An eye-sharpener of a hobby

A lot of artists are getting into digital imaging nowadays, even the older ones who started out long before the Age of Photoshop. And that's fine with me. Art is art in any medium, whether old or new. But it's still fun to do it the old way, using such anachronisms as a pencil or a ballpoint pen and paper. I'm talking specifically about drawing, a basic skill for artists, professional or amateur.

And I hope to get you interested in it, maybe even take it up as a hobby, especially if you already have the inclination for it or if you just have a lot of time on your hands. Now I'm not about to whack you on the head with artsy-fartsy baloney. As I said, drawing is fun – and if you need an elaborate argument just to have fun, you're just never going to get any. Anyway, drawing is a cheap, non-electronic way to have fun. Ask any artist you know, and he'll tell you that you don't really need to buy the most expensive materials to draw. To give you an idea: About six years ago, I bought my daughters some art stuff, because I've always believed that you don't have to aim to be a professional artist as a grownup to enjoy doing art as a child. And you just never know when a skill you picked up in your early years may yet prove useful later on. My elders did the same for me when I was a kid. I remember particularly that moment when I was in fifth grade, when my mother gave me an oil painting set for my 11th birthday. My excitement then would probably be equal to that of a fifth grader getting an Xbox now. To carry on the tradition, I bought each of my own kids a translucent plastic briefcase filled with sketchpads, crayons, oil pastels, watercolors and brushes, pencils and erasers, and sharpeners. I spent around P1,000 for the whole lot. And here's the payoff. When I called my wife a few days later, she said the kids – then aged nine and three – hadn't switched on the TV set for three days. For most of the day, they would be busy drawing – and in fact doing just that at the very moment. Well, hot-diggety-dog, to quote the late TV pioneer Uncle Bob Stewart. When I was a kid, I would have kicked you in the shins if you tried to drag me away from the TV set –and nobody dared to even try when it was Popeye or Batman that was airing. So that was money well-spent for the kids. And I'm an even cheaper sketching nut. All I use is a pencil – a 6B Staedler, a preference ever since I was an architecture student – or more often nowadays, a ballpoint pen – a black-ink HBW 2000, which despite its fancy-sounding name costs just P8 at this store near my place. For paper, I use either my Jackie Chan designhouse pad, which has thick, glossy sheets, or a pale yellow bond-size sheet. The pad was a token given away by the actor during a press con in Makati two years ago and the bond paper comes from an almost-forgotten stack given to me by mother ages ago. I have a set of Prang watercolors and Guitar oil pastels, but I haven't used them in long while. It's just too much trouble getting paper mounted for watercolor sketching and I find pastels unwieldy. Remember, I'm doing this just for fun. And I still recall that interview I had back in the 80s with the late National Artist Cesar Legaspi. He was launching a set of limited-edition prints of some ballpoint-pen sketches he had made on his trips here and abroad. He showed me some of the originals in a book-bound notebook with unlined pages, all done with pens that you could buy even from a sari-sari store. He said he wanted to prove to art students that they could turn out good art with cheap materials. I was awestruck. He certainly proved that beyond reasonable doubt in those pages. But then we can't all be a Cesar Legaspi. Still, I believe anyone can draw who really gets into it. You've seen handicapped artists draw, even paint, with their mouths or feet. Now that's a harder feat of motor coordination. If you still have full use of your hands and eyes, it would be easier for you to train yourself to draw, maybe with some guidance from an artist friend or the Internet. That's essentially what drawing is – coordination between your eyes and hands (or any other part of your body you can use). The more you do it the better that coordination becomes. That's why I'm still into drawing: It forces me to really look at things, which calls for concentration. It sharpens the eye, which should be an asset for any writer. And course, as I said, it's fun. If you don't believe that, you can just get back to your Xbox now.