Col. Gringo Honasan. The other coup attempts were negligible. They were quashed before they become serious threats.

I and the editorial staff of We Forum were on the third floor of the We Forum building along Aurora Boulevard while Honasan's forces were in action. We were at the window watching as a World War two-era plane made a u-turn up in the sky to get itself into position to attack Malacañang once again with machine guns, or perhaps, with the missiles it might have had at its disposal. We were greatly relieved when the coup fizzled out the next day, because we knew that once the right-leaning military renegades won, newspapers like ours which were left-of-center would surely be padlocked and their staff arrested.

The second Honasan coup happened in 1989.  It lasted longer and could have succeeded had not the Americans demonstrated on which side they're on. It was reported that a USAF fighter jet buzzed the putschists' vintage plane, forcing it to withdraw from battle. I can believe that because I actually heard outside our house in Tondo the fighter jet's sonic boom. 

That coup scared me. I was jittery all the time the coup was in progress and was preparing to burn all the anti-RAM cartoons I kept at home. The coup attempt eventually collapsed, and needless to say, I again was greatly relieved.

I wrote in an earlier essay that doing illustrations for a picture book wasn't a breeze. Well, doing editorial cartoons wasn't a breeze for me either. I, in fact, found it more difficult. It was tough trying to come up with an editorial cartoon idea that should be both witty and humorous. 

I start work at the newspaper office around 5 pm, and I usually finish drawing all the cartoons needed around 3 am. I suffered in between those hours. Cartoon ideas didn't come easy most of the time, that I frequently find myself walking, at around 1 am, along the sidewalk of Aurora Boulevard, from our office a few blocks away from Katipunan Avenue up to the Quezon City Medical Center and back in hopes of jumpstarting that flash of inspiration. 

That routine worked, but not always. Those kind of working hours must have turned me into the nocturnal creature I am today, whose energy peaks and who works best during nighttime.

That time in our nation's life, the Cory era, was very tumultuous. It wasn't because of her own doing. The tumult was caused rather by the violent machinations of the failed coup plotters against Marcos who found the prize they covet taken away from them by the people and handed over to Cory. But that very tumult was the juicy source of ideas for the political cartoonists who were provided plenty of targets for their almost always adversarial and satirical drawings. 

No wonder that we saw gathered in that period a great number of high-calibered political cartoonists who later on made big names for themselves in the Philippine art scene as serious painters and in the international scene as well as world class cartoonists. Names like Jose Tence Ruiz, Pinggot Zulueta, Dengcoy Miel, Noel Ariola Rosales, Benjo Laygo, Edwin Agawin, Dante Perez, Ludwig Ilio, Benjie Lontoc, Net Billones, Neil Doloricon, Jess Abrera, and Willy Aguino shall forever be etched in the annals of political cartooning in the Philippines as the luminaries of its golden age.

BOOK ILLUSTRATOR DAYS

I am addicted to books. Books on sundry topics fascinate me. I collect novels, biographies, books on art and history, and of essays, short stories, and poetry. I also have a big number of local and imported picture books.

I won't forget my excitement everytime I entered the kindergarten library of the Holy Child Catholic school. Periodical exams for the 'selected students' were almost always held there. Selected students were the top ranking students from each section who were given the exams ahead of the other students. I belong to that group. Taking the exams there suited me fine for it gave me the chance to read the books of fairy tales, the Ladybird series especially, arranged on the shelves.

It was in 1988, while I was still working as editorial cartoonist for the We Forum Publications, that a fellow employee there, Malou Dela Cruz, suggested that I applied as textbook illustrator at Phoenix Publishing House. She said that she knew Adring Natividad, the assistant art Director of Phoenix. So, I went to Phoenix a few days after,  with a few samples of my cartoons, introduced myself to Adring, and took the talent test which I passed.

The books I was assigned to illustrate were for grade schoolers.The Illustrations required were just line drawings using pen and ink. I levelled up and did full color Illustrations for them six years later, in 1994, when I was commissioned to do a series of cover art for "Florante at Laura" and their Pagbasa (Reading) textbooks. 

Although doing a dozen or two line drawings a day could be tedious at times, I'd say that I was contented. I earned more doing that than doing editorial cartoons, around twice the daily minimum wage at the time. Because I was being paid per piece, the more time and industry I put into the job, the higher the pay I would get.

My pay as book illustrator paled in comparison to that being earned by my former classmates who worked in animation, which could amount to 20 thousand pesos a week. Despite that, I never regretted working as book illustrator because that job enabled me anyway to put food on our table, sent my boys to school, and still have a little extra besides for little luxuries. By little luxuries, I mean being able to watch movies once in a while, eat out at restaurants, take my kids to swimming pools, buy toys and snorkeling gear, and enlarge my collection of books among others. Add also to that the intangible bliss I experienced everytime I see my artworks published. While I only used to admire the art of others in books before, my being a book illustrator gave me the chance to present my art for others to admire.

The fellow textbook illustrators I worked with who I felt was the best in our field were Leo Cultura, Danny Reyes, and Marco Calambro. Leo Cultura is still at it, I think, doing  llustrations for American educational book publishers. He is very successful, combining in himself not only a marked talent for drawing characters in his own distinctive style, but also a knack for business. He was entrepreneurial. He had formed a company in the mid-1990s, the Raketshop, which had to employ several illustrators to meet the brisk demand for his illustrations by those American publishers.

Danny Reyes, who I heard succumbed to diabetes many years ago, was the darling of local textbook publishers who competed for his services. They saw in his cartoony children and other characters the style that suits best the taste of grade school pupils and their parents. 

And then there was Marco Calambro, the guy whose drawings I admired the most. An adept realistic illustrator, he was always assigned the job of illustrating high school textbooks. I learned a lot from him. He gave me insights into his drawing methods. His drawings, especially of the human figures, were on a par with those done by Fernando Amorsolo early in the latter's career as book illustrator. 

I wonder where Marco is now. I can't find him. He is not in facebook. I asked Eddie Yabut, former Editor-in-chief and now consultant of Bookmark, on how Marco is doing. Eddie said he has no news of him. Marco was no longer doing Illustrations for them.

The series of cover art I did for Phoenix Publishing was a landmark in my career as professional artist. I began to employ and develop in those cover Illustrations the sharp-focused realist technique that would be my trademark style when I went on later to illustrate picture books. 

When I visited picture book publishers to apply as illustrator, those Phoenix cover Illustrations formed part of the portfolio I showed them. The publishing houses for which I illustrated picture books were Rex Printing and Tahanan Books for Young Readers. I also did the cover and inside Illustrations for a novel for Adarna House and for a book on Economics for Bookmark. I even illustrated a Cebuano picture book commissioned me by a Finnish English teacher whose wife, the author of the book, is from Bohol.

I thought that the Cebuano picture book was to be my last. I did that in 2008, when I was 52 years old. I devoted the years after that to painting, hoping to make a name for myself as a serious painter. I was wrong, because I was asked late last year by Bookmark to illustrate a picture book for them. I was quite reluctant at first to take on the project, knowing the long nights and intense effort such a project would require. 

But when I learned what the book is all about and the images I need to paint, I accepted the offer with enthusiasm. The Illustrations shall be depictions of pre-war Malabon and the people living there at the time. So now, at age 64, when I thought I'm through with children's books, I am hard at work again doing the Illustrations for one in between finishing commissioned works.

But don't think I'm complaining. I'm not. Why should I when my passion for books and art hasn't been extinguished yet.

GOURMET TAMALES

I love tamales. It was my mother who introduced it to me. I didn’t like it the first time I tasted it. But the next time she brought home another one, I began to acquire a liking for it. 

Mama Ninay bought me the tamales many decades ago, when I was still in  grade school,  from a vendor selling tamales, suman, and kesong-puti outside the Sto. Niño church in Tondo. They are still being sold there every Sunday morning. My wife Carina knows my craving for tamales, that’s why she makes it a point to buy me those whenever she has the chance.

Carina asked the vendor where the tamales she's selling came from. The vendor answered Bulacan. I was a bit surprised because I thought all along that her tamales was from Pampanga, from where I knew that delicacy originated, and where they called it bobotu. 

The tamales Carina buys nowadays seems thinner than those being sold just so many years ago. But no matter, the taste remains the same. They still taste good to me. That's why I haven't lost my craving for it.

Imagine my excitement therefore when one day in 1996 publisher Reni Roxas of Tahanan Books broke to me the news that they chose me to illustrate Didith Tan-Rodrigo’s book “Tamales Day”. The job entailed not only doing the illustrations, but also visiting Didith’s house to take pictures of her family while making tamales, and of course, tasting it and taking home a few pieces more.

Here is an excerpt from the essay I wrote for Tahanan Books’ “The House Tahanan Built”--a compilation of memoirs and conversations about the creative process written by the authors, artists, staff, and friends of Tahanan Books.

“…I next did for Tahanan the illustrations for Didith Tan-Rodrigo‘s story “Tamales Day”. Now, the process of creating art for this book was a very delectable one, I must say, because I was invited by Didith to their home to observe and take pictures of them while making tamales. 

“Their tamales is not like the Mexican tamales ---far from it. Nor is it the ordinary Kapampangan tamales. Their recipe is their own high-end version, which I once described in a Facebook write-up as gourmet tamales. “Why gourmet?”, you’d ask. Well, that’s because their recipe includes as ingredients---aside from the usual strips of chicken and salted eggs---peanuts, ham, chestnuts, and shrimps.

“Didith told me that someone suggested once that they make a business of their recipe and offer franchises. They considered that suggestion but didn’t act on it. They somehow felt that the business won’t be feasible because pricing their product would be tricky, precisely because of the high cost of the ingredients. That’s why I felt lucky then, and special, because I get to taste the tamales that had been denied many others.”

Didith, by the way, is a daughter of Ambassador Bienvenido Tan, the founder of Bookmark. And Tamales Day is a day in December when the Tan family gathers to cook tamales, using a heirloom recipe handed down by Didith’s Kapampangan grandmother.

NOMA

Noma here refers to the Noma Concours for Picture Book Illustrations. It was a competition mainly held every two years whose aim was to discover up-and-coming picture book illustrators in Asia, Oceania, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

The prize was named after Shoichi Noma,  fourth president of the Japanese family-run publishing house Kodansha Ltd., whose generous financial support enabled the competition to last for thirty years---from 1978 to 2008.

The Noma Concours was a big thing for us picture book illustrators. Landing in its list of winners was our biggest aspiration then not only because of the generous prize money, but also because of the bragging rights the prize-winner will feel entitled to. If I remember correctly, the grand prize winner gets 3000 USD, the two second placers 1000 USD each, and the ten runners-up 300 USD each. Those prizes were not purchase prizes. All five Illustrations sent as entries to the competition by each participant, including those of the prize-winners, will be returned.

A woman who was connected to a publication gave me an entry form for the competition. I remember that I was most grateful and thanked her profusely for her gesture, thinking that she did that out of the goodness of her heart and her sincere desire to help me advance my career. 

I was wrong. There was a string attached. She revealed days later what her real intention was. She had written a story which she wanted me to do the Illustrations for. The Illustrations I'll come up with will then be my entry to the Noma Concours. 

She had seen the "The Origin of the Frog", and was most likely impressed by my Illustrations for that book. She was perhaps hoping that the quality of my Illustrations for her story would equal that of the Origin of the Frog. Because if that is so, those Illustrations would have a good chance of landing a prize in the Noma Concours. She believed that if that happened she could perhaps persuade a publisher to publish her story as a picture book 

If you fellow illustrators were in my shoes, what would you do? Would you be willing to again go through long nights for weeks and exert intense effort doing new Illustrations for a book you'll enter in the Noma Concours---or would you just choose the five required Illustrations from what you had on hand and mail the whole package pronto to the Noma office in Tokyo? I of course did the latter, as I know you would too.

Not many Filipino illustrators did well in the Noma Concours. My good friend Ferdinand Doctolero, a consistent prize-winner in major art competitions here and abroad, won one of the two second prizes in the 11th  Noma Concours in 1998---the highest place garnered by a Filipino. I don't know whose artworks won the grand prize in that edition of the competition, but upon seeing Ferdinand's Illustrations I adjudged right away that they were also grand prize material. Ferdinand's entry, his Illustrations for the story written by National Artist for Literature Virgilio Almario---"Sundalong Patpat"--- were not only highly artistic but novel too. You see, all the Illustrations were painted, not on watercolor paper as we illustrators are wont to do, but on wood. 

Another prize-winner in the Noma Concours was the late Albert Gamos, the preeminent picture book illustrator of our time. I learned that he had illustrated more than 28 picture books, published both locally and internationally. He was Honorable Mention in the 1985 Biennial of Illustrations Bratislava, and was nominated to the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Awards the year he died in 2009. 

Albert's Illustrations for "Pandaguan" won a runner-up award in the 8th Noma Concours in 1992, the same award my Illustrations for the Origin of the Frog won eight years later.

Albert had achieved a lot. He had left a big and lasting legacy to us. His death was a big loss not only for the picture book industry but also for those who admired him, including me.  

There are two other Filipinos who also placed in the Noma Concours and were awarded Encouragement Prizes. They are Ruben de Jesus, who won the prize twice, and Frances Alcaraz. There might be other Filipino prize-winners I'm not aware of at this point. I'd appreciate it very much if someone tell me their names.

Still aspiring to win the grand prize, I tried to enter to the competition the illustrations I did in 2008 for Nida Raisanen's Cebuano-English book "Ang Palasyo sa Serena (The Mermaids Castle)". I emailed Noma Concours in 2009 to request that they send me an entry form so that I'll know the new rules if there are any for what I supposed as their 17th competition. The answer I received dismayed me. I was told that the Noma Concours for Picture Book Illustrations "ended its history in 2008." I was two years too late.

I received word on my winning a prize for my entry in the 12th Noma Concours through a letter I received one afternoon The letter said that my Illustrations for the "The Origin of the Frog" won one of the two second prizes. I was naturally very pleased and thrilled, and began listing in my head the items I would buy with the 1000 dollars the prize carried.

But before I could brag to my relatives and friends about my latest achievement, there arrived another letter from Noma. The letter said that they've mixed things up. That what I actually won wasn't second place but just one of the runner-up awards worth 300 dollars. 

Oh what a let-down that was! Anyway, I'm still pleased that I placed in the competition. That was achievement enough for me. But not enough I supposed for me to earn bragging rights like Ferdinand Doctolero.

ENRIQUE DE CEBU

(You can see in the photo-collage above that I was my own model for the Enrique figure on the cover art. I just changed my attire to what was presumably worn during the pre-Hispanic period, drew my face leaner, and added the well-pronounced abs.)

Reni Roxas and Marc Singer's collaborative book, "First Around the Globe: The Story of Enrique", was launch during the symposium held in 1997 at Bookmark's The Filipino Bookstore in the Glorietta Makati. The guest speakers I remember present at the symposium were Carlos Quirino, Cory Quirino, 

Eric de Guia, Carla Pacis, and Rene Villanueva.

Carlos Quirino, a National Artist for Historical Literature, wrote the article which inspired the book. He was a historian and biographer of great note, and was very prolific. He wrote, among others, the biographies of Jose Rizal, Emilio Aguinaldo, Manuel Quezon, Ramon Magsaysay, Eulogio Rodriquez Sr., and Damian Domingo. 

But his having written biographies and histories instead of novels, short stories, essays, and poems gave the 'purists' in the selection committee of the NCCA a reason to question his eligibility for the National Artist Award for Literature. These purists perhaps don't consider history and biography literature. 

So, to get around their reluctance to consider Mr. Quirino for the honor, then President Ramos created another category for the National Artist Award, that of Historical Literature. That was neat, an accurate reading of what Literature really is, because in my opinion any well-written work should be considered Literature. It doesn't matter if it isn't a novel, short story, essay, or poem, but  biography, history, screenplay, graphic novel, or journalism instead.

Mr. Quirino, was 87 years old in 1997, the year the symposium was held. That was also the year he was awarded the National Artist Award. He was on a wheelchair when he arrived at the symposium venue. He died two years later. 

Carla Pacis, a professor at the Dela Salle University, is a prize-winning writer of children's literature. She also later on wrote a novel, "Enrique El Negro"---a work of historical fiction published by Anvil, which narrates in detail what she presumed Enrique's life was as Magellan's slave.

Cory Quirino is a well-known television host, author, and beauty pageant title-holder.  The late Rene Villanueva, on the other hand, focused solely on writing and was very active in the theater, television, and children's literature circles here as their preeminent writer.

What added spice to the symposium was the arrival of Eric de Guia, who came as an Igorot clad only in 'bahag'(loincloth) and an Igorot headgear. Eric is not only a film director but also a performance artist of boundless wit and humor. One of his sons was his collaborator in the performance that day. He followed Eric around with a faux videocam made of rattan on his shoulder and acted as if recording his father's every move.

Eric is popularly known here by his nom de guerre Kidlat Tahimik. He said that he was doing a movie on the life and times of Enrique. Eric confessed that although he'd been working on the movie for many years already it still is a work in progress.

I'm afraid that 23 years after Eric gave his talk at the symposium, that Enrique movie of his is still a work in progress. It's good if it is, because it would be bad if he'd decided to shelve it permanently. I checked Eric's filmography when I learned that he was conferred the National Artist Award for film in 2018, and I didn't see on the list of films he made that movie about Enrique.

That symposium was the first marketing salvo 'fired' by Tahanan Books to stir up interest for the book which made it the success that it was. The book was out of print for a long time, the first edition having sold out fast. Reni and Marc, might have an inkling of the  probability of it doing so. That's maybe the reason why they paid me a fee way beyond the going rate of other publishers here. They paid me thirty-five thousand pesos for the illustrations which took me only a month to complete. That was a princely amount for me then because Rex Printing only paid me fifteen-thousand pesos for "The Origin of the Frog".

A big part of the success of this book was truly due to the superb marketing skill of Reni who also hit upon the brilliant idea of selling a book about a Cebuano historical figure aboard a ship bound for Cebu. My father was on that ship. He recounted that when he heard from the intercom that a book whose illustrator is Arnel Mirasol is being sold onboard he rushed right away to the booth selling the book. My father introduced himself to Reni as the father of the illustrator. Reni smiled and quipped: "Hindi ho maikakaila. Magkamukha kayo (Can't be denied, sir. You look like each other)."

Although I began doing the illustrations for the book "The Origin of the Frog" earlier, it was "First Around the Globe" which got published first in 1997. This book was inspired by an article written by National Artist for Historical Literature Carlos Quirino. Quirino claimed in the article that it was not Magellan, nor Juan Sebastian Elcano, nor any of the surviving crewmen of Magellan's fleet who circumnavigated the world first, but Enrique el Negro.

Enrique was the slave bought by Magellan in Malacca, where Magellan served as soldier.  When Magellan sailed in search of the island, which presumably Enrique had told him to be his native place, he brought him along to serve as interpreter. 

I've read somewhere---most probably from the book on Philippine History written by Gregorio Zaide, or perhaps from the book "Magellan" by Ian Cameron which Reni suggested that I read---that when Magellan and his men landed in Humumu, an uninhabited Island off Samar, he realized that Enrique cannot speak the language of the curious natives who went there to see them. Humumu, now called Homonhon, is just a few miles away from mainland Samar whose inhabitants speak Waray-Waray. The natives must have come from Samar. They must be Waraynons.

They sailed next to Limasawa, an island off Southern Leyte, and then Cebu. There Enrique became useful as interpreter, because Enrique understood and spoke the language of the inhabitants in both places which is Sugbuanon (Cebuano). This book proposes the theory that Enrique could be a Cebuano because he spoke Sugbuanon. He couldn't be a member of the other tribes in the Visayas, and more so of farther Malacca, because the inhabitants of the different islands there have distinct languages of their own which are generally unintelligible to others, like Waraynon, Sugbuanon, and Hiligaynon, among others. 

Since we have established that Enrique was most probably a Cebuano, it's more accurate to consider him as the first circumnavigator of the world. Consider this: Enrique was bought by Magellan in Malacca (now called Melaka in Malaysia), from which both master and slave sailed back home westward to Portugal and Spain. In trying to return to where Enrique came from, Magellan didn't sail back eastward but pushed on west beyond South America to Cebu, where he was killed. 

Magellan may have set foot in Malacca before coming to Cebu, but there was a gap he hadn't traversed before he died---the distance between the longitudes of Malacca and Cebu. If Magellan was killed in Malacca instead of in Cebu he can be said to have accomplished his circumnavigation of the globe.

I've learned lately that according to National Artist for Historical Literature Carlos Quirino, Magellan may have gone on farther East to Sabah in North Borneo. That could be true, but that still doesn't negate the fact that Magellan hadn't completed his circumnavigation of the globe because Sabah in North Borneo and Cebu don't lie along the same longitude. There is a distance between their respective longitudes that Magellan hadn't cross.

Some of you may ask why a Cebuano like Enrique was in Malacca when Magellan was there. Well, since Magellan saw him being sold at the slave market, we can presume that he was captured by pirates who periodically went on marauding expeditions along the eastern coast of Cebu. An extant reminder of that fearful time was the baluarte ruin along the shore of Oslob, Cebu which the Spaniards used as bulwark or defensive wall to protect the inhabitants from those marauders.

We do not know for sure what happened to Enrique after the Spanish survivors with their lone ship escaped from Cebu. No record recounting that exist. The Spaniards including the expedition chronicler Pigaffetta have returned to Spain without Enrique. A most plausible guess though would be Enrique must have stayed for good in the place where the language he was familiar with is spoken. 

Enrique had become a free man. No Spaniard had the right to force him to return with them to Spain because his master had already died. Besides he was no longer on good terms with Magellan's remaining crewmen and had became their worst foe. Enrique connived with the Cebuanos. He  invited the Spaniards to a festivity. Not everyone attended. Those who did were promptly massacred, poisoned, upon the instigation of Enrique who hated them. That was because Enrique suspected the Spaniards of deliberately abandoning Magellan at Mactan. They didn't join the fight. They just stayed on their ship while the fatal skirmish was going on. Some must have wanted Magellan dead so that they can take over the leadership of the expedition.

There was a fellow, a Filipino, who refused to believe that Enrique was most likely a Cebuano. He sided with the Malaysians who claim that Enrique was definitely a Malaccan because he was bought by Magellan in the slave market there. I have argued with him about this matter on a Facebook group.page. 

That fellow claimed that the reason Enrique was able to communicate with the people of Southern Leyte and Cebu was because the Malay language of Malacca, which he asserted Enrique spoke, was some sort of lingua franca understood in the islands of Southeast Asia. But if that is so, why was the language of Enrique unintelligible to the people of Samar and the language of the people of Samar unintelligible to Enrique?

It was also suggested that the reason Enrique was able to communicate with the datus of Cebu was perhaps because these datus, like many Islanders of high rank then, must have travelled to Malaysia and learned the Malay language Enrique supposedly spoke. That was another improbable conjecture, because how can one explain how Enrique was able to communicate with the ordinary Cebuano-speaking inhabitants of Southern Leyte who were not the supposedly well-traveled cosmopolite that the datus were presumed to be.

BOOK LAUNCH AND LUNCHES

I did the Illustrations for "First Around the Globe: The Story of Enrique" in 1997. I was hired next early the next year to do the Illustrations for "The Brothers Wu and the Good-Luck Eel". This was a singular book because its story won for author Fran Ng the first prize in the 1998 Palanca Memorial Awards for Children's Literature. 

I felt long before it won in the Palanca that the story was special. That's because not only was the story well-written, it is also a true-to-life one.  I felt compelled therefore to come up with illustrations that would match the story's excellence. Which I did I guess,  because the supposed excellence of my illustrations for this book landed me in the Honour List of the 2002 IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People). 

I prepared long and hard before I start doing the illustration. Since the story really happened during the late 1800s, I did a lot of research, for authenticity, on costumes and end-of-the century sceneries, both at the National Library and at the Filipinas Heritage Library. 

I also used real people as models for some of the characters in the story. Fran Ng provided me with a photo of her grandmother which I used as reference for the grandmother-narrator character. The brothers Wu's facial features I copied from those of my sons Bahgee and Kai. I also used photos of my wife Carina and compadre Bert Falsis as references for two other characters.

I completed the fifteen illustrations for the Brothers Wu in five months, which was rather fast compared to the time it took me to complete my next job, the eleven illustrations for the book "Once Upon a Time", which kept me busy for more than a year.

Today, twenty years after it was launched, my affection for the book "The Brothers Wu and the Good-Luck Eel" hasn't dimmed one bit. It still is very special to me. Because aside from winning awards and honor both here and abroad, it also afforded me the chance to have a fleeting taste of the good life that is an everyday thing for the rich. 

Reni Roxas hosted two publisher's lunches in 1999 to promote the books about to be launched by Tahanan, first at the Manila Polo Club and then at the Krocodile Grille. That was for free, of course. And I---who was born and raised in Tondo, and who once considered eating out at Chinese Restaurants in Binondo and Sta. Cruz as the height of fine dining---imagined that I have climbed up a rung or two on the social ladder.

The book launch and book signing was again held at the Manila Polo Club, that posh events place of the old rich in Forbes Park. I managed to sell there 13 of the 15 illustrations I did for the book. Among the notable persons who bought my pieces were my  publisher Reni Roxas, the Chairman of the Philippine Daily Inquirer Marixi Rufino-Prieto, the publisher of Bookmark Mari Tan-Delfin and husband Dr. Manolet, and Tisa Roxas-Tan.

It was the first time I sold that many artworks in one go. I felt triumphant. So, I went home  that night feeling already famous and rich. 

But that was just a fleeting sensation of course. Because money, like time, really flies away fast.

How about the fame? Well, it flew away faster. I was truly a celebrity, with all that autographing of sold books, for just about two hours.

POWER CHOCOLATES

Cafe Ysabel's quaint ambiance suited well the event. That was where Tahanan Books held the book signing for DIdith Tan Rodrigo's "Tamales Day". The dainty pre-war architecture of the place complemented finely with the merienda served during the event---the Tan family's heirloom delicacy I called 'gourmet tamales'.

It was a grand affair amply covered by media. I felt like a celebrity that night because plenty of people were asking me to autograph the books they bought. Add to that my 'fifteen minutes of fame moment' when writer Natasha Vizcarra interviewed me. Her write-up on me appeared a few days later in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

I have already completed the Illustrations for another book, "The Brothers Wu and the Good-luck Eel", at the time of the book signing for Tamales Day. While I was occupied with my Illustration tasks, Tahanan Books publisher Reni Roxas had been busy herself reading closely and editing three new manuscripts she had on hand.

When she was through, she called me to a meeting. She had another project for me, she said---their fairy tale trilogy. This trilogy includes ten stories each by Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, and Charles Perrault, all retold by Fran Ng.

That was an exciting project, a dream come true for me. Ever since I bought books on the fairy tale art of Edmund Dulac and Kay Nielsen---two of the leading lights of the so-called golden age of children's illustrated books, a period dating from 1880 to the early 1900s---I began to entertain the ambition of being given the opportunity one day to do similar fairy tale Illustrations.

The first book I'll illustrate will be the compilation of ten Andersen fairy tales. Reni made it clear that they're going to pay me not only for the publishing right but also for the copyright. That's the reason why I got a pretty substantial amount for this project. I don't remember the exact amount, but I think I was paid 66 thousand pesos, a rather hefty amount for a publisher to pay in 1999. I retained ownership of the original illustrations of course, which I exhibited and sold later on.

Since the rights to the illustrations were already bought outright by Reni, I'm no longer entitled to any royalty from the sales of the book and subsequent reproductions of the images. But Reni was very generous. When Tahanan Books received a grant from the World Bank for their Library Hub Project, and three of the books I did for them were chosen for reprinting and distribution to school libraries nationwide, Reni shared what she got from the World Bank. She paid me hefty royalty fees, which she gave in one go or in lump sum, even if I'm no longer entitled to them.

It took me five months to complete the illustrations for "The Brothers Wu and the Good-luck Eel", which I thought then was quite a long time to be working on a book. I was wrong. This Andersen book, titled "Once Upon a Time", took me longer to finish---one year more or less.

Reni Roxas was very exacting. She knew precisely how the illustrations should look. Before starting on an illustration for a certain story she would first asked me to read the manuscript closely and then submit a pencil study. Of the ten stories, the studies for "The Farmer and his Wife, "Thumbelina", "The Wild Swans", "Rumpelstiltskin", "The Nightingale", "The Little Match Girl", and "The Emperor's New Clothes", got by without incident, so to speak. The rest she rejected. I was asked to make minor revisions like removing or changing certain elements in the picture, or major ones like drawing an entirely new composition.

In the original pencil drawing for the "Little Mermaid" I drew the sea witch with her right hand forefinger pointed at the mermaid as if scolding her. Reni said that it is over acting: no need to show the pointing finger. So, I revised it and just show the sea witch's hand caressing the head of the oarfish entwined around her body.

For the "Princess and the Pea", I submitted a pencil study showing the prince and the princess inside a room. In the room was a four-poster bed on which were placed on top of one another more than a dozen mattresses. Propped against the side of the mattresses is a ladder which the princess is about to climb. 

Reni didn't like it. She had a better composition in mind. She whipped out her pen and made a sketch on a small piece of paper. What she drew was a rough line drawing of a princess atop the mattresses. The scene was depicted frontally, with the bedposts curtains drawn aside to show the princess. 

The scene she had in mind was magical. It reminds one of a theater or a puppet show scene. I admit that what she sketched was superior to the study I made. Reni said that she can't draw, but what she drew revealed the artist in her---her instinctive grasp of composition and eye for beauty.

I was asked to do two illustrations for the longest story in the book, "The Traveling Companion'". The study for the first illustration was rejected. I drew there a princess going down the stairs on both sides of which were lined up skulls of her executed suitors. At the bottom of the stairs waiting for her is her king father and the hero of the story. Reni asked me to remove the two men. The emphasis she said should be on the princess and the skulls alone, with the beauty of the princess in stark contrast to the gruesomeness of the skulls.

My study for "The Ugly Duckling" underwent the most number of revisions. I first submitted a scenic but rather bland lake scene showing swans gathered around in a circle, while the still ugly duckling hidden among the reeds watch from afar. But Reni wanted an interior scene. So, I depicted in the second study the housewife in the story and her two children chasing the duckling running on the floor. This was rejected again. 

Reni told me at last what scene she wanted exactly. I drew it, and the study I submitted showing the duckling jumping out of the cauldron hanging inside the fireplace and the startled mother and children was finally approved by her.

I painted the final illustrations using acrylic on Canson Montval paper. The illustrations are quite small, with nine of them measuring just 10 X 12.5 inches. Since the illustrations for "The Emperor's New Clothes" and "The Farmer and his Wife" were double page-spreads, I have to make them wider.

Before starting this project, Reni lent me several picture books illustrated by foreign artists. The one that caught my fancy was the book "Once Upon a Tree", written by Natalia Romanova and illustrated by that celebrated Russian illustrator Gennady Spirin. Spirin's illustrations were truly after my own heart, with all their "kutkutan", or obsessive depiction in minute detail of even the littlest elements of the pictures.

The first illustration I submitted was for "The Farmer and his Wife", which she bought together with "The Wild Swans" when I exhibited them with the rest of the artworks in 2001. While I used a palette of mostly bright colors for my previous Illustrations, I adopted for the Farmer and His Wife Gennady Spirit's  rather somber color scheme of earth hues.

I spent three weeks working on the Farmer and His Wife. But it was worth everyone's wait. When I submitted it, Reni sent me a note saying, "if the illustrations you'll submit next are as beautiful as this, we're on our way to producing a world class picture book." She sent with this note a can of imported chocolates which she hoped would give me the energy to continue producing such amazing work. She called those chocolates, power chocolates.

FROM CRUCIBLE TO TAKUZA

Many consider my illustration for the story "The Little Mermaid" as the best of the illustrations I did for the book "Once Upon a Time". Perhaps, Tahanan Books publisher Reni Roxas thought so too as shown by her choice of the Little Mermaid as cover art for the book.

I'm a bit baffled though, because if she found the Little Mermaid that good, why did she not bought it, and instead acquired for her collection my illustrations for the stories, "The Wild Swans" and "The Farmer and His Wife". 

Apart of course from the meticulous intricacy of my brushwork in the Little Mermaid, what amazed the admirers of this illustration is the composition. They were astounded by my supposed ingenuity in coming up with that circling fishes motif in the background.

To this I say, be astounded no more, because the idea for that background wasn't original. I just copied it. I was 'inspired' by David Doubilet's photo which appeared in the National Geographic Magazine of a circling school of barracudas, at the eye or center of which is a hovering scuba diver.

I realized even before I had completed the set of eleven illustrations for Once Upon a Time that I had on hand artworks which are all art exhibit material. I first showed the original illustrations to Hiraya Gallery's Didi Dee, who rejected them outright. She didn't said a single word. She just smirked and shook her head. I next submitted an exhibit proposal to Araceli Salas of Gallery Genesis. I waited for weeks for news about my exhibit proposal. Nothing came. She didn't even deign to call or sent me a letter of rejection. 

But when I showed the illustrations to Charrie Elinzano of the Crucible Gallery, I detected a ray of hope. I felt at once that she was impressed by the artworks. She said that she'll hand over my exhibit proposal to Crucible President Sari Ortiga for his comment and approval. A few days later, Sari called to tell me that my exhibit was on. 

The opening was set for September 8, 2001, which was also the opening date of National Artist Arturo Luz' solo show in the same gallery. What happened was Sari talked to Luz regarding the schedule overlap. Sari asked Luz if it's okay with him to let me exhibit first. Luz, the kind, generous, and understanding fellow that he is, gave way.

I chose "Old-Fashioned Fairy Tale Art" as title of my show. It was most apt because I wanted to emphasize the difference between my illustrations and the illustrations by other Filipino picture book artists at the time. Where they tend to draw modern cartoony illustrations, I patterned mine after those made by illustrators who did 'classically realistic' illustrations. Gennady Spirin was a big influence. His illustrations which are mostly of earth colors impelled me to change my palette and adopt his.

The opening of my solo show can be described as very soft. Why soft? Well, that's because I plunged with my eyes close and with empty pockets into this solo show at the Crucible Gallery. I applied for an exhibit grant with the Metrobank Foundation by virtue of my being a Grand Prize winner in their first painting competition in 1984. But the cash assistance didn't come on time.. It was awarded much much later, in 2007, when I applied again for an exhibit grant for my second solo in the same gallery.

Since I was told that I can do away with the formal opening and cocktails, I decided to open the show sans refreshments.That was embarrassing. Dyahe! But I have no choice, because I truly have a set of Illustrations that insistently begged and can't wait to be shown.

Although there was also no ribbon-cutting ceremony, I had a guest-of-honor of sorts, Ray Espinosa. He was a classmate at UST High School, batch '73. A very brilliant guy, who took up law at the Ateneo, he topped the 1982 bar exams, and is now one of Manny Pangilinan's most trusted executives.

The atmosphere during the opening of the show would seem dismal, but don't be fooled by it. Because even though me and the exhibit viewers have nothing to munch and sip in between conversations, the red dots plastered on the painting tags were more than enough to enliven the night. Of the eleven illustrations on show, nine were sold. Ray, who's into art collecting, wanted to add Thumbelina to his collection, but it was one of those reserved on the first day and subsequently sold to Mark Yap, who also bought The Little Mermaid.

Although the first day sales was something to be proud of---still, I was embarrassed that I wasn't able to serve refreshment to my guests. So I told my close friends that I'll make it up to them after I got my check. I promised to treat them to lunch, supper, or whatever. I treated Oca Magos to lunch at Busog, and Isko dela Cruz to supper at Wah Sun. I invited Buds Convocar, Jerry Dean, and Bert Falsis to a night out in a bar somewhere. 

But Bert couldn't make it that time because he was indisposed according to his wife Dulce.That's why it was only me, Buds, and Jerry who went to Cubao for a good time. Buds is familiar with the 'watering holes' in Cubao, them being near his place in Kamuning. He proposed that we go to Takuza Resto-Bar. The very name of the joint was enough to pique our curiosity. So we went there. Was it fun?---you may ask. 

I won't tell now. That would be another story altogether.

Essay 13. A HUDDLE AT CAFE BRETON

It was at posh Cafe Breton-Greenbelt where the cover art for the book "Long Ago and Far Away" was selected. Long Ago and Far Away is a compilation of ten Brothers Grimm fairy tales retold by Fran Ng and published by Tahanan Books for Young Readers. 

Publisher Reni Roxas met me and her assistant at Cafe Breton to discuss and select,  over plates of delectable crepes, which illustration would be the cover art. She first asked us our choices. Her assistant  (whose name escapes me now, but who could be Ginny Mata) chose, if I remember correctly, "Rumpelstiltskin". I chose "Snow White and Rose Red". 

Reni jokingly scoffed at our choices. She sharply tapped the table in mock dismay and declared that the cover art should obviously be "The Goose Girl". According to her the Goose Girl is, hands down, the most beautiful among the illustrations I did for the book. She's right, because the book does indeed look splendid with the Goose Girl as cover art. 

Reni not only selected the Goose Girl as cover art for the book, she also added it to her growing collection of my works. Another Illustration for this book which Reni bought was "Rapunzel".

By the way, book illustration is different from book design. The illustrations I did for the book are but one aspect of the whole book design. Reni hired only the best, and the one she chose to design not only this book, but also my two previous books---"The Brothers Wu and the Good-luck Eel" and "Once Upon a Time"---was Auri Asuncion Yambao. Definitely, she's one of if not the best picture book designer in the Philippines.

Auri did the layout, not only of the front and back cover, but also of the interior pages of the book. She also selected the typography, the letter fonts to use for the book title and the inside text, and what the color scheme of the cover would be. In short, Auri was responsible for the book's overall look.

I don't know if Auri's back cover design was novel, but it was the first time I saw printed on the back cover of a picture book thumbnail-size images of all the inside Illustrations.

Incidentally, Rishma Cuerdo, the model for the goose girl character, was a high school classmate of my younger son Kai. Rishma was also my model for three other Illustrations: "Snow White and Rose Red", "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 2", and "Waling-waling", one of the illustrations I did for Jun Matias' story "Alamat ng Agila". In

The Goose Girl scene shows Rishma as the true princess hugging her horse Falada who was about to be decapitated. She of course wasn't hugging a horse in the photo I took. She was hugging my son Kai, who gamely posed as the horse.

MAGIC AND MACHISMO

I signed a contract in 1999 to do the illustrations for what was supposed to be Tahanan Book's fairy tale trilogy. This is a three-volume compilation of fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, and Charles Perrault. But I and Fran Ng, who did the retelling, only finished two---that of Andersen and the Brothers Grimm.

"Long Ago and Far Away", the compilation of ten Brothers Grimm fairy tales is another prized work. The result of nearly two years of highly-meticulous labor, I once more found my illustrations there worthy of being shown in a solo art exhibit. The Crucible Gallery agreed again to exhibit them. 

Four illustrations were pre-sold, while the others were sold later. I also included in this show seven artworks that are not illustrations which were also sold. Long Ago and Far-away is the last book I did for Tahanan.

A flattering afterword  to my illustration career with Tahanan was written by the highly respected art critic Constantino Tejero. His review of my second solo exhibit at the Crucible Gallery, titled "Illustration art as fine art", appeared in the June 25, 2007 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. The review was very positive, that's why that day, which also happened to be my birthday, became doubly special for me.

Had I not been discovered, so to speak, by Tahanan Books, I wouldn't have rediscovered the joys of serious painting. By serious painting, I mean the paintings I do for my personal delectation---not illustrations which are commissioned works, and which are required to hew closely to a given manuscript.

My second solo at the Crucible Gallery opened on March 13, 2007. It ran for two weeks. Below is my Artist Statement for the show:

My family and I live on top of what once was sea. Our house in Tondo sits on land reclaimed from Manila Bay, about a hundred meters away from the original edge of the beach. Not being originally land, our place was swampy, with snatches of murky pools of water trapped here and there, usually under each dwelling. 

Our neighborhood is quintessential 'Erapland', where the measure of manhood is the size of one's brood. Also, vices reign supreme here. The menfolk, in faithful imitation of their flawed idol, flaunt their addictions, while the women play coy and indulge theirs a little furtively.

One would think that an artist requires a calm milieu to create art. Many artist do. But not me. My drawing table, the one I've used for eighteen years, faces a window. It really isn't a table, but just a piece of battered half-inch thick plywood hinged at the edge of the window sill. 

Our neighbor to the left of the window operated a bookie, an illegal racehorse betting station. Another neighbor maintained two video-game machines, the sort where players insert one peso coins to start a game. These machines were patronized mostly by kids, unruly kids, who punctuate their utterances with expletives.

So, you can just imagine the combined aural assault mounted day in and day out by these kids and the bums who bet on the horses. Thus, I myself am amazed, if I may brag a little, by the painstaking quality of my output for the past four years. Despite the aggravations inflicted on me while I work, I still managed to slog along and turned out works so detailed that many who'll see them may conclude that they could only be the handiwork of a painter painting unharassed in an air-conditioned and commodious studio.

The two sets of artworks on view here, being of two distinct themes, were supposed to be shown in two separate non-simultaneous exhibitions. But the Crucible Gallery president Sari Ortiga dissuaded me and instead suggested that they be shown in one exhibit. He reasoned that what will be displayed won't be my treatment of any particular theme but my supposed expertise in my chosen technique, sharp focus realism. 

So, the titles for the two separate art exhibits, "Old-fashioned Fairy Tale Art 2" (for the illustrations for the book "Long Ago and Far Away") and "Facets of Manhood" (for the paintings on machismo) were folded into the eponymous, yes, but bland and generic title, "ARNEL MIRASOL: ptgs & illus". 

The theme of the fairytale illustrations need no elaboration, I think; so, I'll just expound on the theme of the paintings and the two cover art.

I have never handled a gamecock in my life, nor ever placed a bet on a cockfight. It may therefore come as a surprise to many why I chose to do a series of paintings on cockfighting. Tahanan Books publisher Reni Roxas inadvertently prompted me to do so. I once included a rooster in an illustration I did for them and she remarked that I am good at drawing roosters. So, I thought, why not? Why not exploit that skill and come up with a series of paintings depicting roosters. I therefore came up with three smallish paintings of cockers which I admit were influenced somewhat by Picasso's images of massive neo-classical figures.

Although I'm pleased with the finished works, my tentative sally into modernism, I realized that I really cannot sustain the momentum and go on turning out paintings belonging to what I called my "Anak ng Tupada" (Son of the Cockfight) Series. 

I changed tack. I widened the scope of my theme which I now called Facets of Manhood, or my Machismo Series. I felt free then to start another suite, this time about divers, a subject which is more after my own heart for I do indulge in watersports. 

Taking further advantage of the theme's widened scope, I decided to also include The "Imperialist Manifesto" which was used as cover art for a textbook on world history. The inclusion of this work may be perplexing and its link with my supposed theme may seem tenuous. But keener analysis allowed me to conclude that, indeed, imperialism is the ultimate manifestation of machismo. 

Let me emphasize however that this work is not another leftist ranting in pictorial form. I used the term imperialist in its generic sense, that is to describe all the empire builders in history. Thus, the nations alluded to ought to be flattered because this illustration merely advances the thesis that the imperialists were the founders of civilizations.

I am a big fan of Ernest Hemingway, whose lifework as chronicler of the doings of the machos of the world earned him world renown. What he set out to chronicle in his writings I aim to depict in my paintings. But in matters of style, I daresay that we are antipodal. If his language is succinct, mine is not. You see, I have this strange compulsion to render forms in painstaking details, which I suspect is not really a smart way of doing things if I want to get rich quick. 

This preoccupation with male vanity may invite questions on whether I intend to stick to this theme for the remaining course of my painting career. Of course not. This early, I've already started a series of paintings on women. My plan at this stage is to exhaust what is there to exhaust on machismo as a painting subject and hope that, along the way, I'll be able to get this Hemingwayesque fixation out of my system.

FACET OF MANHOOD

(The photo collage shows me and Carina with my painting "Seraglio Fantasy" during the opening of my 2007 solo show at the Crucible Gallery)

The setting of the painting "Seraglio Fantasy" (first painting in the album below) is Lido Beach in Noveleta, Cavite. The model for the foreground figure is my wife Carina. The photograph I used as reference was a picture I took of her at the resort when we and her high school 'barkadas' went there sometime in 1981. The naked figures behind are mannequins that were supposedly brought to life.

An oil painting on canvas, Seraglio Fantasy is a relatively small work, measuring just 2 X 2 feet, I guess I can consider it as the 'piece de resistance' of my second solo show at the Crucible Gallery because it was the highest-priced painting I've sold up to that time.

Seraglio Fantasy was one of the three oil paintings on canvas I exhibited in that 2007 solo exhibit. The other two are "Trekkers' Bliss (Taal Crater Lake) and "Snorkeler's Blues (Ungab Rock Formation)". The rest of the artworks are acrylics on paper.

Months before the show, which also featured the Brothers Grimm fairy tales illustrations I did for the book "Long Ago and Far Away", Crucible Gallery President Sari Ortiga suggested that I do oil paintings on canvas because they sell better than works on paper. He must be right, because the Seraglio Fantasy and the two other oils were bought by a single collector.

I was no longer confident of my oil painting skills before starting work on Seraglio Fantasy because it would be the first time since 1988 that I would be touching oil paint again. The medium I was most comfortable with after that year was acrylic, which I used the transparent watercolor way, for the Illustrations I did on paper. 

This exhibit---titled "Magic and Machismo: arnelmirasolptgs&illus"---marked my return to 'serious painting' after more than twenty years of working as illustrator---first as editorial cartoonist and later on as book illustrator. It was a comeback too for the surrealist in me, because aside from Seraglio Fantasy, I also exhibited two other paintings that are similarly surrealist in tone and form---"Corrupt Bureaucrat Dissected" and "Supremacy of Eve".

Tahanan Books publisher Reni Roxas asked me, weeks before the opening, what is the theme or title of my show. I gave her the tentative title, "Facets of Manhood', and explained that it was because the paintings I will exhibit belong to my so-called machismo series. I can still remember to this day Reni's reaction to what I said. She raised an eyebrow---which must be her way of expressing disapproval of the machismo word without saying it.

There were two guests-of-honor at the opening of my show. Two publishers. One was Isagani Yambot, publisher of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and the other, Reni Roxas.

I must have sent already a letter of thanks to the Metrobank Foundation for their 30 thousand pesos exhibition grant. I'm thanking them again now for that. That exhibition grant was the 'bonus' bestowed on Metrobank painting contest winners, and I was given that because I was one of the three Best Entry winners in their very first competition in 1984.

I also thank the highly-respected art critic Constantino Tejero for writing a review of that Magic and Machismo show. I remember myself  buying 10 copies of the Philippine Daily Inquirer on the day the review was published. Tejero's review appeared in the June 25, 2007 issue of the newspaper. That day was my birthday, that's why Tejero had in effect given me a birthday gift without him knowing it.

NO PLACE LIKE TAHANAN

(Tahanan Books celebrated its 25th anniversary last October 5, 2017 at the Milky Way Cafe,  Launched during the event was its newest publication, "The House Tahanan Built"---a compilation of memoirs and conversations about the creative process written by the authors, artists, staff, and friends of Tahanan Books. The essay below, which I slightly revised, is my contribution to the book.)

Serendipity played a part in how I got to work as illustrator for Tahanan Books. The year was 1996, and I was working then as textbook illustrator for Bookmark, whose editorial office was at Sampaloc Street, San Antonio Village, Makati. The Bookmark office was on the second floor of what I supposed was a former family home. I happened to mention to Bookmark editor-in-chief Eddie Yabut that I also want to work for Tahanan Books, a house that specializes in publishing full-color picture books, since I had by then compiled a portfolio of full-color children's book illustrations.  Tahanan Books, and its owners Reni Roxas and Marc Singer, were featured in an article in the Sunday Inquirer Magazine years before. After reading that article, I began hoping to one day illustrate a full-color picture book for them, too

It was mentioned in the article that the office of Tahahan Books was in Pasong Tamo, which is just nearby. I asked Eddie Yabut if he knew the exact location of Tahanan Book's office. Eddie smiled, and said that Tahanan Books had relocated---downstairs. That is serendipity, isn't it. Tahanan Books being there at the exact moment that I was actively searching for it. I gathered later on that this house was really the former family home of Reni Roxas's aunt.

The first artwork I did for Tahanan was my illustration for Marivi Soliven-Blanco's story "Chun", which is included in an anthology, titled "Golden Loom", of Palanca Prize winners in the children's literature category. The creation of that illustration was a landmark event in my life because it gave me the opportunity to taste for the first time what it's like to sign books during a book launch, and feel like a celebrity for an hour or two.That Chun illustration was acquired right away by Reni, the first in her series of art purchases from me.

I was next given the job of illustrating the complete set of illustrations for Reni Roxas' and Marc Singer's collaborative book, "First Around the Globe: The Story of Enrique". It was a lucrative project (by Philippine standards at least), for they offered to pay me 35 thousand pesos for a work which took me only about a month to finish.That was a lot of money at that time, because the usual going rate then for a set of 15 illustrations was way way below that. But it was hard work because I had a strict deadline to follow. I need to finish at least one illustration a day, so I stretched my usual 10 hours of work to fifteen hours, more or less.

I next did for Tahanan the illustrations for Didith Tan-Rodrigo's story "Tamales Day". Now, the process of creating art for this book was a very delectable experience, I must say, because I was invited by Didith to their home to observe and take pictures of them while making tamales. Their tamales is not like the Mexican tamales---far from it. Nor is it your ordinary Kapampangan tamales. Their recipe is their own high-end version, which I once described in a facebook write-up as gourmet tamales. 

Why gourmet, you'd asked. Well, that's because their recipe includes as ingredients---aside from the usual strips of chicken, peanuts, and salted eggs---ham, chestnuts, and shrimps. Didith told me that someone suggested once that they make a business of their recipe and offer franchises. They considered that suggestion but didn't act on it. They somehow felt that the business won't be feasible because pricing their product would be tricky, precisely because of the high cost of the ingredients. That's why I felt very lucky then, and special, because I get to taste the tamales that had been denied many others.

"The Brothers Wu and the Good-Luck Eel' came next. This was a singular book because its story won for author Fran Ng the first prize in the 1998 Palanca Memorial Awards for Children's Literature. I felt long before it won in the Palanca that the story was special. I felt compelled therefore to come up with illustrations that would match the story's excellence. Which I did, because the supposed excellence of my illustrations for this book landed me in the Honour List of the 2002 IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People. 

I prepared long and hard before starting doing the illustrations. Because the story is a true-to-life one that happened during the late 1800s, I did a lot of research on end-of-the-century costumes and sceneries both at the National Library and at the Filipinas Heritage Library. I also used real people as models for the characters in the story. Fran Ng provided me with a photo of her grandmother which I used as reference for the grandmother-narrator character. (Incidentally, the model for the mature lady in my illustration for "The Nightingale" was also Fran's grandmother.) The brothers Wu's facial features I copied from those of my sons Bahgee and Kai. I also used photos of my wife Carina and compadre Bert Falsis as references for two other characters.

I completed the fifteen illustrations for the Brothers Wu in five months, which was rather fast compared to the time it took me to complete my next job, the eleven illustrations for the book "Once Upon a Time". This book was a retelling by Fran Ng of ten fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen. It took me about a year to finish this book. But that was for a good reason, because my goal when I began this project was to come up with illustrations that will compare favorably with those done by the world's best, both past and present---like Edmund Dulac and Gennady Spirin, for example. A goal I may have achieved, because Reni remarked upon seeing the first illustration I submitted, that we were on our way of producing a world-class book if the illustrations I'll submit next are of the same quality as the first one. That first illustration was for the story "The Farmer and his Wife". Reni liked this illustration so much that she gave me a can of imported chocolates (power chocolates she called them) to give me the energy to continue turning in excellent works. Reni purchased this illustration later on.

"Once Upon a Time" was another watershed for me. When I realized that I had a suite of artworks that was art exhibit material I hastened to shop for a gallery where I can exhibit them. Which wasn't easy. Four galleries rejected me. Only one, the Crucible Gallery, booked me for an exhibit. Although what I had was a soft-opening (meaning no guest-of-honor, no ribbon-cutting, and no refreshments), the sales result of that exhibit was more than enough to raise my spirits. Of the eleven illustrations on show, nine were sold on the opening day. The remaining two were acquired months later by a lady who became a loyal collector of my works.  The title of that show was "Old-Fashioned Fairy Tale Art".

I actually signed a contract to do the illustrations for what was supposed to be Tahanan Book's fairy tale trilogy, which are compilations of fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, and Charles Perrault. But author Fran Ng and I only finished two: that of Andersen and the Brothers Grimm.

"Long Ago and Far Away", the compilation of ten Brothers Grimm fairy tales is another prized work. The result of nearly two years of highly-meticulous labor, I again find my illustrations there worthy of being shown in a solo art exhibit. The Crucible Gallery agreed again to exhibit them. Four illustrations, The Goose Girl, Rapunzel, Snow White and Rose Red, and Rapunzel, were pre-sold, while the others were bought later. I also included in this show seven artworks that are not illustrations which were all bought. "Long Ago and Far-away" is the last book I did for Tahanan.

A flattering "afterword"  to my illustration career with Tahanan was written by the highly respected art critic Constantino Tejero. His review of my second solo exhibit at the Crucible Gallery, titled "Illustration as Fine Art", appeared in the June 25, 2007 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. The review was very positive, that's why that day, which also happened to be my birthday, became doubly special for me.

Had I not been discovered, so to speak, by Tahanan Books, I wouldn't have rediscovered the joys of serious painting. By serious painting, I mean the paintings I do for my personal delectation, not illustrations which are commissioned works, and which are required to hew closely to a given manuscript.

It was at Tahanan that I developed to its fullest extent the sharp-focus realist style that was my trademark style up to 2008. 

Reni said that she can't draw. But she surely knows what makes an art good art. There were several instances when she "art directed" me, and suggested how my illustration should look. The one that I remember well was her suggestion for my illustration for "The Princess and the Pea". 

My drawing of the sleepless princess was already approved by her, but I was at a loss on what to do for a background. Reni pulled out her pen and sketched something on a piece of paper. What she drew was a rough line sketch of a four-poster bed viewed frontally, with the curtains on both sides drawn: "Just like the curtains in a theater," she said. That scene was magical and amazing in its very simplicity. It showed very well Reni's instinctive grasp of composition.

I used as wall text for my 2007 solo exhibit of Brothers Grimm fairy tale illustrations at the Crucible Gallery a manifesto I wrote. I called this piece "An Illustrator's Manifesto"---an excerpt from which is posted below:

"...In my more than ten years in picture book illustration, I have never once considered it a breeze compared to painting. The opposite is true, because the parameters in picture book illustration are many and exacting. There is a manuscript to dissect, an editor to please, and the child readers to entertain. Whereas in painting, you can just affect the nonchalant pose of a recluse and please only yourself."

Well, that sort of sums up what I've learned in my book illustration career. Doing picture book illustration is never easy, contrary to what some snooty art gallery owners and painters think. That's the reason why I switched to doing serious painting full time, because I find it easier. I no longer have to make sure that the images I paint conform closely with a manuscript. No need also to get an editor's approval, nor those of the child readers. I only need to paint what pleases me. I can change style anytime, and add risque elements to my pieces whenever I feel like being naughty.

I now look on my years at Tahanan as the peak of my artistic career. Before that, I was quite content in doing editorial cartoons and textbook illustrations which were being paid by the piece. It wasn't lucrative work, but I at least managed to put food on our table and send my two boys to school. But an incident made me aspire for higher things. 

I was still working as a textbook illustrator for Phoenix Publishing House, when I chanced on two art books on sale at the old Alemar's Bookstore on Quezon Avenue. One book was on the art and life of Edmund Dulac, and the other was on Kay Nielsen. This was in 1990, I think, way before I began my picture book illustration career with Tahanan. Although I bought them at very low prices, these books became very valuable to me. Edmund Dulac and Kay Nielsen are two of the leading lights of the so-called "Golden Age" of children's illustrated books---a period dating from around 1880 to the early twentieth century. On seeing their works I began to nurture the dream of one day being given the opportunity to also do full-color fairy tale illustrations. 

But although.doing full-color fairy tale illustration work was dream-come-true for me, I never, as I've said earlier, found it a breeze. I have to be in the right frame of mind and needed to be fully prepared before I start work. I have a sizable collection of printed materials at home: novels and short stories, biographies and histories, art books and picture books, and even books on poetry. I also collected magazines, especially those with lots of pictures like the National Geographic magazines. Those magazines were vital to my work, because I used the pictures there as references for my illustrations. I also kept clippings from newspapers of images that may be of use to me one day, like photographs of objects and animals, and men engaged in various activities.

Before starting work, I first gathered the magazines I'll used---bookmarked on the pages where the reference pictures are---and all clippings of images I'll need for a particular illustration. Only when I have them all at hand, will I begin to do the preliminary sketches, and afterwards, the final drawing on Canson Montval paper, which I prefer above all other watercolor papers.

Adequate sleep was my primary requirement for the actual physical work. I can't prod myself to paint if I feel even a bit sleepy. So, I always make it a point to sleep first before starting work. I also always have a book at arm's reach, which I read whenever I begin to feel bored from an hour or two of continuous painting work. Music from the radio was also a plus, because it keeps me from getting sleepy while working. There were times when I can't seem to put my brush down, so I stretched my waking and working hours up to 15 hours. That's why many times in the past, I found myself going to bed at around 7 a.m. already.

Although I'm a big fan of many Filipino picture book illustrators, the illustration styles I wished to emulate are those of Edmund Dulac, Charles Santore, and Gennady Spirin, who are practitioners of a quaintly realistic illustration technique. My goal, the challenge I wished to meet, was to produce a body of work that would equal if not surpass the timeless quality of their illustrations. 

I came close to my goal, I supposed, because one of my illustrations, "The Wild Swans",  have been borrowed and used as cover art for their pages by more than fifty foreign blogs. While "The Little Mermaid", "Thumbelina", "Snow White and Rose Red", "Rumpelstiltskin", "The Traveling Companion", "The Nightingale ", and "The Emperor's New Clothes" were each used one time or more by several other blogs. Although neither my permission, nor that of Reni (who is the real copyright owner), were asked, I'm still flattered  that they chose my illustrations from among the thousands of illustrations on the internet to adorn their web pages.

Part Three: As I See it 

AN ILLUSTRATOR'S MANIFESTO 

(This manifesto was used as wall text for my 2007 solo exhibit of illustrations and paintings at the Crucible Gallery. The remark I made here about a few Picasso imitators as second-rate artists have raised the hackles of some who felt alluded to. Well, allow me to clear things up. I'm not referring to all Picasso imitators, nor to all modernist painters for that matter. The fellows I have in mind were those who haven't gone through the whole route of first learning the rudiments of realist drawing and painting before adopting abstraction or modernist figuration as their style.

But there are exceptions to that "rule", of course. Because, once in a rare while, a genius who never went to art school would burst and break into the art scene, and amaze everyone there with his aesthetically-pleasing and fresh-to-the-eyes modernist artworks.

I wrote this manifesto in a state of pique, when I was reminded again of the snub I was subjected to by a female painter eighteen years before she died. I met her when I was working as a gallery assistant at the Galleria delas Islas in 1986. She came to the gallery one day with photographs of her paintings which she wanted to show to the gallery owners.

She was a vibrant raconteur who had many stories to tell. Our conversation amused me a lot, that's why I promised her that I'll do all I can to get the gallery owners to approve her exhibit proposal. I failed. Mr Robert Lane, co-owner of the gallery, told me that he was amazed by the lady's passion for painting. She was very prolific---she presented pictures of dozens of her paintings. But still, Mr. Lane turned her exhibit proposal down. Her works, which were all Picasso painting look-alikes, were, seemingly, not up to his standards.

The painter was disheartened of course. But only for a while. She just shopped around for another gallery to exhibit in and found it. That gallery was the City Gallery at the Luneta, just walking distance from Intramuros where the Galeria delas Islas is located.

I remember that Lalyn Buncab, the manager of Galeria delas Islas, received an invitation to attend the show opening, but she didn't want to attend. That's why it was only me and painter friend Edgar Saballo who went to the cocktail reception. It was apparently a success judging from the big number of guests present. I don't know how many paintings she eventually sold, but I'm sure that she at least sold one because I saw a red dot on the tag of one painting.

I approached her to greet and congratulate her, but to my dismay, she acted as if she didn't see me, and just move on to wherever she intended to go. Dinedma lang ako, hahaha.... Anyway, after partaking of the refreshments laid out on the table, I and Edgar hurriedly left the gallery.)

AN ILLUSTRATOR'S MANIFESTO 

I once consulted a fellow painter for advice. I asked him if it is all right for me to mount as my first solo show an exhibition of picture book illustrations. He said no, and I asked him why. "Strategy," he replied: by which he meant, I surmised, that a painter must avoid being labeled an illustrator at the start of his career. Get known as a painter first, then dabble in illustration later.

Implicit in my friend's response is the veiled disdain felt by some painters for illustrators. The matter is made worse by my firsthand observation that some gallery owners themselves are also infected with that conceit. Prior to being okayed by the Crucible Gallery, my exhibit proposal for my first solo show of fairy tale illustrations was rejected by four galleries. One gallery owner even dismissed my work with a smirk, which made me feel pathetic indeed. She at least could have softened the blow by explaining that my work will look incongruous in a gallery with a penchant for showing angst-ridden paintings.

But no matter, I know that in time, I can somehow prove my point that there are only second-rate artists, not second-rate art forms.

Before focusing my energies on illustration, I did paintings with proletarian themes Those are grim works, which may perhaps partly explain why they never were commercially successful. Today, in my work as illustrator, what is grim is no longer my artworks' subject matter, but my determination to push my standard to my highest limit. In my more than ten years in picture book illustration, I have never once considered it a breeze  compared to painting. The opposite is true, because the parameters in picture book illustration are many and exacting. There is a manuscript to dissect, an editor to please, and the child readers to entertain. Whereas in painting, you can just affect the nonchalant pose of a recluse and please only yourself.

In our art scene, there appeared from time to time a few Picasso imitators who flaunted nothing but canvases filled with Picassoesque doodles and distortions. But something was glossed over in their posturing. They conveniently forgot that Picasso had mastered the technique of Classical Realism by his fifteenth year. These ersatz Picassos have leapfrogged. Although not yet adept in the two-dimensional construction of the human form, they proceeded forthwith to deconstruct it. And presto, they then wore with pride the label 'modernist'.

Lest I be accused of inviting controversy, I do not of course insinuate that all modernists are poseurs. Far from it. I sincerely admire the works of Arturo Luz, Malang, Prudencio Lamarrosa, Marcel Antonio, and many other modernists. And I intend to one day align myself with them and be a modernist painter too. But no leapfrogging for me. I reserve my disdain only for those who mask their ineptness in the realist technique with the camouflage of modernism. They are the second-rate artist I am alluding to.

I repeat, there is no second-rate art form. Each art form, be it painting, book illustration, animation, digital graphics, etc., is as good as any. What counts is the practitioner's level of competence. And competence I think is what I've shown in my suite of Hans Christian Andersen and Brothers Grimm fairy tale illustrations---discipline also, and patience. And courage too---the courage to stare back at the poverty that stared me in the face. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. For among the publishers that I have worked for, my present publisher Reni Roxas of Tahanan Books is the most generous. She never hesitated to offer me fees way beyond the going rate of other publishers.

But with the actual art making process stretched into more than a year, the whole enterprise seemed to cease being lucrative. But believe me, money is never a factor in my success equation. What I've set out to do when I embarked on this project was to create works that will compare not too unfavorably with the world's best. I may have fallen short of my goal, but who cares. I have done what I can and completed my best work yet. I have wielded with much agony the tool that I'm most familiar with---my adeptness in a certain realist technique that another fellow painter said borders on the obsessive. And that proves another point: that we illustrators are also capable of suffering in the pursuit of excellence in our art. And that we too have our own angst, like any starving painter.

THE POST -WARHOLITE BROTHERHOOD

 

An art movement flourished in England at around the same time as when the Impressionists were starving and struggling to gain acceptance in Paris. The three founding members, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John Everett Millais called their group the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, to emphasize their fascination with medieval themes and painting techniques prior to the advent of Raphael.

The Pre-Raphaelites abhorred slapdash and bravura brushstrokes, and had a great success emulating the glazing technique and obsession with details of the quattrocento painters of the Flemish School. Although the Impressionists were considered more significant for their role in liberating painting from academism and tradition, the Pre-Raphaelites also had their own set of admirers from those who put premium on old-fashioned manual dexterity rather than innovativeness.

Pop Art made its first appearance in England in the late fifties. Richard Hamilton was its first proponent there. Although initially British, it was the Americans who managed to popularized Pop and gained for it a cult following, Andy Warhol especially. Who can forget Andy's large scale silk-screened images of Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Jacqueline Kennedy, Mao Tse Tung, car crashes, Campbell Soup cans, and electric chairs.

After the heyday of the other original American pop artists, like Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichstenstein, and Keith Haring, along came Jean Michel Basquiat with his graffiti-like paintings, and Jeff Koons with his kitschy sculptures of Michael Jackson and his monkey among others, and his porn/art collaboration with erstwhile wife, pornstar Ilona Staller (La Ciciolina). There is also Robert Williams who effected a fusion of pop and surrealism with his pop surrealist works.

Lately, a reincarnation of sort of pop occurred in Japan with the rise to prominence of Takashi Murakami and his followers in the Superflat Movement. Their art can be the defining style of the past decade with its penchant for using anime, manga, and computer icons imagery.

In the Philippines, there are many painters who also does pop style paintings, like Ronaldo Ventura, Farley del Rosario, Anthony Palo, Dex Fernandez, Christian Tamondong, Jojo Garcia, Janos dela Cruz, Nemo Aguila, Ricarte Ico, Mura Hari Das Evangelista, and myself.

Beginning 2008, I began to wean myself away from the sharp-focused realist technique I used in my previous artworks. I sort of grew tired of that obsessive technique, and also felt that I have already exhausted all the possibilities of realism. I began looking at art with a modernist more sophisticated eye, seeing beauty in reduction and distortion.

The first products of my tentative foray into modernism were my appropriations of a few famous nudes by the old masters. A prime example would be the series I did on Titian's "Venus of Urbino", which I first painted as an obese Venus in the manner of Fernando Botero, but which I trimmed later into a slimmer though still voluptuous nude.

I didn't stopped there. I continue to subject my human figures to further manipulation and reduction. Now, the figures in my paintings, especially the female ones, are a bit cartoony and very slim, but are still seen as seductive, because of the overly emphasis on their hips and other feminine assets.

The unifying thread discernible in these later paintings, aside from my concern with themes of music, and courtship and seduction---a far cry from the angry and overtly political tones of the paintings of my youth---was my use of cubist and pop art devices like loud coloration, hard-edged lines, overlaps and tangents, geometric and textile patterns, and cartoony and kitschy images.

As with past and present pop artists elsewhere, our present crop of Filipino pop artists are fixated on images contemporary and popular. Jeepneys, sneakers, soda drink cans, toys, cartoons, graffiti doodles, rock stars, etc., are the staples of our art. With the proliferation of Warholite disciples in the Philippine art scene, it would seem that Andy hadn't died and is still busy directing his several assistants to manufacture the artworks for him to endorse and sign. If there was a Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood before in England, there is now a Post-Warholite Brotherhood here. But the millennials among us might abhor the tag Post-Warholite. I suppose that they'd much rather call the movement, tongue-in-cheekily maybe, Pinoy Pop or Ppop.

UNORIGINALITY IN ART

                                                                      

Picasso's painting "Two Women Running on the Beach" inspired me to do the first painting in the photo album below, to which I originally gave the title, "A & E After Discovering the Joy of Sex". A and E are Adam and Eve. I asked a friend, a collector of my works, May Reyes, if the title is risque, and she answered that it is. 

So, I re-titled this work "Candy Serpents", a title I thought innocuous enough, that now, I no longer fear being branded blasphemous by the Fundamentalists out there. The colorful line drawings of serpents on the other hand, were copies of the doodles done by my younger son, Karel Andrei, when he was eight years old.

The "Candy Serpents" is a prime example of appropriation. It is not plagiarism, in my opinion, nor a reproduction, nor a forgery. That's because I acknowledged and gave credit to my sources of inspiration, did revisions of the originals, situated the images in a context, concept, and composition entirely my own, and signed the finished work with my name.

Being influenced or inspired by, and borrowing or even 'stealing' from the art of other artists is nothing new. Painters have been doing that for centuries either for practice or because they feel that they have something new to add to the original artwork. I see nothing wrong with that provided the appropriating artists give credit to the artists who have inspired or influenced them. What is also important is that a new twist or look be given to the new version of a painting by another artist.

Pablo Picasso, who was touted as the most inventive artist of the 20th century was not immune to appropriation. The neck and head of the left-hand figure in "Two Women Running on the Beach", which inspired my version, was borrowed from Ingres's painting of Thetis in the painting "Jupiter and Thetis". Another Picasso work, "Three Women Bathing" was also inspired by the naked figures in another Ingres painting, "The Turkish Bath" - although those figures of course were all subjected to Picasso's trademark distortion. Picasso also did several variations of Delacroix's Women of Algiers series, and his own interpretations of El Greco's painting "Portrait of Jorge Manuel", Velasquez's "Las Meninas", and David's "Rape of the Sabine Women". 

Picasso's revolutionary work, the proto-cubist "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" (1907) was markedly influenced by African art. This painting depicts five whores inside a brothel, three of which look or are trying to look like primitive Africans. The face of the woman at left has a distinct Negroid complexion, while the two women at right wore African tribal masks - to hide their faces presumably. Picasso, the co-inventor of Cubism, also revealed that it was the French painter Paul Cezanne who gave him and George Braque the idea of seeing and portraying all natural objects as mere  cylinders, spheres, cones, and cubes.

We can also trace the lineage of Edouard Manet's famous "Olympia". The immediate predecessor of that painting is Titian's "Venus of Urbino", which was inspired in turn by an earlier painting, the "Sleeping Venus", by Titian's illustrious colleague who died young, Giorgione. Even Paul Gauguin's "Nevermore", and my own painting "My Serenade" were variations also of that Titian masterwork. .

Another Manet painting, the "Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe (Breakfast on the Grass)" was inspired by another Giorgione painting, the "Concert Champetre". 

Salvador Dali, joined the fray too, so to speak, when he painted a not so exact copy of Vermeer's "The Lacemaker". But prior to becoming a surrealist and painting his version of the Lacemaker, Dali first went through his impressionist and cubist phases, obviously because of his admiration for Camille Pissarro and Picasso. Even Dali's surrealist works decidedly show the influence of another painter who came before him - Giorgio de Chirico - the founder of Scuola Metafisica or Metaphysical School. De Chirico's mysterious landscapes littered with objects with no logical connection to each other and to reality and stretching to infinity were perhaps the models Dali based his surrealist landscapes on.

There are also Filipino painters who copied and signed with their own names paintings by other artist, like a painter I met in 1978 in SSS Village who did exact and high-quality reproductions of Amorsolo's paintings. There was also a schoolmate who did skillful copies of Juan Luna's "Spoliarium" and a serenade scene by Botong Francisco. 

Copying the painting of an old master isn't illicit if you follow these three conditions: first, the painting you'll do is not the same size as the original work you'll copy; second, the signature you'll put on your work is your own and not the original master's signature; and third, you'll mention also that your painting is after the work of the original master. 

An artist friend told me that their instructor in  painting required his students to submit as their plates copies of paintings of the masters they admired. Meanwhile, another instructor from the same university even encouraged his students to do paintings similar to those churned out by him which he would sign if they are up to his standards. My artist friend followed his suggestion. He did a painting after that instructor's style, which must have been competently done, because it was signed by the instructor and later on was bought by an art collector.

As to sculptors, incidents of appropriation by them have occurred here in the Philippines. There was a case where a fine arts professor submitted as his competition entry two human sculptural figures made by his student, which he jazzed up with appendages and other adornments original to him. That work won first prize in the art competition. The professor claimed he had the permission of his student to use her discarded sculptural pieces, which the student denied, if I remember correctly.

Another more well-known controversy involved an artist who did a sculpture of a seemingly levitating supine woman with outstretched arms, with only her long hair connecting her to the ground or pedestal. The husband of the Dutch sculptor who created a similar work claimed that the Filipino sculptor just copied part of his wife Elizabeth Stientra's public installation in the Netherlands titled "The Virgins of Appeldoorn". 

The Filipino sculptor denied that, asserting that he arrived at his concept using his own imagination. Which is probably true, because as I have mentioned in an earlier essay, two artists from different places and different times may come up with the same art idea inadvertently without them knowing of the work of the other. Besides, there are lots of levitating women sculptures created already, all or some of which must have been inspired by the levitating Linda Blair photo from the 1973 film "The Exorcist".

Those two cases could be just matters of simple appropriation. What's wrong, or even downright criminal, is forgery, where an artist made an exact copy of an artwork by another artist and then signed it with the forged signature of the original artist. Plagiarism is also wrong. It is when an artist claims as his original a work he just copied.

Reproductions or copies of famous works signed with the copying artists names, on the other hand, is a tricky case. If the copy is after a work by a master long dead, the copying artist is forgiven. He is just trying to make a living after all. But copyright infringement and plagiarism issues arise when the copied works were done by contemporaries or by artists who have died relatively recently.

There are many gray areas on this issue. But to artists who still crave to appropriate, borrow or copy the work of another, my advice is do so, by all means. That is the only way you'll get it out of your system and rid yourself of your fixation. But please, do not claim what painting you'll come up with as one hundred percent your own. Give credit where credit is due. Do not forget to mention the artwork and the artist who have inspired or influenced you. And do it promptly, please. Do not wait until someone pointed out that you only copied someone else's work before admitting that you did. That would be very embarrassing.

(Top painting in the photo collage above: CANDY SERPENTS; 2008; acrylic on paper; 22 X 22 inches; my collection. After Picasso's painting "Two Women Running on the Beach and my son Karel Andrei's childhood doodles of serpents. Bottom painting: MY SERENADE; 2009; oil on canvas: 35 X 35 inches; Julian Felix collection; after Titian's "Venus of Urbino")

VINTAGE BOOKSTORE, VINTAGE BOOK 

 

           

                                  

In 1999, Leonard Aguinaldo, Nemi Miranda, Steve Santos, and I was commissioned by Rex Printing to do an artwork each for their 2000 calendar. It was a special year for them because it was Rex Bookstore's 50th anniversary. I was asked to illustrate a 1950s scene of their original bookstore along Azcarraga (now C.M.Recto Avenue) in Quiapo.

I came up with the illustration above which took me around three weeks to finish. I don't remember the exact size of this acrylic on paper piece, but it must be around 14 X 9 inches. This illustration is just a reconstruction of sorts. I never saw how the old Rex Bookstore looked like, nor was I given a photo of it as reference. What was provided me was just an old photo of the owners, Mr. and Mrs. Rey Fontelera, who are shown here manning the counter.

I just used my imagination and lots of research to come up with that scene. But the glass showcase and cash register are authentic. Rex still has them in their main office in Quezon City where I made sketches of them. The children in the picture are supposed to be students of my alma mater, Holy Child Catholic School in Tondo, as can be guessed by my schoolmates from their uniforms. The model for the boy was my older son Bahgee.

The books stacked on the table at the lower right hand corner are vintage school books which I have in my collection. I bought them  from a bookshop along Recto Avenue way back in the early 1990s. Take note of the brownish book on top of the heap. That is Camilo Osias' "Philippine Readers-Book Six". I still have that book to this day, and I'm now rereading some stories from it. What is most remarkable about this book are the three or four illustrations done by Fernando Amorsolo.

I understand Adriano Natividad's dismay. Ads was the former assistant art director of Phoenix Publishing House. He has a Philippine Readers-Book One which has Amorsolo as its sole illustrator. One of Ads' friends said that that book was much sought after by collectors, and would fetch a tidy sum if he decides to sell it. But the problem is the book is no longer in mint condition, with many of the pictures cut out and the others colored with crayons by his grandchild.

Encouraged by Ads' story, I returned to the bookshop where I bought my Philippine Readers hoping to find a Book One copy. I scoured the shelves in search of that book. The shop still has vintage books all right, but there is no longer any Philippine Readers.

(Photo above: "Old Rex Bookstore"; 1999; acrylic on paper; 14 X 9 inches; Rey Fontelera collection)

KIRSTEN AND EGON 

 

I had an online tiff in 2011 with Kirsten Anderberg. An American, she described herself as a feminist, historian, human rights activist, musician, and writer. She was also a 1997 graduate of the Whittier Law School. So, she must be a full-pledged lawyer by now. Awesome credentials indeed, anyway you look at it. And I, who didn't finished college, was definitely in awe.

Our conversation began amiably enough. A fan apparently of my artworks, she offered to do a write-up on me and my art. But she got nasty and started to label me a male chauvinist and homophobe when I began contradicting her so-called  'feminist' views which I thought unfair and out of line. In the end, she withdrew her offer to write about me, to which I replied, good riddance! I said that I wouldn't want to collaborate with a person who goes ballistic everytime she's contradicted.

Our disagreement was caused mainly by the paintings I did of nude female models featured in the girlie magazines I kept at home. Kirsten wondered why I was doing only female nudes. She asked me to add male nude paintings to my repertoire, to which I answered that it's a big no-no for me, because naked male bodies disgust me. Apparently, she overlooked , the "hahaha..." I end my answer with to indicate that I'm just being facetious. She assailed my saying that, because she must have thought my disgust real. She quickly presumed that i was homophobic, which word she, who claimed to be a writer, thought meant hater of males. Homophobic actually meant a person who dislikes or is prejudiced against  homosexuals.

She next told me that she can't quite believed that I see nothing beautiful in Michelangelo's naked male sculptures. Well, which artist won't be entranced by them. In fact, when I was still in art school, Michelangelo's paintings of powerful males were the first art works I tried to emulate. I was so enthralled by Michelangelo that I bought two books that featured his art.

But Kirsten should understand that when an artist admires male nude artworks, it doesn't follow that that artist will be inspired to also create male nude artworks. Not wanting to paint naked male bodies doesn't imply hating them, or the male specie in general.
Kirsten insistence on their being one and the same is stupid logic.

My fascination with Michelangelo's paintings of naked males is over, and I'm now pouring my efforts in painting, not only female nudes, but also picture book illustrations and other paintings depicting a variety of subject matter.

Her supposedly observant eye then focused on a female nude painting I did, that of Marilyn Monroe in high heels - "Maria Lina Desnuda". She remarked that Marilyn shouldn't be so glamorized because she led a sad life. She may have achieved fame and fortune, but she in truth felt exploited. That's why she succumbed to the lure of drugs and was so depressed that she eventually committed suicide. How true and how sad.

But what Kirsten said next floored me. Here, unedited, caps and all, are her exact words: " I ask you paint a few of her DEPRESSED, LONELY, DRUNK ALONE DESPERATE let's paint REAL portraits of who she was for once! Paint THOSE pictures, not this trite predictable made up crap of a "fairy tale" of what women never should want to be unless they want to be MISERABLE AND DIE YOUNG."

What temerity! Who does she think she is? She has no right whatsoever to dictate to me what I should paint next. It's none of her business if I want to paint a thousand portraits of a glamorized Marilyn Monroe oozing with sex appeal and joy.

Kirsten's opinion on my art doesn't count. She may affixed to her name all those highfalutin titles, but still, I won't consider her "art criticism" valid and relevant because I can see at a glance that her knowledge about art is sparse and threadbare. The only opinions about art I highly esteem and put a high premium on are those of my peers - my fellow artists; those of the art critics, art dealers, art collectors; and most especially those of my family and friends, because I know that they always mean well even if they negatively criticized my artworks.

If she wanted more male nudes painted, I, a male painter, shouldn't be the one she should pester. She should ask the female and gay painters she knows to do it for her. Maybe, she should also request the best painter nowadays of pin-up style female nudes, Olivia de Berardinis, to cease painting those naked women in porn poses and stiletto heels and instead start painting male nudes from now on.

And Kirsten should also stop lumping us painters of female nudes with pornographers. Nude female art, when executed tastefully, is not pornography. By tasteful, I mean those pictures where the models posed demurely and without showing in an obscene manner their private parts.

But even the blatantly prurient quality of artworks are sometimes overlooked when done by artists of high historic value like Austrian artist Egon Schiele for example. Schiele was active at a time when pornographic drawings enjoyed a rather large clientele in Vienna.

Egon Schiele drew female and male nudes that obviously weren't meant as mere exercises in anatomical drawing. These nudes, of both adults and children, depicting them with their vulvas and phalluses in open display were obviously intended to arouse sexual desires.

Egon is considered one of Austria's significant artists. He could have stood out alone at the top and produced many more wholesome artworks, like portraits and urbanscapes had he lived longer. But he died young at age 28, during the Spanish flu pandemic in Europe in 1918, which also claimed the life of his great mentor Gustav Klimt.

Egon's drawings enthrall me. How I wish I could draw like him. My having two books about him is proof that I am his big fan. I could have acquired a third had I enough  money to buy the book of his nudes I saw on sale many years ago at the National Bookstore. These books on Schiele were what prompted me to try my hand at creating my own suite of nude paintings of women,  but minus the luridness, of course

VHENG AND THE SUPREMACY OF EVE 

The title of the painting below is "Supremacy of Eve". It is an acrylic on paper work measuring 30 x 22 inches. It was bought by a former and very much younger schoolmate from the University of the East School of Music and Fine Arts, Elvira Gonzaga. We call her Vheng.

Vheng was one of those from our school who made good in life. As I have said before, Vheng tops my list of successful Fine Arts friends because painters like me hold art collectors in high esteem. I'm sure Jojo Garcia and Oca Magos regard her highly too. We three are the full-time painters in our group. We owed Vheng a lot. She never hesitated to buy our works everytime we offer them to her.

Vheng must have liked the Supremacy of Eve per se. But what could have added to her interest in it was the fact that this painting was written about in a newspaper.

The highly-respected art critic Constantino Tejero wrote a review of my second solo show at the Crucible Gallery titled "Illustration art as fine art". This painting was one of those shown in the exhibit. The review appeared in the June 25, 2007 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. This review was a gift Tino gave me without him knowing because June 25 happened to be my birthday.

Below is an excerpt from that review:

"...But even more than his delicate colorism, the viewer appreciates his fine rendering of form. His illustration skill goes beyond mere visual narrative.

"The viewer can immediately see it in the painstaking details of a piece such as "Supremacy of Eve": the grains of the loose soil; the ribbing of the banana leaves; and even how the light falls on the front and the back of each leaf; the yellow overripe bananas on the ground; the tiny yellow and purple flowers of some weeds."

I had the most difficulty doing research for this painting. As you can see, this work required a lot of banana plant references. Since I only have a few clippings of that at home, I had to go out with my camera and bike to search for real banana plants to shoot. The effort took me to Dagat-dagatan near the boundary of Malabon. It was on a vacant lot along Dagat-dagatan Avenue that I found a dozen or more banana plants. 

There was a barung-barong (hovel) on the edge of the lot beside the road. The hovel's window was open. When I peered inside, I saw sleeping on a mat on the floor a couple, with the man only in his briefs. Boy was I surprised! Hahaha.... I got scared too. I surely wouldn't want to wake them up. So, I just decided to do fast what I came there to do, to take pictures of banana plants. I'm still wondering to this day what that man would have done to me had he woke up and saw me taking pictures on what appears to be his lot.

Incidentally, the barung-barong is located in what is probably the Kalookan or eastern part of Dagat-dagatan. The western and northern part of Dagat-dagatan belong to Navotas and Malabon respectively. Dagat-dagatan up to the early 1970s was all water---a real lake dotted with fishpens. It was drained in the mid-1970s to enable the government to use the reclaimed land for its resettlement project.

Nick Joaquin, in his book "A Question of Heroes", mentioned that the city's name Kalookan was probably derived from Manila Bay which could be seen in the old days from the ridge where the city hall is now located. Bay is translated into 'look' in Tagalog. Or perhaps, the name was inspired by that now non-existent lake below the city hall ridge. Dagat-dagatan translates into false or imitation sea that's why I have the feeling, just a guess actually, that Dagat-dagatan might also have been called Look-lookan a century or so ago. Hence, the name Kalookan.

(Photo collage above: Top photo---SUPREMACY OF EVE; 2006; Acrylic on paper; 30 X 22 inches; Elvira Gonzaga collectiono

Bottom photo---Vheng is the lady standing at right. Others in the photo, clockwise from left, are myself, Jerry Dean,  Oca Magos, Bert and Dulce Falsies, and Jojo Garcia)

CERTIFICATES OF INAUTHENTICITY 

 

One day, I and my cycling buddy Isko Dela Cruz dropped by the house of a painter who was copying an Amorsolo painting. The painter's improvised studio was outside the house, on the narrow front yard separated from the sidewalk by a top to bottom grill fence.

The sidewalk was along Samson Road in Caloocan, just walking distance from Baltazar Bukid Street where Isko lives. The fence being just grill work, we could see from where we stood on the sidewalk the man at work.

The painter, whose name I forgot, told us that he's already based in Canada, an immigrant petitioned by his daughter. He's just here on vacation, he said. On his easel was an unfinished reproduction of an Amorsolo painting. According to him, he used to do several such reproductions when he was younger which he consigned with a gallery in Ermita.

While conversing with him, a friend7 of his, a fellow painter, came along. This fellow revealed that he was also into painting reproductions not only of Amorsolos, but also of paintings by other famous contemporary painters as well. He added that he had a regular client, an art collector, who commissioned him for those works.

But there's a sinister note to their transaction. This collector resells those reproductions as originals to gullible buyers, presenting as proof of their genuineness the certificates of authenticity (COA) provided by the original artists themselves. This painter-forger boasted  that he was paid 20 thousand pesos by that collector for every fake painting he delivered.

Here's how that sinister art collector operates. He will first buy an original painting from a famous best-selling painter and requests a COA, which the painter will naturally give. The collector will then ask the forger to copy exactly not only  the original painting he just bought but also  the signature of the famous artist who painted the original. The art collector will afterwards find a buyer for the fake painting which he'll claim as an original, showing as proof a certificate of authenticity which could be the genuine thing provided by the famous artist or could also be a forgery.

That was neat. Our talk with those two painters happened many years ago, in 2014 I think. I don't know if that painter-forger is still at it, doing exact copies of paintings by famous artists and signing them with the famous artists' signature, and delivering them to that sinister art collector with a criminal mind. All I know is that art forgery, being notoriously profitable, must still be rampant nowadays, especially of works which are easy to copy but could sell for hundreds of thousands or even millions of pesos.

Wikipedia defines art forgery as the creation of works of art which are falsely attributed to other, usually more famous, artists. Copies, replicas, and reproductions are not considered forgeries if the copying artist puts his own signature on the artwork and not that of the master.

Years ago, I came across an article by Constantino Tejero in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, titled "Devious Manansala Thwarted." Tejero discussed in that article a painting, "The Bird Seller", which was scheduled to be put on the block in a Christie's-Hong kong auction. The painting, dated 1976, was supposedly by Manansala, but alert Manansala collectors immediately notified Christie's of their suspicion that the work was most probably a forgery because there is a similar 1973 Manansala work owned by Judy Araneta Roxas titled "Birdman". 

The owner of the Bird Seller could have passed it off easily as genuine despite a subtle difference in coloration. Only the discerning eyes of the Manansala experts prevented his or her doing so. And indeed, the Bird Seller, when analyzed and compared with the original Manansala, showed hints of being painted by a lesser-skilled artist. The accusation by the Manansala collectors must be true, because the owner of the Bird Seller, when challenged by the Christie's personnel, just quietly withdrew the painting from the auction.

Art forgery is a lucrative racket. One painter, a Dutchman, sold more than a million dollars worth of fake Vermeers before being discovered and jailed. The painter who doubled as an art dealer was Han van Meegeren. He sold several 'Vermeer' paintings to Hitler's air force chief Hermann Goering. When the allies discovered Goering's cache of  supposed Vermeers, and traced its origin to van Meegeren, he was promptly arrested and charged with collaboration with the Nazis---a crime punishable by death. To save his skin, van Meegeren chose to confess to a lesser crime, and claimed that he himself painted the fake Vermeers, a claim he proved when he painted in prison the painting "Jesus Among the Doctors".

And the racketeers are still at it, it would seem, as shown by the case of a painting being eagerly passed off as a lost Michelangelo. The painting was a Pieta, and I, although not formally schooled in art criticism, could easily see that it wasn't a Michelangelo at all. It is but a confused amalgam of the styles of Caravaggio, Giovanni Bellini, and okay, perhaps of Michelangelo himself. But Michelangelo always painted his bambinos chubby, not muscular as they are painted on this pieta. Therefore, the very muscularity of the two boys betrays the try-hard and silly attempt of whoever painted this to approximate Michelangelo's muscular images of adult male and female figures.

Filipino art forgers have already caught on with their foreign counterparts, as witness the appearance in recent years of a fake Malang, a fake Bencab, and perhaps several fake Botongs. Fake Amorsolos seem to be abundant even during the days when the master was still alive. I've read somewhere that when a buyer of a fake Amorsolo brought the painting to him for authentication, Amorsolo, out of pity for the poor buyer, applied by his own hand daubs of paint to the canvas to make it an 'original' work of his.

An assistant curator of a gallery in Manila, told me that he moonlights as a dealer of a Botong watercolor, which is priced at more than a hundred thousand pesos. I have seen an original Botong watercolor, so I told him that I could perhaps tell if the Botong he was selling was a fake. He said that he was sure that the artwork was genuine because it has a certificate of authenticity, signed by Botong's manchador (underpainter or apprentice) himself, to back it up. I cannot say this to his face then , but I'm saying now that some people can be bought. And that documents can lie because they can also be forged. Besides, the apprentice or assistant of the master painter should be the last person whose words we should trust on the question of the genuineness of the painting whose certificate of authenticity he signed. Who knows, that painting could just be the handiwork of the apprentice himself, his copy of the master's original.

Well, my point is authentication papers don't mean a thing if the artworks they certify as originals are so badly done that they are easily seen as clear bastardization of the masters' styles. What art buyers should do is to ask for certificates of authenticity upon purchase of the artwork from the artist himself if he's still alive, or from his heirs if already dead. That was what the buyer of the three oils I exhibited at the Crucible Gallery did.

Another interesting read from the Philippine Daily Inquirer was an article by former Toyota coach and painter Dante Silverio. He lamented in that article the practice of a famous Filipino painter he didn't name, who demands 10 thousand pesos for a COA a previous buyer of his painting would request. Mr. Silverio strongly objected to that. He wrote that it is the duty of the artist to provide free of charge COAs to clients who patronized his works, even more so to those who bought from him the works he did when he was not yet famous. Demanding fees for COAs is the height of ingratitude, Mr. Silverio pointed out. I agree.

Since certificates of authenticity are not foolproof and can even be used to authenticate fake paintings, perhaps what a buyer of a painting should also demand is a photograph of the painter handing over the painting to the original collector. It would be a good idea therefore for buyers of art to have their photos taken with the artist and the artwork so that when they decide to unload the artwork later on they can provide the new buyer not only with a COA but also with a copy of the turn-over photo.

This, the latest buyer of my painting, Ms. Maricar Celestial, did when I delivered the painting she commissioned me to her condominium. She earlier requested that I provide her with a certificate of authenticity. I replied that I can't give her that for the meantime since computer shops where I'll have the certificate printed are still close due to the community quarantine. Before I left , Maricar, who commissioned me again for another painting, suggested that she be the one who'll provide printed copies of COAs which I'll just sign when I come back. I agreed of course. So, I left her condominium that July day extremely grateful and satisfied---and confident too that I'll have cash enough to sustain us through this pandemic for the next few months.

(The image above is a photo-collage of the three oil paintings I exhibited and sold to a single collector during my 2007 solo show at the Crucible Gallery. They were also the first three of my artworks for which a collector asked for certificates of authenticity.)

BLACK

 

Amirasolo and Othe

The story Mon Villanueva told us might be apocryphal. The source of that story was a former student of the University of the East School of Music and Fine Arts (UESMFA). This student related that on the first day of their painting class, their instructor inspected their oil paint sets, took the tubes of black paint out of the boxes, and threw them out the window.

The reason, the instructor declared, was because in his class, the use of black in their paintings is forbidden. That was a ridiculous and tyrannical gesture---an overacted dramatics by that instructor who could have just ordered his students to leave their tubes of black paint at home.

Some art teachers from way way back have forbidden the use of black in painting. I've heard first hand one or two instructors telling us to use, in lieu of real black, a mixture of all  the primary colors---lots of blue and red and a little yellow. That was a dictum probably propagated by impressionist painters who preferred a palette of pastel hues above all others. They won't use black for shadows, but would instead use blue, purple, and even pink. With good results, I admit.

But not all painters are impressionists. Many painters like myself are not averse to using black in our artworks. Even in art school, I've always used black in my plates in direct disregard of the advice given us by an instructor.

More so when I turned professional. All of my illustrations and paintings have ample traces of black in them. I mixed black with red to get a maroon, and with blue and white to get a blue-gray color. I used black too in painting shadows, hair, eyes, and anything that looks truly black.

It seems impractical to spend time and effort to mix three colors to get a color that is almost black when I have a tube of black paint waiting to be squeezed on the palette and brushed on the paper or canvas. Of course, if I need black and I don't have a tube of black paint on hand, that's the time I'll employ my knowledge of color mixing and combine all primary colors to get my black.

One seemingly valid reason why art teachers tell students to refrain from using black in painting is because the finished work would appear to have holes in them if black was used. Not always. Of course, the spots of pure black paint will look like holes if their edges are painted sharp, and not blurred to blend with the adjacent colors.

The trick really is to use black paint sparingly, to not mixed it with many of the colors you are using. If you have a tube of black paint, use it. Do not mixed the blues, reds, and yellows to get your black. Because a time may come when you'll need those primary colors individually but you don't have any left anymore because you have used them all, mixed up together, as black paint. You'll be forced then to rush to the art supply store to buy again the colors you have carelessly used.

(The photo collage above shows a few of my artworks on which I made ample use of black paint.)

LORD OF THE REEF: ARTIST STATEMENT 

(Lalyn Buncab, curator of the Museum of the Dela Salle University, invited me to join an exhibit she's organizing. That was in early 2018. The show, MUKHA: PORTRAITS OF HISTORIES AND STORIES, had for its theme, portraits. Posted above is my piece for the show---the painting "Lord of the Reef". Below is my Artist Statement.)

ARTIST STATEMENT

This painting is a self-portrait---though not obviously so, because of the diving mask covering my face. If you look closely you'll discern that the eyes, eyebrows, and moustache of the diver are my eyes, eyebrows, and moustache. Also, the attire and diving gear were what I used to wear then. But even though this work is a self-portrait, the scene is just imaginary. I am just role-playing here. The painting is a portrayal of my fascination with the sea and my admiration for and awe of spear-fishermen who I considered before as sportsmen par excellence.

But why "Lord of the Reef"? The title is also a question. Who really rule the deep---its fiercer  denizens like the barracudas or sharks, or the intruding humans, whose greed and wanton fishing methods could only lead to the depletion of marine resources?

The persona I assumed in this painting is anti-heroic, so to speak. I said that I considered spear-fishermen as sportsmen par excellence. That was before. But no longer. I now see those who are into spear and deep-sea fishing for sports as no better than those who hunt for trophies in Africa. If they must kill fish, they should do it out of necessity---not for fun, not for thrills, and certainly not to earn bragging rights as champion sea hunters.

--- May 5, 2018 in

(Photo above: "Lord of the Reef"; 2007; acrylic on paper; 30 X 22 inches; Dr. Manolet and Mari Tan-Delfin collection)

EROTIC AIR IN THE TALE OF RAPUNZEL 

 

Amirasolo and Other Essays

Part 3. In my Book

Essay 37. EROTIC AIR IN THE TALE OF RAPUNZEL

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm didn't have children in mind as their primary audience when they put out the first editions of their book, Kinder-und Hausmarchen (Children and Household Tales) in 1812 and 1815. It was only in the 1819 edition did they begin to eliminate passages with erotic content to make it more palatable to bourgeois morality and taste. For the curious out there, here is the English translation of an excerpt from "Rapunzel" as originally written and published in 1812:

"At first Rapunzel was afraid, but soon she took such a liking to the young king that she made an agreement with him: he was to come everyday and be pulled up. Thus they lived merrily and joyfully for a certain time, and the fairy did not discover anything until one day when Rapunzel began talking to her and said, "Tell me, Mother Gothel, why do you think my clothes have become too tight for me and no longer fit?"

So, there---Rapunzel became pregnant by the young king, which was the most natural and lovely state for her to be. My sensibilities may have been numbed by all the explicit videos I've watched, but I must say that I see nothing wrong in that very oblique mention of their amorous frolics. Therefore, to make my illustration adhere closely to the original spirit of the tale, I painted a half-eaten apple, symbolizing that most delicious of 'sins', at the lower right portion of the artwork.

(Image above: "Rapunzel"; 2003; acrylic on paper; Reni Roxas collection)

DKNY EXPRESS

Amirasolo and Other Essays

Part 3. In my Book

Essay 38. DKNY EXPRESS

I painted DKNY Express in 2012. The jeepney image was a variant of a cartoon I designed and printed on t-shirts in 1992. The female guitarist figure in turn was an image I came up with after I switched style in 2008, and started experimenting and subjecting my human forms to simplification and distortion. I called the suite of paintings of slender females I produced during this period my 'slim series'.

This painting is closely connected with two of my UST High School classmates---Arn Cruz and Ray Espinosa. The DKNY of the title doesn't mean Donna Karan New York. It is the tongue-in-cheek abbreviation, or initialism, for Divisoria Kanto ng Ylaya (Divisoria corner Ylaya), which are places in Manila frequented by bargain-hunters. I first heard of 'Divisoria Kanto ng Ylaya' from Arn Cruz when he gave me and another classmate a lift in his car on our way home to Tondo. When I said that our house is just walking distance from Ilaya Street, he said something to this effect, "Ah, doon ka pala nakatira sa DKNY (Ah, so you live in DKNY)."

I initially planned to letter 'Viva Santo Niño' on the visor or headboard (or whatever it is called) of the jeepney and title this piece "Fiesta Serenade". But then Arn's DKNY joke came to mind, and that's it. I realized at once that DKNY Express is the better title because of its humor and wit. Thanks Arn for giving me the idea for the title.

Ray Espinosa, on the other hand, bought this painting. There was a time during the latter months of 2013 when I really need cash fast. And to sell fast, I offered this painting at a very low price to Ray. I even included as sweeteners two of my small abstracts on paper to the package. What Ray said after reading my message surprised me, very pleasantly. He said that I shouldn't sell my paintings cheap. He offered me an amount almost four times higher than what I quoted, which I of course accepted readily.

Thank you very much, Ray.

(Image above: "DKNY EXPRESS"; 2012; oil on canvas; 18 X 24 inches; Ray Espinosa collection)

 

WORKS ON PAPER

Amirasolo and Other Essays

Part 3. In my Book

                                                                          Essay 39. WORKS ON PAPER

Noted painter Renato Habulan invited me to join him and other noted artists, Fred Liongoren, Benjie Torrado Cabrera, and Pinggot Zuleta, in an exhibit of paintings on paper. The show, "Papelismo",  opened at the Crucible Gallery on September 4, 2012. It was the first in a series of shows by the Papelismo group.

It was late 2011 when Ato send me a message about his plan to mount such a show, because he was of the impression then that works on paper were supposedly being ignored by artists and art collectors alike. 

Well, there may be truth to that, because Atty. Jing David, owner of Galerie Anna, had also observed the same thing. We were at the Altro Mondo, during the opening of an exhibit of our group of Metrobank painting competition winners, when he told me that galleries find it difficult to increase the price of paintings on paper. He observed that there seems to be a certain ceiling beyond which the prices of paintings on paper cannot go. 

Sari Ortiga, President of the Crucible Gallery, also expressed a similar opinion. He suggested that I do more oils on canvas, because they are easier to sell. And he was right there, because the three oils I exhibited in my second solo show at the Crucible in 2007, were bought wholesale by a single collector at a good price. I surmised that one reason why collectors seem to be reluctant to buy paintings on paper is the perceived 'perishability' of such works. Pish posh! I say to that.

The painting "A Gift of War" (top painting in the photo collage above) is one of my oldest extant works. It is a 1983 acrylic on Ingres-Fabriano paper. Compared to my old oils done during the same period, this painting aged admirably well. While my old oil paintings have lost their luster because of the accumulated dust and grime, the colors of this painting have surprisingly retained their original intensity. And the paper is still far from crumbling.

In my later works, I have used acrylic mostly on Canson Montval paper. Sometimes, when I finished a work, the paper buckled or warped because of the many acrylic washes I applied to it. This may surprised you, but what I did to straighten the paper out was immersed it for a second or two in a tub of water, and then hanged it on a line to dry. Once dried, the paper regained its flatness with the colors remaining undisturbed and intact. 

One way of protecting paintings on paper is to always keep them framed under glass or wrapped in plastic, which I should say isn't an inconvenient or expensive thing to do, compared again to what should be done to prevent an oil painting from collecting dust and grime---which is to display them in a dust-free or air-conditioned room.

By the way, "A Gift of War", which was my plate for our Composition class at the UE School of  Fine Arts, was one of the two paintings I submitted to a gallery in 1985 for approval. Our group, the SETA Movement, intended then to hold our first show at that gallery. 

We asked a fellow UE fine arts student and one of the gallery's resident artists, to intercede for us. But he, to our disappointment, returned with the word that our exhibit proposal was rejected. He said that the reason the gallery owner wasn't sold on our proposal was because she considered this painting an illustration. Today I'm still baffled why she said that, because any competent art practitioner could easily see that A Gift of War is a serious work of art , a pure painting, and not an illustration.

It seems that many are still confused about the difference between an illustration and 'pure or serious' painting. A pure painting can stand by itself, that is, it doesn't need a manuscript to give it significance, unlike an illustration which owes its existence from it. An illustration is a pictorial depiction of a story, or visual adornment for or of a product which is meant to be printed at the outset in commercial quantity. Thus, art for books, calendars, commercial ads, and greeting cards are all illustrations. 

The illustrative quality of a particular work doesn't lie in its having linear or non-painterly characteristics. A foreign art restorer who worked on Botong Francisco's large-scale painting "The Pageant of Commerce" remarked that "there is a thin line between illustration and painting in the linear style". He added that "Francisco's painting is a prime example of linear painting where lines and contours appear like cut-outs". He was in effect saying that that Botong Francisco painting is almost like an illustration because of its linear quality. 

I don't agree. I have seen several illustrations that are non-linear and some almost abstract in style, where the brushworks are loose and painterly and the edges of the images blurred. 

On the other hand, to further prove my point, I will cite the frescoes of Luca Signorelli and Diego Rivera, Michelangelo's "Doni Madonna", Andrew Wyeth's temperas, and the paintings by the Pre-Raphaelites,  to name a few, as prime examples of linear works that are pure paintings, not illustrations.

Well, that is how I understand it. I'd welcome the comment of anyone who has a different take on the matter.

THUMBELINA ILLUSTRATIONS 

Amirasolo and Other Essays     

 Part 3. In my Book                                          

Essay 41. THUMBELINA ILLUSTRATIONS

Before I began doing the illustrations for a book of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales, Tahanan Books publisher Reni Roxas lent me several foreign picture books for me to peruse and to be inspired or even challenged by. One of those books was Wayne Anderson's "Thumbelina". 

True enough, I was indeed so inspired by one of Anderson's illustrations that I patterned the composition of my Thumbelina illustration after it, with the difference that the human figure and the other elements in the picture I drew are realistic or un-stylized.

Anderson's Illustrations, although cartoony, rest on a higher level of artistry than comics Illustrations and manga or animation and anime, all of which are but black and white line drawings colored digitally. The Thumbelina character plus the flora, fowls, and fauna in Anderson's pictures were drawn in a cartoonish and charmingly distorted manner, yes, but they were painted the way a fine artist would paint, by hand, using watercolor, with touches of colored pencils perhaps. The resulting illustrations are therefore prized collectibles that any art collector would crave to add to his collection.

My Thumbelina was one of the illustrations that were very much in-demand on the opening day of my solo show at the Crucible Gallery in 2001. Four art collectors wanted to acquire it. One of them was my former UST High School classmate and now Meralco President Atty. Ray Espinosa. But Thumbelina was already reserved for and eventually acquired by Mark Yap, who also added the book's cover art, "The Little Mermaid", to his collection.

Incidentally, I was truly expecting Reni to choose Thumbelina to be the cover art for the book "Once Upon a Time".  But she chose The Little Mermaid instead. Which is not a bad choice, come to think of it.

Thumbelina had been illustrated by many illustrious artists, both past and present. The most notable ones in my opinion were those done by, well, the British Wayne Anderson, the  Russian Gennady Spirin, the Ukrainian Galya Zinko, and the Austrian Lisbeth Zwerger.

Since it took me around three weeks to finish each illustration for "Once Upon a Time", I completed the eleven illustrations for the book only after about a year. That's a veritable snail's pace, I would concede, especially when compared to the pace of other Filipino illustrators who can finish a book in one month. 

But I can't help it, being the obsessive-compulsive person that I am, who won't declare an artwork done until I saw that it won't compare too unfavorably with the works of the illustrators I admire.

(Photo collage below shows, clockwise from top left, illustrations by Wayne Anderson, Gennady Spirin, Galya Zinko, and Lisbeth Zwerger)

MY MOST BORROWED ILLUSTRATION 

 

Amirasolo and Other Essays

Part 3. In my Book

Essay 42. MY MOST BORROWED ILLUSTRATION

Of all the illustrations I did, The Wild Swans was the one most borrowed by bloggers. I'm flattered. But I'll be flattered more if the people who shared this image asked permission from me first, or better yet, from the real copyright owner, Reni Roxas, before posting this image on their sites. When I searched the internet, I discovered that when you googled Arnaldo Mirasol, around twelve blog sites will appear with the Wild Swans as cover photo. Last I checked, here is the list of those sites: Sacred Familiar, Watercolordreams, indigodreams, sweetpeapath, sosuperawesomw, Dangerous Prayer, illustratosphere, Altared Spaces, and  traveling ghost. Of these, only traveling ghost made it a point to obtain my permission.

So, Reni Roxas, publisher of Tahanan Books, must have chosen right when she picked The Wild Swans to add to her collection---instead of The Little Mermaid, which many consider as my best work. Reni said that she wants the Wild Swans because it can stand by itself, that is, it doesn't need any manuscript to define or explain it, or give it significance. Many agreed with her, because admirers of The Wild Swans see it as not just a "mere illustration": they almost always describe it as like a surrealist painting. Which is a compliment in my opinion, because surrealism occupies a high niche in my pantheon of artistic styles.

Today, the Wild Swans is turning out to be my most in-demand work too.There were  requests in the past from people who wanted me to do a copy of this illustration for them. But they baulked in closing the deal when I said that I must do the remake of this really big. This Illustration is rather diminutive in scale, you see---it measures only 10 X 12.5.inches. What I had in mind was do a version in oil on a canvas measuring 3 X 4 feet, or even 4 X 6 feet. Only Kartini Asia Gallery owner Nina Malvar and Pinto Art Museum's Dr. Joven Cuanang agreed that the remake should really be big. Dr. Joven even asked for 'the privilege to purchase' the large-scale oil version for the Pinto Museum. He said that it would be lovely to have it there.

Months ago, a writer---a poet primarily---who writes in Spanish and English sent me a message asking my permission for her to use my illustration for the Wild Swans as cover photo for her Facebook page. She said that it is meaningful in times like this, that it is beautiful and uplifting. I told her that the copyright to that work and all other classic fairy tales illustrations I did is owned by Reni Roxas, publisher of Tahanan Books for Young Readers. Reni bought from me not only the copyright, but also that very artwork and several others besides.

I added though that perhaps Reni won't mind because, anyway, the work won't be used for  commercial purposes. That is what is meant by 'fair use' in the copyright infringement laws, I think. I myself won't mind. I feel honored in fact that a published writer from Latin America would find my work worthy to be the cover of her Facebook page. I just requested that she write in the caption my name as artist and Tahanan Books for Young Readers as publisher.

FACET OF MANHOOD

Amirasolo and Other Essays

Part 3. In my Book

Essay 43. FACETS OF MANHOOD

by Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol 

The setting of the painting "Seraglio Fantasy" is Lido Beach in Noveleta, Cavite. The model for the foreground figure is my wife Carina. The photograph I used as reference was a picture I took of her at the resort when we and her high school 'barkadas' went there sometime in 1981. The naked figures behind are mannequins that were supposedly brought to life.

An oil painting on canvas, Seraglio Fantasy is a relatively small work, measuring just 2 X 2 feet, I guess I can consider it as the 'piece de resistance' of my second solo show at the Crucible Gallery because it was the highest-priced painting I've sold up to that time.

Seraglio Fantasy was one of the three oil paintings on canvas I exhibited in that 2007 solo exhibit. The other two are "Trekkers' Bliss (Taal Crater Lake) and "Snorkeler's Blues (Ungab Rock Formation)". The rest of the artworks are acrylics on paper.

Months before the show, which also featured the Brothers Grimm fairy tales illustrations I did for the book "Long Ago and Far Away", Crucible Gallery President Sari Ortiga suggested that I do oil paintings on canvas because they sell better than works on paper. He must be right, because the Seraglio Fantasy and the two other oils were bought by a single collector.

I was no longer confident of my oil painting skills before starting work on Seraglio Fantasy because it would be the first time since 1988 that I would be touching oil paint again. The medium I was most comfortable with after that year was acrylic, which I used the transparent watercolor way, for the Illustrations I did on paper. 

This exhibit - titled "Magic and Machismo" - marked my return to 'serious painting' after more than twenty years of working as illustrator, first as editorial cartoonist and later on as book illustrator. It was a comeback too for the surrealist in me, because aside from Seraglio Fantasy, I also exhibited two other paintings that are similarly surrealist in tone and form - "Happy Man" and "Supremacy of Eve".

Tahanan Books publisher Reni Roxas asked me, weeks before the opening, what is the theme or title of my show. I gave her the tentative title, "Facets of Manhood', and explained that it was because the paintings I will exhibit belong to my so-called machismo series. I can still remember to this day Reni's reaction to what I said. She raised an eyebrow - which must be her way of expressing disapproval of the machismo word without saying it.

There were two guests-of-honor at the opening of my show. Two publishers. One was Isagani Yambot, publisher of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and the other, Reni Roxas.

I must have sent already a letter of thanks to the Metrobank Foundation for their 30 thousand pesos exhibition grant. I'm thanking them again now for that. That exhibition grant was the 'bonus' bestowed on Metrobank painting contest winners, and I was given that because I was not only one of the three Best Entry winners in their very first competition in 1984, but also the co-winner, after the second round of judging, of the grand prize together with Roberto Feleo.

I also thank the highly-respected art critic Constantino Tejero for writing a review of that Magic and Machismo show. I remember myself  buying 10 copies of the Philippine Daily Inquirer on the day the review was published. Tejero's review appeared in the June 25, 2007 issue of the newspaper. That day was my birthday, that's why Tejero had in effect given me a birthday gift without him knowing it.

ON MULTIPLICITY OF STYLES 

My painting "Jolly Kids" (above) clearly shows the stylistic gulf separating my current artworks from those I did in the 1980s up to the year 2007. My UST high school classmate Vince Tabirara remarked that he can't quite figure out my style. He said that my artworks don't have a distinct look that would readily identify them as mine. I replied that my having a multiplicity of styles was inevitable, considering that the artworks he saw in my portfolio were done over a period of more than thirty years.

I had a varied art career. My first professional works were paintings belonging to the social realist school, but with a surrealist twist a la Dali. I was an editorial cartoonist for several years and then textbook illustrator, jobs where I put my knack for cartooning and caricatures to good use. 

It was when I became a picture book illustrator that I can truly say that I've exhausted the limits of realism. My fairy tale illustrations were replete with minute details rendered in true "kutkutan" fashion. I eventually grew tired of that style, especially after a fellow painter described me as obsessive-compulsive and his writer-wife in turn predicted that I won't get rich because of the excessively long time I take to finish an illustration. Even though said in jest, their remarks being on point stung me a little and got me worried. Thus, I changed style.

I'm not the only one who did. I could cite the names of numerous painters whose bodies of works would reveal several stylistic changes. Pablo Picasso was the most prominent and extreme example. Picasso was a child prodigy. He can already draw like Raphael when he was twelve years old, and he was just fifteen when he came out with paintings comparable to the mature works of the leader of the French Realist School, Gustave Courbet.

But Picasso wouldn't rest on his laurels. He chucked off that realist style for good in Paris when he created his poignant series of blue paintings. But before that, on the eve of his departure from Spain, he did a suite of pastel drawings more evocative of Roualt---with their dark outlines and simplified figures---than of Courbet. These, Picasso's Blue Period paintings done during his starving years, were pictures of sadness, poverty, and misfortune.

In 1907, Picasso came out with the landmark painting "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" which was to become the prototype for Cubism. He next came up with his Neo-classical series, where the figures this time are of robust proportions, quietly reminiscent of Michelangelo even if overly simplified and distorted. The painting which many consider his masterpiece, the "Guernica", was apparently a fusion or synthesis of his cubist and neo-classic styles. Picasso went on to create in rapid succession more paintings of different forms or styles which art historians no longer bother to label or classify.

Another painter who have trekked the style spectrum, so to speak, was the surrealist Salvador Dali who started out as an impressionist. With the advent of cubism, he promptly did paintings that mimicked closely those by Picasso. He also produced minimalist mixed-media abstracts when such were in vogue, and even what could be classified as a semi-abstract expressionist print where he used as tool, in lieu of brushes, an improvised grenade packed with nail shrapnels. When this so-called "apocalyptic granate" was detonated deep below a ravine, the nails embedded themselves on the surface of copper plates arranged like a box in the ravine leaving nail marks all over. Prints were made on large parchments using these copper plates one of which Dali jazzed up afterwards with an image of the Pieta and other adornments on the border using watercolor. The title of this piece is "Pieta of the Apocalypse of Saint John".

When Dali became a member of the surrealist movement he focused his efforts in creating dream-inspired paintings of mutating forms and double images rendered in his trademark illusionistic-surrealist manner. But unlike Picasso who stuck to his violent deconstructions or distortion of the human figure to the end, Dali's imagery in his later years, especially in his large-scale religious paintings, showed a resurgent concern with correct anatomy. His last painting though was a return to the minimalism of his youth. He just depicted in that painting lines resembling an outline of the tail of a bird and a motif or two from a violin.

Other artists who've switched or used simultaneously different painting styles in the course of their career were, to name a few among the foreign painters, Camille Pissaro, George Braque, Wassily Kandinsky, Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Jackson Pollock, Frank Stella, Jasper Johns, and Stanley Spencer. Filipino artists who did the same were Nena Saguil, Alfredo Roces, Hernando Ocampo, Jerry Navarro, Federico Aguilar Alcuaz, David Medalla, Santiago Bose, and Bencab, among others. Vicente Manansala, who was the first proponent of cubism here didn't start out as a cubist. His earlier works were influenced somewhat by Botong Francisco.

So you see, switching styles doesn't really diminished a painter. True, an artist who changes styles often might just be the impressionable type, or one who is easily influenced by anything he regards as superior ---which I confess I sometimes am. But the opposite could in fact be truer, because hopping from style to style can also be a mark of versatility, or even ingenuity. It might actually be just a manifestation of the artist's restless spirit and fondness for novelty and experimentation.

BIG APPLE DREAM'S TWIN

Although abstract, "White Head" (top image) is the 'twin painting' of the very figurative "Big Apple Dreams" (bottom image). I consider them twins because I began and finished both paintings almost simultaneously using the same oil paints I had on my palette. The surplus paints after I concluded a day of working on Big Apple Dreams was what I applied afterwards on the abstract canvas. Even though I'm satisfied at how this abstract painting came out, I was still pleasantly surprised when somebody bought it. White Head was part of Kartini Asia Gallery's 2018 group exhibit at the Alabang Country Club.

The first title I gave to this piece was "Fliptop Champion", in reference to that disgusting so-called modern "balagtasan" where declaiming protagonists shout expletives, obscene words, and insults at each other, instead of arguing using lilting  poetic wholesome words like in the balagtasan of old. I decided to change this painting's title to White Head to sever its link to that dirty present day verbal joust on Youtube.

Even though my paintings are mainly of the realist mode, I have in my list of favorite artists thirteen abstractionists who I'm sure are also masters of the realist technique---like Raul Isidro, Lao Lian Ben, Gus Albor, Lito Carating, Rock Drilon, Buds Convocar, Ross Capili, Max Balatbat, Isagani Fuentes, Fitz Herrera, Michael Pastorizo, Alain Hablo, and Josep Pascual. Their art have inspired me, and drove me into dabbling in abstraction

But some may question my leap into abstraction. I have been a realist painter for more than three decades now, and many art theorists looked askance at painters whose shift to abstraction was rather abrupt. Well, all I can say is my shift was not abrupt, because I have been at it, experimenting in creating new forms since 2008.

Unlike some child abstract expressionists who've gained prominence lately---thanks to online hype and sleek marketing strategies--- what I worried about in my early youth was how to get my drawings of the human form right. The thought of leapfrogging into being an abstract expressionist by creating art using the drip and splatter technique never entered my mind then.

The instant abstractionists have not done right, in my opinion. They have not hewed closely to what art and being an artist is about. The word art after all was derived from the Latin "ars", which means skill. Thus, painters who aspire to do abstractions should hone their skill in drawing and realistic painting first. They should first learn the rules before daring to break them. Some may disagree with that axiom, but if what I stated is wrong, what's the use then of having art workshops and schools or colleges of fine arts?

(Top image of the photo collage below: "Evolution of the Naos"; Bottom image: "Brown Cliffs of Nowhere")

PAINTINGS FOR FREE

Amirasolo and Other Essays

Part 3. In my Book                 

Essay 46. PAINTINGS FOR FREE

I consider the painting behind me in the photo above as my best surrealist work. It remains unsold to this day. The title of this painting when I exhibited it at the Crucible Gallery in 2007 was "Happy Man". Ii was shown again under another title, "Corrupt Bureacrat Dissected", at the Altromondo Gallery in 2010 during a group art exhibit of winners in the Metrobank annual painting competitions.

Two collectors have offered to buy this painting, but both deals fell through. One collector who expressed interest in buying this was one of the VIP guests in the  Metrobank exhibit at Altromondo. She said that she's going to have this painting reserved for herself because she wants to give this as gift to the then newly-elected President Noynoy Aquino, to warn him of this type of politicians who'll definitely hover around him in the coming days. I was elated of course, expectant of the windfall that will come my way in two weeks or so 

But I had no such luck. The painting wasn't bought. The woman didn't even have this reserved---that is, have it tagged with a green dot. Today, I suspect that maybe that woman was not really interested in buying this painting. Maybe, she just wanted me to get the hint, and volunteer to donate the painting myself to the President. Which I'll never do for two reasons. First, PNoy is a rich man and he can surely afford to buy this painting if he wants to. And second, we're not close---he's not even an acquaintance. I know of him but he doesn't know of me. I only give paintings to friends, long-time friends mostly, who've done me favors in the past. In short, I give paintings to reciprocate.

Another woman who was connected with a certain foundation once told me that artists should be grateful if they got invited to participate in a charity art exhibit and given part of the proceeds from sales. Well, I say that artists have all the right to get paid. It would be too much to ask of them to do the donating all by themselves, and give their paintings absolutely gratis to the organizers of a charity art exhibit. Painting is the painter's means of livelihood if he is not a mere dilettante. Proceeds from sales of his paintings put food on his table and paints on his palette. Not paying him in any way, therefore, would deprive him of those.

Asking professional artists to do an artwork for free is the height of insensitivity. It is an insult even, a presumption that an artist's talent, time, and effort were of little value. Offering exposure or free publicity as payment in lieu of cash exposes those who do so for the cheapskates they really are.

Years ago, there was a call for painters to do mural work inside Intramuros, if I remember correctly. There would have been a rush by artists to answer that call had there not been a catch. The catch was the artists won't be paid for their efforts. It was purely voluntary work where the payment presumably would be exposure and free publicity. I don't know if that gratis mural project pushed through, but I've never heard of it again.

Don't get me wrong, please. Artists can be civic minded too. They won't hesitate to donate an artwork or do art for free for truly worthy causes---like for example, Buds Convocars 'Art for Humanity' fund-raising campaign for the victims of Typhoon Yolanda. A plea to donate paintings to raise funds for a cancer-stricken fine arts schoolmate was also made. Both calls were successful as artists, including myself, gave artworks with alacrity. And then, there was Dr. Joven Cuanang's 'Flores Para Los Muertos' mural project on the east wall of the North Cemetery in which hundreds of enthusiastic painter volunteers participated.

You can see from the projects I cited above that artists are not that stingy. They are in fact inherently generous. All the promoters have to do to persuade artists' to perform volunteer work is to be forthright and state the commendable objective of the project without adding as supposed sweetener those crappy overused words, 'exposure and free publicity'. No need for them to take on the job of  publicizing what we artists do. We can do that without their help. If we want to flaunt our art, what we'll do is just flood facebook and other social media with our works.

THE ART OF GORE

 

Amirasolo and Other Essays

Part 3. In my Book

Essay 47. THE ART OF GORE

Years ago, I saw on television a Filipino painter who uses real human skulls as his painting medium. I repeat, as painting medium, not as motif or subject matter. The painter broke the skull into several pieces and used each as some kind of chalk which he rubbed on big squarish sheets of abrasive paper (papel de liha) which served as his canvases.

The abstract images he produced consisting of white striations and hatchings would have won the nod of art enthusiasts with modernist leanings or taste. But the gross nature of the medium I'm sure would repulse them instead. The fellow apparently relished demonstrating his technique as revealed by his brisk manner and his quite articulate reply to the interviewer's queries. He was obviously euphoric; he savored to the last delectable morsel his fifteen minutes of fame.

Featured in the same program was another painter who uses his own blood as painting medium instead of watercolor, acrylic, and oil. This painter treads the path similar to that walked on by other painters who, in the name of innovation and uniqueness, utilize edible ingredients like fried garlic and coffee as their painting medium.

Attempts to break out of the box and do things the novel way are commendable, indeed. But, these painters should also see to it that their finished works would be durable. The buyers of these artworks will be shortchanged if the 'pigment' used begin to fade, crumble, and deteriorate after just a year or two. Watercolor and oil paints have binders mixed with their pigments (gum arabic for watercolor and linseed oil for oil paints) which hold the pigment particles in suspension and make them adhere to the paper or canvas. Without those binders, watercolors and oils done centuries, or even just decades ago, wouldn't have lasted and remained in mint condition up to this day. Now, if the blood, fried garlic, and coffee pigments don't have binders mixed with them, then, I doubt if they would last for a long time 

What could have impelled these painters to use untried pigments as their medium must have been their craving to attract the attention of journalists on the prowl for unique stories. They perhaps suspect that their talent is not remarkable enough to attract media attention. They are wrong there, because their outputs spoke volumes about the innate talent they all have, which I'm certain would thrust them later into prominence. The process of being recognized as a significant artist is a long and arduous one. There are absolutely no shortcuts. The celebrity they now basked in is certainly short-lived. They run the risk too, if they persist in their ways, of being considered more as curiosities---oddities---rather than as significant artists by those involved in the art scene here.

Although graphic renderings of the human skull is not the thing of the guy who used cracked skulls as drawing tool,  I guess i can include him among the disciples of the Skull School. I can feel that he shares the same impulse in his art making, which is necrophilia and love of gore. The skull-schoolers espouse an upside-down aesthetics. They see beauty in rot. They confused their preoccupation with arcana and esoterica as profundity. But as I have said before, I suspect that what may have impelled these people to go the gross route is their obsessive craving for publicity. They must have realized early on that the flouting of rules and conventions is almost always newsworthy. 

And they are right, too. Salvador Dali may have employed similar tactics to generate publicity for his art but his methods now look amusing and even wholesome. He may have disrupted societal conventions and overstepped the limits of good taste, but everything he did was done tongue-in-cheek. Dali was just hamming. His feigning lunacy was just a marketing ploy. And let's not forget that for all his clowning, Dali, was in fact the great artist that he loudly touted himself to be. In my opinion, only Picasso outranked him as the greatest painter of the twentieth century.

I don't know if that Filipino artists still use human skull as his painting medium. I suppose and hope that he had stopped doing so and realized that true fame only comes to those who pursue and excelled in their artistic endeavours by going the tasteful route. Fame achieved by being famously disagreeable is notoriety. It is not the kind of publicity we artists should crave for.

(The image above, titled THE TRAVELING COMPANION, is one of my two illustrations for the longest story in the picturebook "Once Upon a Time". It was also one of the two that remained unsold at the end of my 2001 solo art exhibit at the Crucible Gallery. The Traveling Companion remained in my possession for some time.  Years after the show, I offered it to one of my collectors, May C. Reyes. She bought it, though with some misgiving on her part, I presumed. I say that because although she'd already paid for it, she seemed reluctant to have it delivered to her. It could be because of the skulls that are part and parcel of the story and the artwork. I understand because the skulls are creepy, all right. After maybe around two years, she send me a message saying that she already wants the Traveling Companion handed over to her because her son saw and liked it and wants to keep it for himself. So, I brought the piece to our meeting place together with "The Emperor's New Clothes", the other unsold piece, which she also bought.)

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