Her.

(not about the spike jonze film.)

You were the one who told me that we were the fighting kind.
You were the one who urged me to never back down.
You were the one who told me the women in our family are strong.

Whatever happened to that lady, now afraid to leave a life of comfort and monotony for a life of freedom?
Whatever happened to the woman who is now afraid to question, to go against, to stand up for what she believes beyond of what happens within the four walls of this house?
Who now believes that none of us can truly be equal?
Who now wants me to "accept" everything that is given me without so much as a sound?

You who stuffed my bones with bravery so they wouldn't buckle when someone tries to break them.
You were the one who drained my body of cowardice so I would never have to feel it again.
You were the one who lit my veins up with the fire of the fight.
What happened to you?
You were so full of feist, and now still need the reassurance of witnessing in order to wake up and smell the smoke. The fire is all around you; it crackles at your feet and in the black of your eyes (so dark, so burned) that I cannot do anything to stop it.
But the only person who cannot feel it is you.

I want to shake you, I want to light you up.
I want to give you a piece of my mind.
I want to scream at you so that your ears would light up like a fuse
To rattle the bones made brittle by years of labor done for love.
Sometimes the way you snap back makes me think the spark has found its way
But sometimes the way they ravage my insides with the flame makes me feel other than what I want to feel

Still, I keep on
Wishing that maybe every word I let go becomes kindling
And you burn on
Greedy and hot and ruthless
And I catch fire
And it surges in my nerves
Careless and hungry and bright
And so we battle on that way
Because the best way to fight a fire
Is to light a fire.

Resolution 2014

It's nine days late, and nothing's new, but I'm pretty determined on changing the way I create this year. For example:

1. Less free art because of "boredom", more fair trade in terms of art. I make you something, either you pay me for it or make something for me as well. It helps both of us practice if the latter, yes? (And me for the former, for when I have to price my art in the future... whew.) :)
2. I hope I'll want to be able to make at least one work of art that isn't school or Collegian-related every week. From sketches and doodles to full-blown paintings, traditional or otherwise, I don't really care, as long as I don't confine myself to work that I have to admit sometimes take the heart out of the art when I don't feel like doing it but I have to. That's life, and I intend to break out of it as best as I can.
3. I want to try new things and revive the old. I've never bound a book before. It's been so, so long since I last used polymer clay or made jewelry. I've never used oil paints (successfully, that is). Hopefully the learning experiences I'll be able to put off until I have the opportunity to learn them in school, or when I have the time and can learn them myself should it not be done in school. In the meantime, I'll try my best to come back to the projects I left hanging; who knows, maybe I can apply what I've learned, and make them better. Probably.

That's pretty much it. Like I said in my previous blog post, here's another year of wanting to be the very best (artist), like no one ever was. Well. Maybe not that last part. There were/are tons of 'em, after all. I just want to focus on being a great me.

'Til next time!

Hello, 2014.

Albeit a belated one. Heh.

I left 2013 a more creative, more "Filipino", and (hopefully) more mature individual. Here's to the year that lies ahead of us - may it bring more joy to savor, more spirit to live, more challenges to overcome, more creation to create. And may I be blessed with the resilience to update this blog as much as I'd like to. :P

Tag Post*

*for lack of a better title. Tagged by Mandy Cruz.

rule 1: always post the rules
rule 2: answer the questions the person who tagged you asked and write your questions
rule 3: tag 11 people and link them to the post
rule 4: actually tell the people you tagged that you tagged them

1. Did you like the last movie you saw? 
Thor 2? Hell yeah.
2. Favorite cocktail? Or, if you don’t drink, favorite beverage? 
Mudshakes are a cocktail, right? Haha. It's like the alcoholic version of "I'm Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman".
3. Not a question, but name your top three favorite cities. 
THREE ONLY? Haha just kidding.
- Quezon City
- Manila/Pasay
- Vigan
4. What is the thing/who is/are the person/s that give you the most ~feels? 
I'll disclaim that this changes a lot, but I guess my friends give me the most feels (Haha, Mandy) because it's always reciprocated. Sure, I get to think up a lot of feels when it comes to things and celebrities but nothing compares to my friends giving their own input and exponentially increasing the original amount of feels I had anticipated to feel. 'Ja feel?
5. What’s the best part about being you? (#NAKS)
The best part about being me is my ability/curse to overthink everything. On one side I can think of a lot of ideas and good things and stuff but on the other side I can't escape this anxiety on things I've done wrong. It's my best part and I worst part. #NAKS

My questions:

1. If you were a type of cake, what would you be and why?
2. If you could change one thing about you what would it be? (Boring, I know)
3. Give the song that you've been playing on repeat for the past few days.
4. Your favorite thing about where you live right now.
5. The last thing that made you really happy. Or rather, describe the last time you felt the happiest.

D.I.Y. Debut

Finally, I can show you what I've been up to these past three months. I couldn't really talk about each of them one by one because... well, it's kind of hard to take any quality pictures when you're borrowing your DSLR camera, as a lot of my old posts might have shown you. Besides, I find it better to dump them all in one sitting, don't you? Haha.

Thanks so much to Tita Lianne from Sugarpuff Photography for the amazing pictures!

It all started with a sketchbook...

One of the things I'll miss the most about prep is writing and drawing my ideas in this journal, even if the debut shouldn't be the end of my entries. I guess this is the first time writing a journal wherein I truly didn't think about what I was writing except for the gist of it, of course. I just let the words flow~ Haha. I'm not really a journal-keeping person (says the girl who tries to maintain a blog harhar) except for all those fictional ones that I have to "script".

I can't wait to look back at this book and see what took up most of my time between August to October 2013, haha.

The Cake

Expectation, reality. Haha, but in fairness, I love how the cake came out, it complimented the party beautifully! I guess an entire ombre-on-the-inside cake is way too ambitious too anyway, but I really love the color blending. Thanks so much to the bakers from Cravings for achieving this so beautifully.

Painting everything...

From the watercolor invites... (these are the originals, I scanned them in and laid them out on Publisher so you could fold them into actual cards! I apparently fooled a lot of people into thinking I did them one by one... hahaha)

...to the poster paint menu cards (I actually had to go through several trials of this because of the changing menu, haha - but I loved food tasting and taking reference photos, although making the food look appetizing with poster paint was a liiittle challenging. Thank God we tackled the color wheel at school before this so finding and mixing colors was easier for me and with this medium then)...

...to watercolor signs and banners posted on the events page and at the candy buffet...

...to the watercolor background on the Freedom Wall, which also took several tries to perfect because the mother/"manager" had a few changes... hahaha.

I'm quite proud of the turnout of several days scattered with hard work, I can't believe it's all collected into this, haha. The whole thing really upped my appreciation for painting and watercolor, that's for sure.

The Souvenir Bag

Aside from the adorable candy buffet provided by Ate Jaz from Sweet Nest (who also did the gorgeous table set-up, backdrop, registration front, and provided creative ideas for so many things) my Mom suggested we have canvas bags for give-aways (aside from the tiny notebooks we hand-stapled and the paper of which we got from our usual supplier, Emerald, near Anonas station) and found the Rehabilitation Sheltered Workshop for the National Capital Region. We learned the bags are hand-crafted by persons with disabilities and even got a discount. They work so efficiently, we got the final bags a day after they started. Also, I sent them a preliminary study for the logo and they were able to Photoshop one for me (because I had no Photoshop at the time haha) and the two-tone print was included in the package.

Seriously, if you guys want to custom order bags or are finding a supplier to sell them, check out the RSW and their website here. You're supporting persons with disabilities as well as getting amazingly crafted quality bags and other products.

Miscellaneous Signages

Before we went to the salon Ate Jaz asked me to drop by so I could write on the black side of some illustration boards. I'm not so good at calligraphy yet so it took me a while (and a looot of erasures) before I could finish these hahaha. Luckily, I wrote a poem beforehand for the toast, but I really chickened out on saying it mostly because it was so cheesy hahaha. But oh well, both of them turned out quite nicely~

***

Like I said, I'll really miss stressing out on party preparations (even though my amount of stress is nothing compared to my parents' hahaha) and working on everything. The party passed like a dream - a four to five hour whirlwind of a dream filled with people who were hopefully happy, and things that took me by surprise, and things that hopefully went as planned, and then suddenly it's all over. Three months of hard work coming into something like this. But hey, in the words of the immortal Dr. Seuss, "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."

I'm looking forward to being legal, and even if I do have to be careful where I tread now that was one hell of a party, and I'm so glad to have spent my first day of being legal with the people I love (even though some of them unfortunately couldn't make it) and in a way that really captured my me-ness hahaha. Even though I stressed about the party not being about "me" it was still one of the most memorable experiences I've ever had. :)

Belated Happy Halloween, everyone! :D

Renata Remedios Buendia (Meme)

Yyyep, it's been a while. Going to post my Big Art Project Party post later, but for now, have a watercolor painting I had been doing near the end of preparations, just for kicks. And also because this was one of the most beautiful parts of One Hundred Years of Solitude that I read, because gosh, that book is so poetic and lovely and heartbreaking and historical.

That night, the guard brought down Mauricio Babilonia as he was lifting up the tiles to get into the bathroom where Meme was waiting for him, naked and trembling with love among the scorpions and butterflies as she had done almost every night for the past few months. A bullet lodged in his spinal column reduced him to his bed for the rest of his life. He died of old age in solitude, without a moan, without a protest, without a single moment of betrayal, tormented by memories and by the yellow butterflies, who did not give him a moment's piece...

- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

***

Some details...

I'm really proud of how her skin came out. I admit I'm not an explorer when it comes to colors, because I'm uncertain of how things will come out in the end most often; but I can only describe how the leftover yellow in one of my brushes came out on her skin as a "happy accident" because I turned out really well.

I just regret the butterflies a little. I could've made them more intricate if I'd worked harder, but oh well. The random effect came out quite well.

I'm quite proud of how it all came out hehe. Here's to hoping I'll develop my watercolor skillz even more :)

Antiquated

Took a trip down memory lane again when my parents and I visited my great grandparents' house in Roxas where my aunt and her husband are staying now.

I haven't been here in forever. It's pretty cool/strange how we become so acquainted to something that we take it for granted, then the next time we interact with it after a long time it feels so foreign, but familiar.

That wooden Igorot statue at the top of the stairs used to look so much scarier, so much taller. Now it's about four to five feet flat, I realize, still carrying the head of his fallen enemy, maybe not so sinister after all.

I find it funny how I hold so much more fascination now than I did all those times we came by when we were little. I look at all the antiques in wonder when before they were just furniture. I guess it was only now that they counted as remnants of the past to me.

Notice how I'm avoiding using the word "nostalgia". Would you count that when most of the memories I'd made here were... detached? I don't want to be so cold, but that's honestly how I see it.

The house wasn't lit up by anything other than the sunlight. It was nice, but I couldn't help but think of Bob Ong's Mga Kaibigan Ni Mama Susan whenever I looked at the religious figures mingling with wooden models of the Igorot. Also, their kitchen was really dark. I had to muster up enough courage to pass through that place.

I really did want to take a lot of that stuff home even if I knew there wouldn't be any room. I don't know; it's been a long time I've seen a house with so much history interwoven in the peeling lumber. The smell of age wafted through the air like a giant turtle and was oddly very comforting.

My great grandparents have passed now, my great grandfather going first. It's too bad I couldn't really "appreciate" them when I had the chance. All I have to remember them by is the childlike wonder I went through earlier today. Also, I wish I had a better camera to capture all of this. I wasn't even planning on taking any pictures until we got a look at the place.

It feels exactly like finishing a book when you're a kid and coming back to it about ten years later. You remember so many things but it all feels so new.

/end throwback-slash-reflection post

***

Life Updates:

Yes, I know, I've been a bad blogger. I can't even blame College now that it's sem break but apart from a lot of debut-related ups and downs and one trip to Pampanga and Tarlac with my mates from the Philippine Collegian nothing's been too eventful. I promise I'll blog/vlog after all of this blows over - I have a lot of stories to share, after all.