Grotesque and Mockery

My Anthropology professor said that humans don't like reality, especially in their art. So they tend to exaggerate real proportions, distorting figures in desired areas, and they probably interpreted real as something like that. Well, I know it is still open for an open debate, but for me I interpreted grotesque as something more than just real, and they are not just mirrors of the real but something to discover with.
I've seen so many artists that they rely their works on grotesque. One of my favorite is the ones who are not much recognized; the artists of Gothic cathedrals.


Perhaps I spent a couple of minutes just staring at the pictures of gargoyles in a book in our library, thinking how did they manage to establish such beautiful and mysterious works. Although they are largely influenced by secular matters, they had freedom to unleash their imagination that is almost incomparable today. I heard a legend about a sculptor of gargoyles in Notre Dame who set the faces of his works from his appearance. His works are filled with sorrow, and so as the artist because he was left by his beloved girl. Somehow, these grotesque creatures portrayed from their infinite imagination, where for them there was a thin boundary between real and unreal. And I salute them for their immeasurable imagination and strangeness.

I also saw from a book in our library about Pieter Bruegel. They had a picture of Bosch's illustration of quite strange creatures
The book also had a picture of a flying buttress in the cathedral of St. John in Flanders. They are quite interesting to observe.

Picasso's blue period is my favorite works of him. It just reminds me of El Greco's Burial of Count Oegaz. He portrayed decay-like skins, thin, almost androgynous people.
Since I illustrated my works inspired by medieval art, I illustrated this picture of my youngest sister, cracking her fingers while laughing exaggeratedly.

Done in watercolor on board, this is one of my little works last summer, before the this semester started. Although this is not her actual portrait, most of the features are based from her. From her tangled hair to her bony arms and legs.

Some tiny works

My enrollment this June was a bit easy despite of the heavy rain. Thank God! I got all of my subjects for this semester on our online pre-registration, so I didn't need to fall in a very long line. As I didn't have time to draw during the first week of June, my bunny just took pictures of some of my sketches from last month.


Heads surrounded by the writings about them. I was trying to sketch some characters a few months ago for my third story.

This is my little sketchpad. Here, a little girl is posing, though for no reason. I called her a Wittle, one of my invented creatures for my first, fourth, and fifth story.

A mythical creature called Tikbalang. They are malevolent creatures that get people lost into the woods under their territory.

Creatures called aswang. Actually, they are considered to be people with various, unusual skills. Some of them can change their physical appearance into animals like bats, cats, and pig. Some can curse a person by means of other things, as in witchcraft. Some can halve their own body, at the torso. The upper half has bat's wings, and flies during the night, their entrails hanging down, scouting for people whom they'd prey on. Some of them live off the bodies of the dead, especially those who had just died, fooling the bereaved by replacing the corpse in the coffin with a banana trunk and spiriting off the real thing (because of this, Filipinos have the habit of making a lot of noise--eg. drinking, gambling, eating--in the presence of the coffin during the traditional nine-day wake, in order to dissuade any aswangs from taking their dead). Some of them have a hollow tongue which they use to suck the viscera and/or blood and phglem of people, especially the dying, thus ushering death; and in the cases of pregnant women, the tongue will stray towards the abdomen and from there, eat the unborn child and the liver of the mother. This particular type is rather popular, making pregnant women uneasy whenever they hear footsteps or clawing on the roof, and a curious tik-tik-tik sound by nightfall. They say that when the aswang are far away, you'd hear their screeching, like the violent death-throes of a pig or the tik-tik sound, as if they were hovering near. But when they are really hovering near, their sounds seem faraway. Those who don't know any better might venture out into the night to their own demise.

A fool standing in a corner looking at the sun.

This illustration was done by the bunny for my blog. The Fool and Death with our college motto: Ars longa, Vita brevis (Art is long, Life is short).

Mary Barton, in the form of a ghost, talking to an Engkanto under the Lake

We were required to create a portfolio for a final plate last year. This was one of my works included in that plate. It was inspired by the earliest story that I wrote, and which is probably the best work I have written so far. I started it in 2004, back in high school, for a friend who was brokenhearted. But in spite of this, he was always happy, and made other people happy too, besides me. Right now, as far as I know, he found his true love. I also created this story because I wanted to remember that time as one of the happiest periods of my life. This will also served as a memory book for those whom I've met, whether they were a friend or an enemy. I have no intention to publish this work yet, but maybe someday.
Anyway, this scene is from the second part of the whole story (there are eight parts, and I have a plan to condense it into two, because it was requested by a beloved girl), in which the protagonist, in a form of a ghost, is swimming in a lake to talk to the underwater beings there.

I already finished it in 2006. But lately, I revisited it, and started to make revisions to the story.