I need more practice. My efforts are elementary-level, unlike when I was raging with emotions earlier this year. Twin I said, “Mommy, you must get depressed again to be able to draw again.” 😑 NO, THANK YOU. I don’t want to go back to that horrible episode.
Nope, I can’t go back to this state of mind and general well-being even though depression did help a lot in fueling the emotions in my drawings. Art and photo by CallMeCreation.com
I took out my aging sketchbook and tried my hand again at fake urban sketching. I say fake because I’m not drawing onsite. Ah well, the first photo was done onsite but didn’t finish there.
I revisited this sketch of the view from Starbucks 7thAve, BGC. Added squiggles and more details. Art and photo by CallMeCreation.com
This was sketched with pencil onsite but I finished this Rooftops Viewed From My Tiny House here at home. Practice in perspective and dimensions. Art and photo by CallMeCreation.comAS building a.k.a. Palma Hall. Practice in depth. Art and photo by CallMeCreation.comThis was sketched with pencil onsite, at UCC beside Raffles Hotel in Makati, when I downed three shots of Patron tequila in May. This is a combination of coloring markers and my sketching watercolors (student grade), hence the saturated colors. Those markers were the cheap kind so it didn’t come out well. The ones I wanted were Copic markers used by Japanese manga artists. Maybe I’ll buy those after finishing my house.
Since I’m better at pencils and charcoal, I think I should use color markers when drawing onsite instead of watercolors. I mean I should concentrate more on drawing details with pencils and liners and not rely on watercolors to make the drawing relatable. But Copic markers are expensive and prices on Amazon are unjustifiable to my wallet because of the weak peso. I think Zig Kuretake Scroll and Brush are a reasonable alternative and I’m ok with the Kuretake brand since my watercolor for large formats is a Kuretake.
I wonder how will I find time to draw more onsite…
Meanwhile, I will no longer buy student-grade watercolors because they turn out horrible when the paper is not the ideal one for watercolors (this sketchbook is not meant for blending by layering since the colors bleed). Some in my palette of Tokyo Finds are student grade and they didn’t blend well enough on this paper…
The colors bleed and don’t blend. Art and photo by CallMeCreation.com
Once I finish those student grade pans (or I can give them to my eldest nephew who also draws), I will replace them one by one with Holbeins squeezed into half-pans.
Only one more week to go before I take a week-long break. Wohoo!
Indulgence at Starbucks 32nd Street, BGC. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I arrived early, about 3 hours before Ayala’s press briefing because I want to savor being out on a not so rainy day. Surprisingly, the traffic was not as bad as I thought it would be. I couldn’t believe I drove from QC to BGC in less than an hour. I guess a lot of people worked from home today.
I stayed in Starbucks near Globe Tower because I just want to hang around the area. It has been a long time since I went out like this and unencumbered by endless stories to edit or stories to rush. I made a few rough sketches while I was sipping my frapuccino.
In a rush because I realized the presscon will start in 30 mins. Art and photo by CallMeCreation.com
This is at the corner of 32nd and 7th Avenues and I have some perspective issues. It has been a long time since I picked up a pencil and drew. I made the sidewalk narrower maybe because my sketchbook is narrow. Hahahaha!
I couldn’t draw inside the coffee shop so I went out the balcony to sketch.Photo by CallMeCreation.comThe company CEO I was targeting today. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
He told me that right after we wrote one story when he answered one of our text messages to him, he got a call from one of the big PEs and…he laughingly said “next time I should just say no comment!” 😂😂😂
All in all, today was pleasant, a sharp contrast to yesterday’s headache-inducing hammering from my manager because of something I couldn’t control.
Coffee, cookies, and a chance to sketch again were all I needed to regain my balance.
Should sleep now because in a few hours I will be driving to my mom’s.
This guy is 100% right. Ever since I started drawing and keeping a sketchbook, I began to see the beauty in ordinary things. I always think about how light and shadows fall on an object and how I would render it on paper. Instead of doom scrolling on my phone, I make my brain busy by thinking about how I could draw it and what colors I would use. My daughter once caught me staring at something and she asked me why. I said I was thinking of how I would draw that. She may have thought I was nuts.
I was like that when I was into photography—I was looking for the beauty in the mundane. I was always looking for a better angle, better way to frame a scene.
Bantayan Island. 2010. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
This is also the reason why I always carry a notebook in my bag. My passport size Travelers Notebook is where I keep my musings while waiting for my turn at the doctors’ clinic or at the bank. When a thing happens while I was standing in line, I always thought to myself how I would write it in my notebook.
It’s just like this blog. There’s no reason for me to continue blogging but I still do it because this is for myself. It’s lovely to chronicle my life this way because I can upload photos, videos and whatnot—like a scrapbook of my daily life. I don’t have to print photos to make a point. When I was writing about things that happened in a day when I was in high school, I had to write the news for that day (“Today Miriam Santiago lost to FVR”) and had to describe/lift passages from newspapers. I had to cut out photos to document the day properly. Now I can look back and see how I was in January 2021 and read how I was a different person back then. I’m still the same person and yet a different person, too.
So this reminds me I have to finish that sketch of that view from UCC. As this guy on the video said, it doesn’t have to be perfect and beautiful; what you’re doing on your sketchbook is for you. I always have to remember that.
So today is a little bit less brutal compared to yesterday. I only had to deal with three edits and rewrite my own story, which my boss had to return to me because she’s demanding so many things.
I rested a bit at lunch—that’s when the world suddenly went dark. It rained heavily.
Starting to rain. I opened the window to feel the wind. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
It was so dark that it looked like it was already 6 in the evening.
This is how my room looked at 12 noon today. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
It was conducive for a nap. I slept on my tummy because I was scrolling through my emails. I think I’m a half-panda; I could fall asleep anywhere.
In between edits, I took the car to the aircon shop to have its AC cleaned. It’s an annual thing so that the evaporator and condenser would not grow molds and smell bad. Tomorrow, I’m gonna have the auxiliary fans and belts checked and buy a new pair of Yokohama tires. I have to make sure that my car is in tip-top shape before our Pico de Loro holiday and for the rest of my vacation leave that I would be spending in my home province. I talked to my bestfriend while I was on the way home from grocery shopping tonight and checked if she would be free for an overnight stay in lake Caliraya. Ah, we have to schedule it the following weekend since she’s still busy computing grades—I almost forgot, it’s Hell Week = the week before the semester officially ends.
In my grocery cart. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Mommy duty called. I had to fill our pantry with supplies again and this is the only big shop I will do for June because I have no time. The rest will just be top-ups of meat and vegetables in smaller marts because supermarkets are full on weekends.
Harassed mommy waiting in line at the grocery cashier for an hour. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I then found one little big girl playing with my phone while I was having dinner…
Playing with three pairs of my sunglasses. Photo by Twin I.
I have like 8,000 photos on my phone so I had to order a new SD card (500GB) because I would run out of space at the rate I’m snapping photos/my kids are snapping photos of themselves.
Patron Silver and the shot glasses I’ve downed this lunch time. 90 proof (45% alcohol). Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Things are so bad that press conferences come with alcoholic drinks because our hosts know how stressed we are right now. Twitter has made every reporter I know depressed today with a series of bad news after bad news, the primary one is having an incoming press secretary who is a lawyer suspended by the Supreme Court and her only claim to fame is being a fake news peddler VLOGGER/blogger. She red-tags people and is very hostile to media.
During Duterte’s admin, I have experienced being unwelcomed by the government as we legit reporters were not given seats in a national economic conference while the bloggers like uTh*king P*noy are given a special section where they can write and tweet inanities. These people who just add GDP cumulatively and declare that Duterte will end his admin with a 45% GDP growth 🙄 These people who cannot make heads or tails of FDI, stock market, mergers and acquisitions, and benchmark interest rates. I had to write my stories on the floor on those days despite my being in business clothes. That’s how bad it was.
My group chat has been on fire today. Marcos is putting hostile people in place to barricade us to prevent transparency and truth.
A lot of my friends and colleagues said they have turned off Twitter today due to the series of WTF stories coming out.
At UCC. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Despite downing a couple of shots of Patron, one of the strongest tequilas known to the market, I didn’t get tipsy. But just to be safe, I went down from the hotel where we had the lunch briefing to have coffee and work.
My laptop bag with cat scratches. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I wasn’t really productive today but I was able to secure an interview with an Indonesian company for one of my reporters. I’m a generous boss; I farm out the things that land on my plate and I do not hog them for myself. Besides, I should be doing more value-added things like big scoops and more global/regional stories so I shouldn’t be doing small stories that suck up my time.
Sketch. Art and photo by CallMeCreation.comAt UCC. Art and photo by CallMeCreation.com
But I’m so brain-dead now that I could not pull up my watercolors to finish this sketch. Perhaps tomorrow when I’m in the zone?
My friend from my old TV network told me he wants to quit now and join corporate. I told him, he better jump now when the offer still stands because the threat of the incoming justice secretary is serious. It’s martial law all over again, closing down independent media and promoting crony media like SNI (owned by a Duterte ally wanted by the US FBI for sex trafficking and other offenses) and Net25 (Iglesia ni Cristo station).
Rough sketch. Art and photo by CallMeCreation.comArt and photo by CallMeCreation.comBuilding views, Makati central business district. Art and photo by CallMeCreation.comPoolside. Art and photo by CallMeCreation.com
I decided to make bookmarks and use urban sketching style to draw pictures as I have a lot of board paper off-cuts here.
When Kr and I met last Friday, I gave her the 400 pcs of business cards I ordered for her, the Baguio City pines painting I promised her, and a print out of the yellow bell I painted for my mom. She was surprised that the print was not a real painting and she said I can make Christmas gifts out of such prints. I said I will try making book marks and the original ones I will give to special bookworm friends and the prints will be given to other bookworms. I will have them plastic laminated.
I was inspired by this urban sketcher last night so I went back to drawing again today, even if these are just quick drawings.
I’m not proud to say that I again procrastinated today and was just busy emailing and chatting with people online. Well, it’s still work, right? There are days when creative juices just don’t flow and I needed to seek it elsewhere, hence, the drawings today. Besides it’s a holiday today here in Manila (and the rest of Southeast Asia) so my brain knows I really don’t have to work that hard today.
I read somewhere (I don’t remember if I already blogged about this) that executives and creatives have different workflows. Executives function well if they divide their day according to chunks on a per hour basis. They can easily finish daily tasks like that. Creatives, however, cannot block time like executives do. So when visual artists or writers block their days, they do it by how many hours it takes them to finish because you cannot just cut thought or creative drive like executives cut their calls per hour. That’s why a lot of writers tend to skip meals because it’s hard to cut their train of thought when they’re deep into writing.
It’s the same with starting a creative process like writing. I need to be in the zone to write so there are days that I really procrastinate—which is bad since I’m a manager too. So my days now are filled with executive work that involves talking to a lot of people and emailing, fixing admin stuff, etc. So the more I procrastinate doing executive tasks, the more the creative process gets delayed.
I have to fix my workflow better. This blog entry gives good tips on how to manage your daily tasks. Since I was a semi-manager in the past, winging it was ok. But now I have my entire ass on the line, I cannot just wing it like I did before.
To complicate matters, I must still manage my household like a chief executive, including weekends. Single mom manager and super journo—I don’t know how but I will get through this.
This gave me a headache. I just realized Ayala Museum faces Dela Rosa St. at an angle so it took me some time before I was able to determine how slanted this facade was. I need to adjust some more lines that don’t align. 😑 And I painstakingly counted all the glass panes. *wrinkles growing on my forehead* I don’t want Leandro Locsin Jr. to come after me with an axe for sabotaging his building.
Duh. Art and photo by CallMeCreation.com
I have my vanishing points mixed up. I need more exercises on vanishing points. 🤔
So it is done. I no longer have an official passport in the next 3 weeks.
Punched out passport. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I had been lining up the whole day today. First, for the girls’ second dose of Pfizer. Thankfully, it only took us an hour compared to 2.5 hours the first time. I drove them home and I went to Robinsons Novaliches where the satellite DFA office was for NCR North.
Queue going inside the mall. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
After entering the mall, I decided to have brunch first at McDonald’s and finish some digest I need to publish today. It was hard to concentrate 😫 but I had to finish what I can. Then I lined up again at DFA. The actual process was just less than 30 mins because everything was done online and the clerks just needed to verify and have my fingerprints and photo taken but it was the queue that took forever. This was different from what some friends told me when they just breezed through their renewal process in some locations like Robinsons Magnolia or SM Aura.
On the way back home I was debating whether I should drop by QC Circle to buy flowers. Well, well, well… Commonwealth Avenue in Fairview was lined with plant stores. Hahahaha! That decided for me. I bought four more flowering plants since some of mine at home dried up despite watering them twice a day. It’s just that it’s so freaking hot these days.
It was so hot that when I got home I was so exhausted. The heat sucked the life out of me and I just fell asleep. It was so hot that I was tempted to buy a giant Megabox plastic bin in Handyman that I can fill up with water so I can just soak in there.
As part of my urban sketching practice, I want to visit Escolta, Manila—the old shopping district in Manila before and after WW2 before Makati CBD came into being—to sketch the old Art Deco buildings there.
View from the office of One/Zero architects in First United Building shows the splendour of the past (Photo from https://i-discoverasia.com/escolta-street-2/)Photo from Instagram @ysabeldediosPhoto from Instagram @rylejustinuy
I should have done it in January when the heat was less deadly.
Escolta was the old CBD that’s why it was the fashionable area of the city then. The old banks’ and trading houses’ headquarters were located there. The old tranvia of Manila plied Escolta then.
Tranvia that was run by Manila Electric Co (Now the country’s biggest power distributor)Photo from https://skyrisecities.com/news/2017/03/manilas-long-lost-tranvias-once-envy-asia
By the 1920s and into the ’30s, the Manila Tramway became one of the most extensive tram networks in Asia, rivalling those in far more populated cities like Hong Kong (600,000 by 1930) and Tokyo (4,000,000 by 1930). Its 100-kilometre urban and interurban service carried a recorded 35 million passengers during its peak year in 1925. The tramway was a central part of the rapidly modernizing city, as the former colonial port town was growing up fast. The American influence and capital that had flowed into the Philippines following the US takeover brought with it a host of impressive Beaux-Arts and later Art Deco edifices, as a series of new office towers, government buildings, and train stations began to transform the Philippine capital.
Pedestrians in the photos were smartly dressed. The tranvia network was completely destroyed after WW2. Well, Manila was the most devastated city in the world after Warsaw when the war ended. The crafty Americans gave the Philippines independence right after because the country was so war-torn and expensive to rebuild. We were left to our own devices after that.
One of these days I would brave Manila and seek some haunting scene that I could sketch. Maybe I can start with the old Luneta Hotel.
