101 Butterflies

101 Butterflies

Pigment ink on 11"x14" Bristol Board. Click on image to enlarge. This is a large file.You may want to maximize it twice.

I've almost forgotten about this drawing. I filed it on a folio last week and set to finish the American Basswood Grove then I started a new Maple Grove drawing last night. I really enjoy drawing but I miss painting and today, when I visited Manon's blog, I saw her fiery painting and I wanted to rush home and start painting. I set up a new 30"x40" canvas on the easel and I closed my eyes. Nothing. I am not ready to paint yet. I call this drawing "101 Butterflies". One hundred belong to the order Lepidoptera and one belongs to the order Primates and species Homo sapien. Butterflies are free, colorful, light and airy.

When I was 13 years old...

I wore my brother's navy ROTC shirt and hat. I loved the style. It had pockets. I like military uniforms worn for civilian life. I wore a pair of baggy denim pants. The brand was McComber. I felt so good. I thought I looked so cool. My father said I looked like a boy. My mother just smiled. That year several boys courted me. One followed me home one day. He asked permission from my mother to visit me. I remember him sitting in the living room. I told him I was busy. That year I realized that boys were attracted to me. It was very flattering.

When I was ten, I wrestled with the elder of my two brothers. He pinned me down on the ground and tickled me. I struggled. Then he made me smell his armpit. I was screaming and asked for help from my sisters and other brother who were just looking and minding their own business. This happened all the time. The eight of us will be in the yard or garden and several interactions happened simultaneously. I was incensed! I was spitting at my brother but since I was down my spit just landed on me and he kept on laughing. I got angry and finally he let me go. I ran towards the garden and grabbed a 2x2 and poised to hit him. My sisters were aghast. My other brother just looked. They did not think I would land a blow on my brother but I did, several times. He tried to stop them but I was relentless. My parents came out and my mother told me to stop. I was crying.

I cried because I did not mean to hurt my brother. I cried because I knew he did not expect me to react so violently and I knew he was mad at me. He was just tickling me. We wrestled like we always did. I changed. He changed. We used to be close. I always thought he was so cool. He dressed neatly. He had a nice print penmanship. He can fix anything, he can make things, he can cook, he is always busy with his hands. He let me use his Rotring pens for drafting. He let me use his calligraphy nibs. He let me use his watercolors. He fixed things for me. He was very protective of us when we were young.

I think my mother loved my brother the most. Maybe I am wrong but I think that. He was a baby during the Japanese occupation and he cried in the air-raid shelters and the hiding places. The men and women who hid with my mother and eldest sister complained. One night my brother cried and everyone complained that his cries may attract the Japanese soldiers. So my mother left the shelter and in the middle of the night took my eldest sister and my brother into the sugarcane fields to hide. I tried to paint that scene that my mother described. I did a study of it but I was so overcome with emotions. I cried on the drawing until it was soggy with my tears.

I think it was right that my mother loved my brother more. I love my brother. When I lived in New Jersey I wrote to him. He was working as a mechanical engineer in a nickel plant. He signed his letters "Your loving brother". He is a loving brother. I should call him and see how he is doing.

All Done!

About Art Exchanges: Ah! My dearest friends. Thank you for your email invitations to join art exchanges. I am sorry I keep saying no. I appreciate your invitations and some of you are master artists and craftsmen (Lisa, I am still thinking of you, rain-check!) but I am so busy with work, money work, not even artwork. I cannot crank out a drawing in one week. My drawings take weeks. So I am sorry to keep on saying no to all of you. I have so many projects at work and they are very demanding and stressful projects. I cannot let my art give me stress by meeting deadlines too. Thank you for the invitations and for thinking of me. I am honored.

The Grove

Pigment ink on 17"x14" Bristol Board. (Click on image for details - large file)

I don't know what I am going to do next, maybe clean the house. That will be a change. The Viking is having a birthday on Saturday. I have a sideline job I need to finish, updating a database. I am on call on the eve of Thanksgiving Day and I have several rules I need to write. Busy, busy, busy. I miss painting. I need to paint something bright or dark...

So Long My Dearest Scarlet,

Scarlet

Oil on 30"x40" gallery frame canvas.

So long my dearest Scarlet,

Travel safely.
Off you go to your new home.
I will miss you very much.
I hope your new mistress
will find you a bright spot
so the light

will make your face shine.
I will let you go
because I love you.
You are my rebirth.
But I am sending you
to the one

who helped me

make it happen.
May you warm

and calm her heart
as much

as you warmed mine
and gave me

peace.

Black And White - One Leaf At A Time

Another week. One rule at a time, one task at a time. I cannot repeat last week. It was too stressful. I am stronger, better. I am also learning to ask for help. Thank you, thank you.

This is the grove. It is a drawing I started in August before my wrists gave out. I thought I'd breeze through it. I have drawn it before on a much smaller scale of 9"x12". This time I am drawing it on a 14"x17" Bristol Board. It is tedious. Each leaf is drawn individually. Quite ambitious considering the area I have to cover. It is teaching me a great many lessons.

Each individual leaf requires attention and more time. I suppose that is true compared to when they are clumped together just like anything in real life.

There are not very many gray areas in my life. I make decisions based on my beliefs and upbringing that I trust gave me the foundations to do what is right. There are areas where I will allow a compromise, these are things that I can do without but those areas that are integral to my core being, I will not forsake. I hate political correctness. To me there is nothing complex in knowing what is good versus evil and what is right versus wrong.

I know why I draw. It gives me time to think. I don't set out to draw something with an end image in mind. Instead I tell myself I will draw a concept or a representation of someone and as I draw I think of that person or thing and what embodies that person or concept according to my own perception.

I think a lot when I draw. In fact that is all I do when I draw. I think. Sometimes my thoughts stir my emotions, the range of the entire spectrum. That is why I draw or paint, to think.

I have a bundle of rules to implement today. I pray for a good week, not just for me, for everyone I love.

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

Update: 12:52 PM. It's official. I lost my nuts. All 36 of them. They were 4 sets of nine acorns, all different species ready for lay out on the ATC collage mats. I accidentally threw them away. They were in a Ziploc bag, yes, I know a ziploc bag, but that is how I carried them around. I put them in my cargo pants pockets as I drew them while being up and about. So back to the drawing board to draw more nuts.

Today is an auspicious day! Today is Sunday. Today I am oncall, not yesterday. I thought I was oncall yesterday and stayed at home to work waiting to be paged. At 1:00 PM after I did not receive a page I made sure my pager was set, I checked the schedule and realized I read the calendar incorrectly. I was not oncall yesterday. I am oncall today. So that was that! Everyone left me because I was oncall. It was just Daisy and me. I was alone and I spent the day drawing, just drawing. I forgot to eat. I started having headaches and then something happened.

I am happy, very happy. My eldest sister emailed me. My sister Rebecca emailed me. My younger sister emailed me. My other sister emailed me. My other sister must have been busy. My beloved sisterfriend emailed me and we talked. Another sisterfriend emailed me. I bloggermanced with another sisterfriend. I received an email from one who identified herself as my "sisterfriend" from way back, long ago...after she read all 15 posts on the main page. OH MY GOODNESS! It was indeed my sisterfriend Nini before I coined the term sisterfriend. I could not contain my thrill, my neck was about to split open from excitement. I emailed her back and gave her my number and we talked. It was like yesterday. I was 24 years old once again and was talking to one of my dearest, beloved friends. There were four of us. We called ourselves the Golden Girls and we wanted to live together when we get old. We had so much fun. Oh yes! We had so much fun. We laughed everyday. I am sure we had sad times, I can't remember them. No we did not have sad times. We were happy, I was very happy. Well, I missed the Viking but I was a happy young woman nevertheless. I told her I had a headache and she said "Maybe you did not eat." I was jolted. I replied "How did you know?" She replied "I know you, remember?" Oh my God! Indeed she knew me. She said "Go eat". It was wonderful to talk to her. She is my beloved friend. I should really keep in touch with my friends...

and take care of new friendships I have made and not ruin them with petty arguments and stubbornness.

I am so happy. I am blessed. My friends are so wonderful and my blog friends are awesome.

Okay! I have a project implementation early tomorrow morning. Here comes work once again, I need to relax, breathe deeply, not let stress manipulate me. I need to smile and give thanks. I love my family, I love my friends. I am happy, unlike last week, I was very sad and unhappy but my friend was there...my friends and family were with me.

THANK YOU!!! THANK YOU!!!

Intussuception or invagination is the slipping of one part into another, like the intestine does sometimes requiring emergency surgery. Blogger does not recognize these words and is suggesting interception and indignation. What indignation indeed! Do you see the intussusception of the pipe? Someone slipped into the other part with it and is now trapped. I love drawing teeny-tiny things. My Mother used to scold me for overtaxing my eyes and she would swear. Yes she swore. She said "Lightning!". That's what she said. "Lightning! You are going to makes yourself blind with those tiny details. Stop drawing. Take a nap!"

Illustration Friday - Unbalanced

Balanced Unbalanced - Balancing In An Unbalanced World (Click to enlarge)

Pigment ink on 11x14 Bristol Board. This is an unfinished work as I attempt to draw several Illustration Friday themes on one Bristol Board. I am starting this piece with today's theme "Unbalanced" hence the white spaces. Come back every Friday to see what becomes of this piece. In the meantime...

A perfect prompt for my imperfect state. Words come cheap. We all attempt to maintain balance and equilibrium in our lives but it is easier said that done. There are punctuations and exclamations that sometimes jolt us and it takes a lot of help to gather ourselves again. To all those, including my sisterfriends who support me and still love me when I am not my best, thank you very much.

Today is a beautiful day. Seven years ago, when my Mother knew she was going to die, she told me and my sister who were nursing her, to celebrate our sister's birthday. She said "Go home and celebrate her birthday. You must celebrate everyone's birthday, no matter how simple. Give thanks for their lives." My mother died on a Monday morning and on Wednesday as we continued her wake, all eight of us sisters and brothers and our nieces, nephew and the maids, celebrated my sister's birthday. We sang happy birthday and indeed we were happy. And we were also sad.

Happy Birthday Inday Beck. I love you so much. You are always there for me and you are always happy and cheerful. You always speak softly and tenderly to me. You are fun, kind, loving, caring, talented, intelligent, smart and brave. I always hear you in my mind singing "I've got you under my skin" and I see you bent over laughing so hard. You took care of Tatay and Nanay while you continued working full time and caring for your daughter. You helped pay for my nursing education and even though you tried to rat on me when I said I was spending the afternoon with Sister Rebecca and everyone thought I lied and was being facetious for calling you "Sister", you did find out that I spent the afternoon at the orphanage helping Sister Rebecca who was a real nun care for the orphans! HAHAHAHA! I love that story. Everyone thought I was lying. But you always believe me. Thank you. Happy Birthday! You help make my life balanced! Thank you!

Thursday...

Thank you very much dearest friends for your constant words of

kindness,

comfort

and

inspiration...

While I appreciate your visits and comments,

I have been slacking off with my visits,

overcome with chores and responsibilities...

One of these days I'll be my old self again...

Thank You Nanay

Seven years ago my sister and I went home to take care of the most important patient we ever had. It was my greatest honor to be one of her nurses. She was our mother. My sisters, brothers and I all went home and we were very hopeful that Nanay was going home that week. Well, she did go home but to her own mother, our grandmother who died when Nanay was only ten years old. Nanay was born to a wealthy family and grew up privileged until my grandmother died. Thereafter she and my aunt struggled. They went through so many adversities but today I am not going to talk about them because my Mother, if anything, taught me that the struggles and adversities are but a means to a greater life. She never once considered herself a victim of any kind, even of wars.

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She was a very dignified woman and carried herself with grace. She was well respected because of her intelligence and wisdom but most of all because of her generosity and kindness. She really was altruistic if ever there was an altruist. Our home was a refuge for battered women in the neighborhood and for the Negritos or Aetas who were sometimes stoned when they descended from the mountains to collect provisions. My mother had an uncanny ability to learn languages and she was able to communicate with them. She had an impressive vocabulary. She was fluent in English, Spanish and several dialects.

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Nanay was one of two children, both daughters. She had eight children of her own. She was strict but fair, she was serious and solemn but also very playful. She told jokes. She had a very contagious laugh and she smiled all the time when she saw us but in the photographs she seldom smiled. She was not intimidated by anyone.

One night she woke us up because she had this flower that bloomed only once a year and only in the middle of the night. So she woke everyone up so we can see and my father posed us and took photographs (see that photo on the far left below). Even though she was very busy, she managed to take us to the parks and plaza, to the movies and she never missed a school activity where one of us was honored or presented.

She was our friend, our confidante, our playmate. I remember her telling us stories where she would make up words in place of common objects and as she told the story she replaced the original words with the made-up words. So we were forced to pay attention and memorize the words or we will lose the gist of the story. She played baseball with us, we hated her home runs because we had to search for the ball all over the place. She played with our dolls and made dresses for them. She taught us how to make paper dolls, how to build swings inside the house, how to pitch a blanket tent. She bought us miniature pots and pans and actually let us cook with flames and charcoal using the miniature objects. One day she draped herself with a white sheet and pretended to be a ghost and my younger sister and I screamed both with fear and delight. We played hide and seek and when we were preschoolers she let us climb her back and she pretended to be our horse. She let my older sisters play "hair salon" with her hair and they tied malonggay stems on her hair. A visitor came to the house and she opened the door with her hair tied up with stems and leaves. She did not care nor apologized for she was playing with us and that was just as important. We played a lot of word games. She taught us the rules for playing the classic and native children's games. Later when I had hair, she played with my hair to help me go to sleep.

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Most of all she let me be . I was so different from my sisters. I also looked different, I had no hair until I was three years old! I also thought that I can choose to wear any clothes and I liked my brother's clothes. My brother and my younger sister were my best friends. As children they were both pacifists. It wasn't that I was bellicose, but I was fiercely loyal to my brothers and sisters. I was their self-appointed protector, never mind that I was only half tall. My mother let me be. I don't know how she managed all of us. We turned out to be pretty successful in our chosen careers. My parent's greatest joy was attending graduations and my sisters and I provided them with ample opportunity to attend as many graduations as they could.

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I can see her sitting in her favorite bench in the covered patio just outside our dining room and she is reading, she read all the time whenever she was not working and I can hear her laughter.

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I love you Nanay. Thank you very much for everything.

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Here are a few photographs from my happy childhood:

It's Only Tuesday...

I woke up this morning, gathered my drawings by my bedside which I took to bed with me last night. The alarm did not ring yet. I automatically wake up at the same time. I have become a cyborg, except today I was so happy that my call will be over soon and I will enjoy the weekend. Then I realized it's only Tuesday...

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I wrote a letter (above) to a friend for one hour and I have not written a single word!

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I was upset with myself yesterday. I was at work. I went to the Women’s restroom and left my reading glasses there. I still had several hours left until I went home and I wondered how I can read without my glasses. I left my spare readers at home. I tried to recall where exactly I left my reading glasses. I can’t remember. Too much stress! My mind is shutting down. On the way back from the restroom, I saw my friend down the hall. I waved at her and did a dancing motion. She replied in the same manner. So we were waving and dancing without music while looking at each other from opposite ends of the hall. I went to the break room and made myself tea, very hot. I love hot tea. I love hot liquids, like coffee, tea or soup, not scalding but very hot.
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I tried to work and determine if I can use my computer and still be able to see. Maybe I can enlarge the font or move my chair farther from the screen. I could not see, my vision was blurred, so I adjusted my reading glasses. ..my reading glasses! I had them on all that time, I had my glasses on. Whew! What a relief. Darn! I am losing my mind! Drats! I can’t see!

Illustration Friday - Blur

Some memories cannot be blurred.

They just get clearer.

65 butterflies and counting...

One Hundred Butterflies In The Stomach - Now In The Garden!

Between the hours of 4 and 6 AM, I am at peace. Everyone is asleep and this morning even Daisy was still asleep. She stayed up all night with the boys. I sit in the dining room table and draw while drinking coffee. The silence is beautiful. I can hear myself think and I can feel the beating of my heart.

To all my dearest sisterfriends, thank you for your kind words and support when I had those horrid days this week. The good thing about having a bad day is it becomes yesterday and today offers another chance for peace and contentment. To all of you, I am grateful, you are my blog family and to each and everyone of you, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Today I started drawing butterflies. Twenty five, so far. The rest of my day: 11"x14" Bristol Board, 005 nib, daylight fluorescent light, rubber eraser, wrist splint, very hot coffee on a scarlet Fiesta keyhole mug, dictionary, encyclopedia of vegetables and fruits, The Wall Street Journal weekend edition, The Houston Chronicle, prescription glasses, rib eye steak, jarlsberg cheese, red wine, white wine, salmon, two loads of laundry, checkered pajamas, barefoot, Daisy, treats, lemon tart, a joke, ciabatta bread, challah bread, cinnamon raisin bread, English muffin, rye bread, epsilons, The Viking prepares dinner again!

You may know I am one of six daughters, but do you know I have two brothers? Yes, I do. They are terrific men, each a math whiz, they are both engineers, electrical and mechanical. The electrical one is a mathematics professor who as a teenager used to write poetry. The mechanical one is an artist, a cook, a gardener, he makes things with his hands, he can fix anything. When I was a little girl, I used to peek into his bedroom when he was not around. He had neat things, they attracted my attention. There was a slide rule, very nice pens and tubes of different colors. There were models, lots of gear and screws but his room smelled like cigarettes. He smoked. I hated it. It was from his bedroom window where I saw our neighbor's daughter looking out of her bedroom window, the one who never went out of the house. My brother taught me how to draw and it was his Rotring pens that I used for drafting and his watercolors that I used for drawing.

Anyway, I will tell you more about my brothers when I finish this drawing. I thought of them when I was drawing this piece. Wow, I think I was 10 years old when I last wrestled with the senior older brother. I don't get a chance to tell him often but he knows I love him. When I was growing up, the junior older brother was my best friend. He is the most gentle soul, I know. I can still tell him anything and he won't judge me.

An Illustration Of The Illustrator Of The Flower Girls

An Illustration Of The Illustrator Of The Flower Girls
Pigment ink on 11"x14" Bristol Board

I found the above drawing inside an empty Bristol Board pad. It was unfinished then. It is part of the Artist Profile Series that I started in the summer. You see the first profile on the left, it's Aimee of Artsyville. I start so many projects and then get sidetracked. I was quite insecure with the above drawing. I showed it to Bella and she liked it so I decided to finish it.

Then I found a very small brown dot on the drawing I decided to draw a tree but I could not stop and by the time I was finished the entire board was covered with ink.

I understand why people drink, smoke, gamble, go shopping for things they don't need, do drugs, become addicted to prescription drugs, perhaps they first did it to relieve stress and got used to the immediate gratification and relief. I feel like drinking. I thought yesterday was the worst day in my fourteen years of writing rule programs, but no, today was!

I don't have any vice for the purpose of relieving my stress. I thought this afternoon I was going to have a nervous breakdown. My neck is so stiff from all the problems that I had to fix. It's a long story, I am not going to bore you with details but for someone who seldom cries, I felt crying today. My eyes started welling and then I got so upset that I was upset and I became defiant.

Thank goodness I draw or paint. Drawing provides me with great comfort. I don't think I can paint this week. I feel very intense and heavy when I paint and if I feel a little more intense that I do now, I think I'll explode. I like my work and it's a very good job, but it is very stressful, more stressful than being an emergency trauma nurse.

Thank you to all my dearest sisterfriends who emailed me because they were so concerned that I disabled the comments on my blog. I am fine, stressed but I am okay. I think I'll join the kids and The Viking for dinner. The Viking prepared dinner last night and ordered it tonight.

Oooh!

The Secret Society Of Oaks - The Provost Nymph and The Skinny Trees

The Provost Nymph

Permament ink on 11"x14" Bristol board

Dedicated to Bella Sinclair and her contagious mirth.

The Provost nymph said she is not that skinny,

I assumed it's just one of those brush-offs she gives me

to redirect the attention away from her.

An exercise in mirth may be accomplished

by drawing a series of lines and squiggles.

For example,

a few lines and semi-circles to create a koi fish kite

with two epsilons clinging to its dorsal fin

with their Mom and a canine named Oz looking up with glee.

These and others you will have to see.

A Fiesta carafe and a coffee mug

can you guess the color?

I hijacked these from the cerebral one

who masks her brilliance with a wicked sense of humor.

Like the tetris rock formations

and pachyderm named Elton with a couple of friends

watching the ripples of the fish studded stream.

Of FPOT and a pot with F

of Bella sticking her tongue

and Isabella firmly grounded, not flying or falling.

Of a couple of ducks performing extreme Korean seesaw action.

Of Epsilon Nine playing Concerto No. 2, 3rd Movement, by F. Seitz

aboard a happy pachyderm

and Epsilon II, Emma the Diva serving honeysuckle tea to Alyssa

while the poor girl whose hairdo eluded the illustrator

of the most adorable Flower Girl Series is dangling

from the Taco Flower.

The elfin Ces drawing on her Bristol board

surrounded by a mother and two kids

in the form of ducks and turtles.

Somewhere is the mental ninja and

the precarious stack of cups formerly used by the violinist

sans kettle which now hangs from a tree

and a source of curiosity for the canine Oz.

I tried to portray my friendship with the Provost nymph

a bond still growing.

Do you remember when you were young

you used to play with two tin cans connected together by a string

which served as your telephone?

The two birds don't need that anymore

for they are perched together on a tree limb.

An on the twig is a banker bird who loved watches and golf

while on the other end a mother eagle watches over her nests

while an array of impressive bird houses display.

I love the four storied one.

The Viking bird with his wife on the computer

and his son with the canine named Daisy

and his daughter doing her homework while

listening to Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd.

Up north is a bald eagle bird

and on the west is another, not quite bald now

and her two epsilons

and the loving and caring glances of two senior birds

gazing upon them and as far out east

to a family with two little birds.

The sprouting oak the Provost Nypmh holds

looks like a heart.

She is a provost because she has a doctorate degree

in "nutology" and her favorite nut is me.

Let the pachyderms float in the air and roam on the grounds.

With my pen and my Bristol board

I squiggle with mirth!

The Secret Society Of Oaks - In The Dark

Isn’t it surprising to know?
Sometimes we can see better in the dark.
We no longer rely on our eyes alone
that sometimes fail to notice the details.
We touch.
We feel.
We listen.
We smell the aroma
or the repugnant scent
that we did not discern
because what we saw was enough.
We now notice the minute things
that we overlooked
because we were focused on a certain path.
And we realize that the little details mean a lot.
That if we only noticed them before
we could have averted
the fall that made us trip
and almost plunged us into the chasm.
It’s good to turn off the lights
And sit in the darkness for a while.

The Secret Society Of Oaks - Sunlight

The storms and heavy rains down here have an uncanny characteristic, they don't last long and the sun always penetrates even the thickest clouds. There is nothing that love cannot heal. I know I've said before that sometimes love is not enough, but you know what? Things get better with love. I like what my friend Deborah, my lovely tall oak nymph sisterfriend told me... love always wins. When I am sad I write, paint or draw. I started the above drawing last night and the constant stream of good and loving thoughts chased the dark clouds. Life is good. I like to think that.