How Far to Go to School

The humid summer of August is about to end. And things are getting interesting lately!

Recently I joined a contest for a children's book illustration based on one of the three featured short stories. Luckily, I am one of the honorable mentions on the result of the contest.

It was painted on plywood using acrylic.

The works are relatively small (again) each panel is about 8 x 12 inches so that I could carry them easily and slid into an envelope. And also I am lately working and experimenting my work in a smaller painting as you can see in my previous works here and here.

For the sky I used almost pure Prussian blue. This is the first time I used such color since the brand that I want for Prussian Blue is a bit expensive, and I guess it came out very good! That expensive paint suddenly reminds me of the expensive Lapiz Lazuli or the Ultramarine color of oil painting.

The work was based on Genaro Rojo Cruz' short story entitled "Gaano Ba Kalayo Patungong Paaralan?" (How Far o Go to School?). Unfortunately I only had a Tagalog version of the text so let me summarize them to you.

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He, the narrator, and his brother were off to bed early so that they can go to school early when he asked how far is the school. He asks if "when they reached the pleasant garden of Aling Perla" but the older brother simply said no its not there yet.

And so the elder brother unravels his everyday long journey to school, where he cross rivers, vast rice fields, and various places.  

But the reality is less fairy tale. I thought about the poor children in our far flung and nearly-isolated provinces who are travelling miles and miles on harsh landscapes and perilous rivers just to attend their daily school.

Photograph by John Weinstein

This poor folks, who are often neglected by our government, are really determine to go to school no matter how hard their travel. Sadly enough, most people I knew take for granted of going to school. You could read John Weinstein's article about the rural education in the Philippines here.

So, I partially dedicated this small pieces of work of mine to them.

Lampara Publishing House offered me to illustrate Genaro's story for them, and so I gladly accepted! But this project will start by mid-September because they offered me another project based on another story which I will talk about to you later. and here's a sneak peak on them.

And for the next work, I will not show this to you yet until the recipient receive them. Its a small painting I made many months ago as part of my experiment with my relatively new color; Prussian blue. Ever since college I am quite interested with this new and foreign acrylic color.

Panels

Panels, as you know, always fascinates me. They are architecturally odd, that sometimes the frames are decorated with architectural motifs, especially when they look like old door-like buildings that swing open and unveiled its wonderful interior of paintings. They are like doors that lead to hidden worlds set in oil paints. The most popular and one of the most wonderful diptychs, triptychs, or polyptych makers are the Flemish during the renaissance. Among them is the famous Ghent Altarpiece by Jan Van Eyck and, supposedly, his brother Hubert Van Eyck, an example of polyptych, a diptych for Jeanne of France by Rogier Van Der Weyden, and The Last Judgment by Hans Memling. Aside from Flemish, the Germans are also good at this, like Matthias Grunewald and Albrecht Durer. My Art History professor showed us byzantine paintings of Madonna and child in a palace-like throne. They also create beautiful triptychs and sometimes in a cross shape.

The Russian icons are also amazing about this. Here is a beautiful example of Madonna and Child by Paolo di Giovanni in about 1300's. Perhaps when I will have enough time I will practice these kind of technique (except maybe that I will have a real gold leaf). You can look for other Russian paneled icons here.

Aside from these classic masters, I also encountered wonderful paneled paintings made by various artists who had beautiful works. One of them is the Russian artist Vladimir Gvozdariki. He had this collage of antique and curious things in a decorated box container that has doors that you can open. You can look his whimsical artworks here.

About four years ago I created an unfinished polyptych of my mother’s clan (not the one in Bloodlines) in a cross-shape with six panels. The outer wings have the illustrations of the wives and husbands of my mother and her siblings, facing the family tree. Although I don’t have the plan to finish it, I will create a new one for the bunny’s clan, which I will use for my thesis next year. Though sadly, I do not have any picture of those, but I can post them if I already revise them.

The Tale of the Two Worlds

I have just finished the blog diptych for my header and footer. Panel paintings fascinate me. They are like boxes within boxes, filled with picture of stories enclosed by wood. I like how they are enclosed, with several divisions sometimes leading to another set of boxes hidden behind the outer panels. Imagine they are drawers and bookshelves with tiny doors. Each chamber has paintings of stories, and in order to continue up to the end you must open the painted doors, which lead to the innermost chambers, where the most hidden part of the story awaits for you to reach it. Maybe that's the reason why I was fascinating with Netherlandish painting of their triptychs, as well as German Gothic altarpieces, and my favorite among them is the Isenheim Altarpiece. It is a polyptych altar executed by Mattias Grunewald for the hospital chapel of Saint Antony's Monastery in Isenheim in Alsace. It is a complicated, four-layered, painted structure. It was created for those who were ill, to give hope to them during that time when most people resort to their religion because medicine is still relatively primitive and almost as hokey as folk remedies.

Anyway, going back to my previous topic, the diptych was based on my little tale I created when I started painting them. It is a story about the two worlds with one name. Let me begin the story from the upper panel. There was a small village called Estrella.

It was named after the red angel flying around the evening sky to attach the jewel-like stars so that the villagers have lights in the evening. It wants to make the people happy so it does the best to do this.

Until the monsters from far away lands came and savaged the village. The sky became red, monsters are everywhere, and Estrella was no longer a happy, peaceful village.