the come back

              I know, I haven't posted in a while ever since I got back to school and it seems I've been busy with a lot, not to mention just everything. It's finally CHRISTMAS BREAK!!! After what seemed like centuries of deadlines, plates, and school stress-- it's now time for me to sit back, relax, and enjoy the Christmas holidays-- NOT! Seriously though, we were given a lot of homework-- meaning more plates than ever and  it's like: How the hell am I supposed to enjoy my Christmas break? In the Philippines we have this so called Noche Buena thing-meal which in my opinion is similar to the Christmas Eve dinner Americans have, so anyway, given that tradition, we were tasked by our photography teacher to take shots of the food we eat during Noche Buena accompanied with different lighting setups, lighting diagrams, and etcetera, so I was like: "Seriously man? Seriously?". We are going to eat you know and not just stare at the food on the table. I am not going to have my Noche Buena with all those gadgets like tripod, dslr, and flash in my hands, I mean how am I supposed to eat ANYTHING when I'm too preoccupied with taking photos of the food I will eat? And I'm not just talking about ordinary, random, unprofessional, food shots, I'm talking MIDTERMS here, like my whole life is in those shots and I just can't ignore that fact. Because if I fail those shots I fail my class and that adds to the whole STRESS that I'd have to carry this break. Not only that, I also have Illustration plates to attend to and I'm like procrastinating on those plates big time-- yes, I know, I shouldn't, it's bad and I'm in huge trouble if I don't make it on time for the deadlines but, c'mon it's Christmas and I should be spending more time with my family enjoying the Christmas Season, Spirit whatever you call that rather than stressing on too much school work-- hello! But I'm happy though, because luckily the class already started making our first plate out of the three plates we were given, so I'm just down to two but still, I feel like it's days until the deadline and I haven't made any progress at all on the second or third plate-- I'm dying and soon I will be dead if I don't start yet. So here's a photo of my first plate which is entitled as "PRIDE" since the theme for my portfolio is all about "MY TWELVE CAPITAL SINS", I know what you're thinking-- what a weird theme for a portfolio and to add to that "weirdness" it also seems creepy but that's just what popped out of my mind the moment we were to decide what theme we wanted to do, although at first I originally had "Twelve Capital Sins" without the "MY", but then when everybody seemed to go all-out-personal with their works I figured I could to, so I guess I'll just have to live with my theme for now. Enough with the blabbing, so here it is:

                    

          I used Pen and Ink for my medium and a little bit of Gouache for the background. What I had originally was just the image of that guy sitting on a chair with no background, no trees, or sky or whatsoever, just him with those three tiny men down below, but then my teacher said I had something that was really, really, plain and boring and I'd get low grades with that plate if I don't add something to the background. What he had in mind was a landscape with trees and flowers but that didn't seem applicable to me because mine was a dark, twisted theme and adding life to it would somehow contradict to what I was trying to say to my audience so there goes the dead, rotten trees of what may seem like the underworld. Ha! 

 

           So these are the mediums I used, together with the ever-present, ever-loyal Tech Pens I have. They are so expensive and I hate to waste them on something not so very passionate such as school work-- I'd like to regard my schoolwork as unpassionate works of art because they are forced, graded, and pressured on students like me, so you get the whole idea, wasting precious things such as these on pieces of unpassionate crap is heart breaking.             I guess my post ends here with a smile and a big sigh. This is what you might call as a payback-post, since, it is in itself a payback for the days I haven't posted. Three more days and it's Christmas! I can't wait to post about my first Christmas here in this very big city of Manila ;) Will it be worth it? Well, I'll just have to check that out for myself. Don't you think?