Run

Midnight

Last night we talked about death. He showed me a photo of his grandmother lying on her bed.

“She even got up to eat when I arrived”. His grandmother had been bedridden since the accident and on some days did not eat at all.

He was her favorite grandson and he cried to see her back with bedsores.

“It was as if she just waited to see me” because she died the night he took the boat back to Cebu.

There are many nights when do not talk at all, weeks at a time even. There are nights when we exchange one word greetings as he walks out of his room across mine. Then there are nights when everything has crashed down and we are blanketed with heartache or failure or death.

And on our little couch for four, me or me and my three roomies, we would sit in silence and let the darkness bathe us. We’d watch all the scenes of our young lives, listen to all the conversations we could remember, all the bitter pills and silent nights.

Sometimes, you get what you need

from the sketchpad

Sea

Detach

Sleep

Poof

Is anybody out there?

Sneezing

There are a few people that believe that sneezing is “a method of protection against evil spirits entering the body through the open mouth of a sneezing individual”. If that is true, I have been engaged in a brutal battle with an evil spirit for two days now- as I have been sneezing non-stop. I wish it would just go away to some reformation program and come back as a good spirit. The world is better with good spirits and without the common cold.

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Tigers are so majestic

These are detail screenshots of drawings that I’m doing for a Mural that’s going to be mounted in a school library, north of Cebu. I’ve never seen a tiger- yes, not even in a zoo! They seem so mysterious- and these drawings are based off photographs.

For this project, I’m doing some of the ink work while Johanna colors (the image posted here isn’t it- this is just me playing around with washes while I wait to go out for a walk, and buy new studio lights). It is very strange to be doing two straight mural projects, as we never really thought of it as a feasible illustration avenue.

Meanwhile, take a look at the marvelous work of Tessar Lo (who has painted a few tigers, btw). I hope he continues to paint forever, I find myself looking at his art on the web every now and then, it is very moving and some pieces speak to me in a very personal way. I hope that one day I can get to see his work in person. His website is tessarlo.com and he also keeps a blog at tessarlo.blogspot.com