Light and Shadows

I think this one is a language of an artist. Like the one used in painting, probably by using a charcoal or even a plain regular pencil. But I found these words "light and shadows" as a description of what all of us have been through in life and to the perspective of an artist, it is simply making the painting look perfect is to use a combination of lights and shadows. I'm not an artist (though I desire to be one) but I used to watch them paint on sidewalks and inside the malls and observed how they intricately brushed every detail of their subject before they hang it for display.   

We are our life's artist. When we started to sketch what our life is going to look like, we were like artists making dirty sketches on a pad. Just like an amateur who cannot decide on a subject, and he doodle on anything that he could think of.  Some of the lines he made are dark, some are light. And if we thought it is really really bad, we often toss it in the trash can.  A fact that tells us that life isn't always about luck, or serendipity or good fortune. It comes in all packages.

Be your life's artist. Paint your life's portrait to perfection using a good contrast of light and shadow. Look back with the choices that you made in the past that makes the real you today. Yes, those are your shadows that makes a good contrast of your life. Embrace it and be thankful because it make us more of who we are.

 The key to fulfillment is acceptance. Acknowledge the real us without any camouflage. 

COMICS

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I was amazed by how my 8 years old daughter can draw close-to-perfect images of people's faces, to cartoon characters and even two dimensional objects with her own fine details in it. Now that I stayed home for quite a while, often I could see her with a bunch of paper and pencil in her hand sketching from time to time on just anything that she can think or things that she will notice on TV. At times, she will even ask me what I want her to draw and oftentimes, I told her to look around. Each moment I looked at her drawing, it brought me a picture in mind of my first notebook that has all my first sketches.

Back in time, before I started school, I was already fascinated by the pictures in the comic magazines - which are so popular at the time. I remember, some of my friends in high school would even cut classes because they just want to stay at the comic stand from across the road in our school, just to read their favorite comic story from name comics like Wakasan, Liwayway, Hiwaga, Aliwan, and many others. At that time, we would spend 25 cents to every comic magazine we read.

Photo credit: http://komiklopedia.wordpress.com

My mother would never give us spare money to read comics, and besides, my brother used to bring us a lot of comics from the city where he worked. I have no idea if he bought all those, or if it was given to him but we found ourselves grabbing and swapping each copy and reading it silently in our own corner of the house. That was the time that I started to recognize the difference in the way the pictures were illustrated in each stories. And they were different because they came from different artists. Mar T. Santana and Joey D. Celerio were my most favorite. Every time I read a comic magazine, I always looked up for their name in the title.

I missed those times that I could spend time reading my favorite comics. I searched the names of my favorite comic illustrator to find out that they were already gone. I just love their art, the way emotions are shown in each pictures, and lay out, and most of all, the consistency.

Well, as teacher I'm glad I know a little bit how to draw. And believe me, each time I make simple sketches on my white board it will definitely get the attention of my class. Thanks to the Maestros I mentioned above. They do not know me, but certainly they had an influence on me through their drawings.

I never had found reading comics as a waste of time before, and in fact, I personally believe it helped me with my sharp intuition,  imagination and creativity. And also, I was the fastest reader back in kindergarten!

One of my pencil sketches.

Photo credit:http://komiklopedia.wordpress.com