The devil is in the details. Though it is important to be aware of the little things, it is best not to think of them when working.

How can one not think yet be aware? Anyone who has experienced flow knows what it feels like to execute without conscious thought. Instinct and second nature rule.

Flow requires skill and time. Almost a year ago I challenged myself to paint everyday. In the early stages I would think about EVERYTHING: the paper weight and color, brush size and water content, angles, shadows, the lighting. If I did not love it painting would have been a chore, and still it was tiring with all these little decisions that needed making.

I had to lump all the important decisions at the beginning so as not to have to make them in the middle. The most important decision was “strategic”: it was to favor QUANTITY over quality. This meant I favoring SPEED to achieve a daily output. I chose to work on the smaller A5 paper, and to work with “easy” materials like pen and ink, and water-based pigments like gouache and watercolor to reduce preparation and cleaning time. I decided to paint mostly from reference photos taken by very good photographers that I found on Instagram. Toned paper (e.g., black paper, see above), aside from creating a mood, also provided a ready-made background. I also worked from a pipeline of subjects predetermined in batches of 10 to 80 paintings so that I did not have to spend much time deciding there and then what to paint. If I found a random subject, I saved it or took a photo for inclusion in a future pipeline.

Drawing this way gave me some level of second nature. Second nature gave me perspective. For example, I used to agonize over the color of stone. The agony came from a desire to COPY. Now, I choose hues that just happen to go well together and concentrate on getting the right tones. Texture I achieve through the paper itself or through colored pencil. Only a fraction of my work may be considered good, but what does that matter? There is beauty that comes from accuracy and beauty that comes from harmony.

In the end, QUALITY follows QUANTITY.

The time element of flow comes not only from the speed and ease at which little decisions are made and executed. It also comes with warm up: I’m never really into flow until around 10-30 min into a project. Time also comes with simple numbers: the more bad work, the more good work.

Time spent in flow is still tiring, but it is very satisfying.

Row 1 LR: Portrait of Jeannie; Subas Ko resto-bar in El Nido Palawan. R2 LR: Street scene in Hanoi; street scene in Divisoria, Manila; Chinese New Year 2020 in Binondo, Manila, when SARS-Cov2 had not yet reached Manila. R3 LR: Blue Rats gig in La Collina, Makati; Bamboo gig in Shangri-La Hotel, Pasig; R4: AMP gig in Balete Kamias in Quezon City. R5: Street scene, Hanoi; Non-conformity Band gig in Quezon City. R6: Z and Elyssa in Snacks and Ladders, Maginhawa St., Quezon City. R7 LR: Filipino band in Candles Bar, Ningbo City, China; a cafe in Annecy, France; cover of “Day by Day” by Shakatak and Al Jarreau (1985).

Stylized human forms are used in architectural drawings, urban sketches and quick sketches. Certain styles are genres, such as the “woodblock” style I used to draw my cousin Jeannie (top left).

But don’t think all my drawings of people are deliberately stylized. I’m not really good at drawing humans. True, I prefer other subjects such as buildings, but I do need to work on accuracy.

The natural place to start is with the nude and artists don’t neglect training in this field. It is easier to draw the female nude because there is less demand for accuracy with the underlying bone and muscle. Some body parts are very hard to draw, especially the hands and the feet. But artists have said that the best reason for drawing the female form, clothed or unclothed, is simply that it is one of the most beautiful forms created by God.

I use reference photos as a rule. However, a much better way to draw human is live. Draw the clients in the cafe where you are now taking your morning coffee. This is the art of gesture drawing. The trick is to think of the gesture before thinking of anatomical accuracy. One way to do gesture drawing is to time it. But whether you complete a drawing in 30 sec or 10 min your focus is to capture the movement. I say “feel” the movement. The details and, if you wish some distortion, come later.

What gesture drawing has really taught me, however, is that there is gesture in everything, even in the mug that stands on my desk right now. Before you capture the form, capture the movement.

The ability to draw the human form accurately has always been part of an artist’s skill set. The human body is truly beautiful. It also contains all the elements of drawing anything — shape, volume, perspective, tone, line. As there are no straight lines in the human form these elements come together in ways more complicated than they would especially in non-living subjects; in addition underlying parts like bones, fat and muscle reveal themselves in subtle ways through skin. Also, the human form has movement and expression. It is not easy to capture all these, especially if as in gesture drawing the challenge is to draw fast.

Drawing the human form is an excellent exercise. I think that the many hours I spent practicing how to draw humans in as little as 30 sec has significantly improved my ability to draw all other things. The exercise has taught me not only about perspective and shape, but also how not to get obsessed with detail or perfection at all stages of the drawing process.

Most people associate Picasso with the cubist style of forms distorted and with no perspective. Not many know that he was an excellent realist. As with grammar, I believe that one can only truly disregard accuracy if one knew it well. Hence my occasional foray into forms with exaggerated eyes, hips and breasts for women and enormous biceps and pectorals for male heroes. This style is seen in this sketch of a form from an Indian temple in Madhya Pradesh.

Caricatures focus on unique features of a subject and often exaggerate it. Heroic art employs proportions not seen in a real human population. Animated cartoons are stylized and simplified because animators need to draw thousands of frames. But all good artists know how to draw accurately, that’s why they’re good at stylizing.

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On the third day of what was to later to become the “lockdown” against the coronavirus, I went to Cafe Adriatico in Araneta City to write a paper and to draw. I love this restaurant for its thick Spanish chocolate.

Within a few days, all malls closed completely and remained so for more than a month. What bothered me, though, was not that Cafe Adriatic closed; the lockdown made sense then even if the cost was very high. What was sad was that we got so little health benefits in return.

A lockdown is meant to “flatten the curve”, i.e., to reduce the daily incidences by limiting transmission of the virus. Flattening the curve means the epidemic will last longer but the health system will not be burdened by hospitalization rates. Social distancing lowers transmission, and the more draconian version of social distancing is the lockdown where people cannot leave their houses without permits.

Flattening the curve with a lockdown is very expensive. Even today, the cost from decreased economic activity is estimated to be about P2 billion a day. The Philippines eventually had the longest continuous lockdown in the world at 11 weeks beginning middle of March 2020, extended, modified, enhanced, relaxed, even to this day. This is mismanagement.

A lockdown is mean to give governments time, to increase hospital beds, to negotiate vaccine supplies, to recruit staff, to fix laws, to print money. The Philippine government has tried to do all this. But the proof is in the damn pudding, so we ask: have we controlled the pandemic? As of this writing most Southeast Asian economies are opening up, and most have ensured their vaccine supplies. But not the Philippines, a country with “open” choices, where everyone’s voice must be heard before action is taken–not the kind of strategy you want in a war. Vietnam, much less wealthy in per capita income, has an extremely small fraction of the Philippine rates, thanks to their vigorous and some would say authoritarian response. Yet Australia, not an authoritarian state, immediately imposed strict border controls and brought an end to community transmission by May 2020. The Philippines dilly dallied on border control, and community transmission remains high in major cities as of March 2021.

Not everyone chose to lockdown. Sweden, didn’t. The death toll has been heavy, but their economy is not battered. When the pandemic ends as it inevitably will countries like Sweden will rebound much better than others like the Philippines.

Choices depend on information. In my own circle, the problem is that people are too informed. There are 11 of us. Everyone is highly educated, has access to the internet and to opinions of all kinds. I get mine from fellow scientists, but there’s this PhD who gets his information from a physician. He says I have to wash up and decontaminate my clothes simply because I had to go out to work. I have never heard this recommendation from other than technicians working with dangerous pathogens. It’s not a recommendation endorsed by the WHO. But in a democracy every voice must be heard, and in our democracy no one argues against the “precautionary principle”. That sums up the Philippine situation.

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My brother gifted me this Christmas with the 48-set Arteza brush pens. I had also gotten myself a set of Tombow dual brush. That’s the problem with gifts. But then I enjoyed using both. Arteza saturates more quickly, resulting in more brilliant colors with fewer applications. With Tombow pens controling tones is easier. I tend to agree with some Youtube reviewers to use Arteza for more impressionistic results.

I used thick poster paper for the trials above. Not ideal. Pigment is more rapidly absorbed on this paper than on quality watercolor paper. Arteza bleeds through poster paper, but not in watercolor paper. I’ve tried the brush pens on 90 gsm paper, which are for dry media. Absorption is more rapid, and though the results can be pretty, I did not really like them. Go for no less than 140 gsm.

Applied directly brush pens are more brilliant than watercolor; but they can be toned down by first applying on non-absorbent plastic then picking up the color with a brush. On watercolor paper one can pull color with a wet brush, but this won’t work for thin paper.

All media are different from everything else. Brush pens are easy and fun to use. Exploring the techniques to make brush pens truly work is part of the fun.

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The last time I visited Binondo was Chinese New Year two years ago. I returned 27 December 2019 hoping to have a good lunch, find some art supplies, and capture scenes for painting. Got two out of three.

First, a background. Binondo is a district in Manila that is also called the city’s Chinatown. It is the world’s oldest Chinatown, established by the Spaniards on 1594 as a settlement for Chinese Catholics. It was already a hub of merchants trading with China. Today, it is still a vibrant business center. Covering 0.66 square kilometers, it is the most expensive piece of real estate in the Philippines.

No question about using a car to get there because of the notorious Manila traffic. I took the metro (the MRT 2, or purple line) and got off at Recto station. C.M. Recto avenue is a busy crossroads and a business extension of Binondo. Here, one can find art supplies not usually found elsewhere. I went to a shop called Deovir, but they did not have what I was looking for. Meaning clutch pencils are probably not available anywhere in Manila.

Recto to Chinatown is about 1.7 km, a 20-min walk. From Recto make a left to Reina Regente St. In this area are four big shopping malls: Lucky Chinatown, 11/88, 168, 999, and Robinson’s, with Tutuban and Divisoria Mall not far away. I made my way to the San Lorenzo Ruiz Plaza and the Binondo Church, then decided to explore a bridge that I have never been to before, the San Fernando Bridge (the first two paintings above). Then I made my way back to the church. Facing it and going down on its right side is Ongpin Street, Chinatown’s busiest. The street is lined by restaurants, Chinese drug stores, Buddhist temples, banks and traditional shops. The shops are already doing brisk business in lucky charms and all things feng shui in preparation for January 25, Chinese New Year, the year of the Metal Rat..

To reach my lunch objective I turned to Salazar St., lined by bright red lucky charms shops (see above). Then I turned into Benavidez St. to find the best noodle house in Manila, the Lan Zhou La Mien restaurant. It is a very small place (I sketched from my table, right at the entrance). But I arrived here at 11:30, just before the crowd. Food is cheap: about $5 for a plate of beef with noodles plus drinks. The servings are large–what I ordered was the smallest size at Lan Zhou, but in other places such a serving would be shared, and would be about 1.5 times more expensive. Right beside Lan Zhou is Wai Ying, and further down the street, Wan Chai, two other famous restaurants, all highly affordable.

After lunchI walked to nearby Divisoria. Any description of the commerce in Divisoria will be an understatement. The crowd was elbow-to-elbow. I wanted to check out Ilaya St..The last time I visited the shops were ON the street. The new mayor of Manila, Isko Moreno, has shown grit in imposing order. The shops are now where they should be, on the sides, but the crowd was even more dense than I last remember it. This being right after Christmas, people had lots of money to spend. Another interesting observation was the large number of Badjaos exchanging jewelry for money in the pawnshops. The Badjaos are a seafaring people from the southern island of Mindanao who are famous for pearl diving.

From Divisoria I walked back to Recto. I took a rest at the Isetann Shopping Mall and found this nice little snack bar, The Whale Tea (see above). They only opened 9 days earlier, I was lucky I found a seat just before people started coming in.

After rehydrating at The Whale Tea, I took the metro back. The year of the Metal Rat is supposed to be a year of interesting beginnings. Well, something interesting happened to me. Walking on the way to Binondo I bumped into a professor friend from my university. On the metro from Isetann, I bumped into his brother. In a sea of people, what are the chances?

Whatever. I think 2020 will be a good year.

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I had to make an unplanned trip to El Nido, Palawan from 18-20 December 2019. Someone from the local Protected Areas Management Board called me a week before inviting me to give a presentation in view of being issued a permit to conduct research in this town.

First of all, El Nido is a wildly popular ecotourism destination. It is located at the northern tip of the island province of Palawan in the Philippines. It is also a favorite of biologists. For example, in a survey of a 2-hectare plot, 45 species of birds were found, 36 of which are found only in Palawan. My own business there is to look for novel bacteria.

One gets to El Nido from Manila by plane either from Manila or from Clark City. The Clark flights (Airswift) go straight to El Nido, whereas the Manila flights (Air Asia, Philippine Airlines) go to the capital in Puerto Princesa. I took the latter, flying out of Manila in the early morning of the 18th and arriving after a 1.5-hour flight. From Puerto Princesa one can take a bus or a van to El Nido, a 5-6 hour trip over excellent roads. I took the van to the Sea Slugs Traveller’s Inn, a 15-min walk to the town center of El Nido. I arranged the flight by Internet; I contacted the Inn directly and got a prompt and very courteous reception. They also arranged the van; I settled all payments when I arrived there in the early afternoon of the 18th.

Before the meeting at 10 am of the 19th I took some time to visit the town. I went as far as as the seafront. This is the jump off point for boat rides to any of a good number of islands and beaches. See this: https://outoftownblog.com/amazing-islands-and-beaches-in-el-nido-palawan/ . Other beaches are accessed by land. I was specifically interested in Lagen Island as a research sampling site. I was able to visit their booking office in El Nido, where I found out that this island was exclusive and not part of the regular fare. It is also very expensive, about $770 a night. My stay at Sea Slugs was for less than $30 a night, typical of most other lodgings in El Nido. On my walk to and from Sea Slugs was this limestone mountain jutting out of the sea to maybe 300 ft. I drew it, and the charming house at the base.

By the way, the Russian edition of Survivor will be filmed in this town between January and March 2020. I learned that during the meeting with officials. I told them that my aim was to discover novel species of bacteria and hopefully novel antibiotics, that my sampling site was to be Lagen Island, specifically coves 3 and 7, and that I planned to start in March 2020. The board asked a few questions. I could see that the locals took their responsibility seriously, balancing legal requirements, social and environmental impact, and the large income derived from tourism. If Survivor has chosen this town to be one of their regular sites, it means they find the place excellent, not just because it is beautiful, but because it is well managed.

It also happened that the tricycle drivers had a seminar for half the day. Since tricycles are the main means of transportation, this meant that only a few were circulating for most of the day. Perhaps the lack of traffic I observed that day was special. I think the town would be noisier on a regular day.

While waiting for the certification, I had a beer with another researcher, Art, from Ateneo de Manila University, who was also there to defend a research project, this time on arthropod biodversity.

After he and I got our certifications I spent the early evening visiting places in the town. First stop and dinner was at the Subas Ko Resto Bar, because there was a band playing in about an hour. I first had dinner (tuna pasta), beer, and a shot of vodka for $2 since it was “happy hour”, and spend the rest of time painting the cliff and house from a photo I took earlier. Then the band played. I painted that, too. Then I took a walk, impressed by the beautifully designed bars, such as the Frenz Bar (see above) because of its bamboo screen design. I was even more impressed by a sobriety I did not quite expect. I imagined Boracay, noisy, party-crazy Boracay. El Nido, I had the impression, is for backpackers and families.

Souvenirs? There’s nothing much to buy in El Nido except for swimming gear, sandals, handicrafts, etc. I found some statuettes made of dried seeds and shells. I got three, representing a musical band. I will draw this later. As to the food, well, El Nido is not known for it. In fact, the lunch stopover on the Puerto Princesa-El Nido route is a plain bummer. But, everything here is cheap (except for Lagen Island). Think backpackers and researchers on a budget.

I left Sea Slugs at about 11am for Puerto Princesa. I just painted while waiting for the van, painted while waiting for the plane. Arrived in Manila at about 8 pm, and my house by about 10:30 pm because of the traffic.

Ah, the legendary Manila traffic. Saw nothing of that for 2 days.

One problem I have with drawing objects at some distance and using pen to draw details such as roof tiles is that the pen is too “strong” and makes the drawing look cartoony. One solution I came across is to use metalpoint to draw fine lines at any desired tone. In addition, painting watercolor on top of a metalpoint line doesn’t smudge the line. This also means that a metalpoint sketch with all the tones can be painted over with watercolor, and the colors will catch some of the sketched tones.

What is metalpoint? It is a technique of drawing with metal (e.g., Smartphone stylus, safety pin, paperclip) on specially prepared paper. By itself, a paperclip will not leave a mark. But when paper is treated with a primer such as gesso, a light touch on the abrasive surface will rip some metal onto the paper resulting in gray lines. Repeated lining or using heavy pressure will create darker lines and achieve a large range of tones. It is like using pencils, but with metal instead of graphite. Any metal will leave a mark, but the most popular are pure silver and gold.

Metalpoint has a noble history. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) drew in silverpoint. His tool consisted of bone tipped with pure silver. The graphite pencil was invented in 1564, and its modern form dates from the 18th century; the original lead pencil used real lead. But lead is too soft. Silver was the most popular because it left dark, warm lines that when tarnished turned a beautiful sepia. Copper also leaves dark lines, but they tarnish unpredictably to red or green, which is not very nice. Gold does not tarnish; the gold color reflects at the right angle of light.

One reason metalpoint declined is that the drawing surface had to be primed. Priming was accomplished by coating paper with a mixture of ground animal bone, gum arabica, water, and components like zinc oxide or pigments. Priming today can be easily done using gesso, a cheap and readily-available primer used for oils and acrylics. Because gesso is water-based, thin paper buckles. A more expensive alternative is silverpoint ground, which has the advantage of also being available as a colorless fluid.

Metalpoint lines are much harder to erase than pencil. But since they don’t smudge one can draw without having to protect the sketch from the palms. Washing with ink or watercolor will not cause the metal particles to float away as with graphite. The lines do fade over time. Da Vinci’s images are very faint to the naked eye, but the lines burst into view when viewed under ultraviolet light.

For samples on what metalpoint can accomplish I suggest the works of the Australian artist Gordon Hanley. He makes photorealistic drawings in gold and silverpoint. The drawing instrument consists of a standard clutch pencil (a kind of mechanical pencil) using a metal wire filed to a point. The wire doesn’t have to be sharpened again and will last for years because an extremely minute amount of metal is deposited on the paper. I was impressed by the dark tones possible with silverpoint.

Hanley’s photorealistic drawings are awesome, but it takes a lot of patience to make them. He puts in 10 hours of work everyday for 6 days, and 8 on Sundays. At this point I’m more interested in metalpoint as a support for watercolor. The drawing above was made on paper prepared with white gesso. All the outlines and most of the tones on the house, trees, and grass were drawn using the metal tip of a smartphone stylus, which I think is tungsten. The tiles and wooden planks making up the house were done with the stylus with some texture coming from the gesso itself. Other tones were achieved using the bent part of a steel paperclip. I then painted over using watercolor, taking advantage of the metalpoint tones and then adding some. I then darkened some of the lines and tones with my stylus, and then used white Liquid Paper correction fluid to add some accents. I found it hard to achieve dark tones with stylus or paperclip, so I’m now looking for some decent silver wire. An old silver teaspoon will also do.

The gesso is worth exploring for pure watercolor work because water behaves differently on gesso than on paper. One may apply gesso only in parts of the paper where texture is desired. Gesso also comes in black, but I have no use for that right now.

One Cheap Uncle held its first solo improv show “One Cheap Aguinaldo” last 17 December 2019 at the Snacks and Ladders bar and restaurant on Maginhawa St., Quezon City. The improv group entertained a packed audience from 8 to 10 pm, playing 2 sets of improv games. As one member of the audience commented after the show: “That was fun. Best belly laughs I’ve had all week.”

It was also a momentous week being the first show they ever organized together. They set the playlist, cast the players, and marketed the show to friends and family.

The choice of venue was also good. Snacks and Ladders is on Maginhawa St. near the University of the Philippines Diliman. It is a street lined with low-priced restaurants, bars, bookshops, with a “student” charm, what I would sometimes liken to the Latin Quarter in Paris, whose attractive mix of intellectual seriousness and coed silliness also describes the humor of One Cheap Uncle.

The group first came together in January 2019 as Level 1 students in the Third World Improv training program. The members include the current cast consisting of Zee, Shawn, Jan, Elyssa, Anton, Justine, Andoy, and myself, and others of the original cast that included Teddy, Will, Gica, Matthew, and Arvin. Their teachers are Monica and Rejean, professional improv artists with many years of experience between them. The group called themselves One Cheap Uncle (“Either you have one, or you are one!”) in their Level 1 recital in March 2019 at the Doreen Black Box Theater at the Ateneo De Manila University in Diliman. (The name came from an inside joke; it’s a politically correct version of “fat uncle”, first coined by one of the first members, Will V, during a game.) The solo show is a project of Level 4 students in the TWI program.

I signed up intending to improve my spontaneity and cure some stage fright. I went from hesitant to significantly more daring as we went through all the levels. Practicing a skill for 3 hours every Wednesday in the course of a year really does change a person, and this is true in many different ways for every member of the group.

One Cheap Uncle begins Level 5 in January 2020. This level is distinguished by the “long form”: improv games that last for about 20 min.

You can learn more about improv shows and classes by visiting the Third World Improv Facebook page.