Sketches

I haven't sketched in a long time, let alone actually paint. I have long forgotten the principles of chiaroscuro, the dynamics of mixing and creating colors, the rudiments of drawing out meticulous detail that the human face demands on art. What is left of me is just this chaos, these aimless curves and lines that collide and collapse over each other to find, on good days when the light is pleasant, a recognizable form. 

I don't even know what made me draw that. I think I did this after watching a random romance on TV. (I'm still only just a girl—no matter how disgusting romantic clichés get, they will always pierce through my reason and make me swoon.)

This I made after devouring a book of erotic Filipino poetry and art. Let's just say this is the more decent option of dealing with the literary catharsis.

Of this I am particularly proud because it turned out rather well—I didn't expect I'd get her cheekbones right and the way her facial lines cast shadows on her jaw. It's not very good by academic artistic standards I'm sure, but compared to my other drawings, this is easily one of my best. Hannah Arednt is one of my most favorite female philosophers, and when I saw that poster of her biopic I knew I just had to have a piece of her myself. I couldn't quite capture how she holds her cigarette though, so I just settled for that darkly shaded mess of a hand. 

I only ever draw when I can't write, when words fail to describe the temporary fever that I find overwhelming when I see a face that makes me stop. The way a smile painfully curves, the way skin sinks into facial recesses, the melancholy twinkle in the eye, the robust contour of a nose— sometimes there aren't enough valleys and flowers to turn them into poetry. They have to take shape through my hands, no matter how flagrantly I disregard artistic conventions of shadows and light and proportion. 

I guess there are just some benefits of chaos.