Iwas 6 years old. Maybe younger. My favorite medium back then was that famous pencil I used to call “the yellow stick”, and my canvas, the walls of our house. When my mother enrolled me in prep school, I found out that the best part of the entrance test was grabbing a coloring book so I could trace the lines of the objects on every page. I opted not to fill them up with colors first because I thought that was the right thing to do. I was told later on that I didn’t have to, but because I did, I was given an A+. Wooheey!
Fastforward to 3rd grade, I developed a liking for tracing characters on comic books my uncle used to bring home from work. I didn’t create my own sketches yet because I enjoyed the process of running my pencil along curves and slants. Jumping to the next level, I resorted to adding beards to male characters and making the eyelashes of the female characters look longer. It was fun. I ended up transforming plain-looking villains into monsters, too.
Entered high school and I began creating comic books when I joined the Art Club. No computers, no graphic software to use during that time. Sniffles. Yet, I developed the habit of sketching on my notebooks’ margins at class. The urge – and I mean, URGE – came naturally, but the ultimate driving force was the boring lecture of some of my teachers. But, hey, I still love you, teachers!
Creating comic books was like creating a new world. Although, most of my characters were based on my classmates’ personalities which I secretly tried to embellish with humor, turning them into superheroes and supervillains, and the events were vaguely based on real campus situations, with additional, ummm, lah, moral lessons. The comic book was an instant hit that my Art teacher reserved a space on the bulletin board for me to post the 8-10 pages of saddlestitched awesomeness (and, errr, moral lessons) for all the students to read.
So I told myself that I wanted to become a cartoonist. But due to the magnetic influence of cartoon networks, I decided to be an animator. But I also love music, so I thought I’d like to be a musician. But, heck. How would I know what I really wanted to be back then? So, I continued sketching. Even though, I followed a not-so-different route during college and my professional life (I leaned toward Literature and creative writing), I still painted and drew lines when ever I get the chance, submitting to contests and newspapers.
Finally, I’m back to drawing the lines more often. And I believe the title of this article should have been the story of my life. But, I’m cool. And you are cute because you read it. Yep, I’m random, too. And so are my lines. The end.
This article was first published on my online store’s blog on October 8, 2015.
