Graphic Diabolic

When the moms of my classmates in grade two bragged how their kids are so brilliant in math or science, my nanay’s proud retort was: “But my son makes the best Dracula drawings in class!” Incessant laughter ensued. They’re still probably laughing to this very day.

In a weird Charlie Kaufmanesque manner, she’s a seer of a mother. Fast-forward to now: Decades older, less hair, more bulge in the belly, albeit still badly behaving like a grade school student, I’m one of the graphic artists in The STAR and I’m still making illustrations of Nosferatu, Rasputin, the living dead and such. I gravitate toward the ghastly, anything purgatorial, things that leave viewers with mounting horror. A few of my favorite influences and subjects: Bizarre magazine, David Lynch’s Eraserhead, William S. Burroughs, Jorge Luis Borges, John Cage, David Croneberg’s Videodrome, video games and bondage movies and horror flicks, Francis Bacon, Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, The Hunger, Venom, Hellboy, gimps, Joel-Peter Witkin, Waiting for Godot, William Blake, Watchmen, From Hell, The Waste Land, skulls, spiders, Henry Miller, free jazz, Damien Hirst, Clive Barker, H.R. Giger’s Alien, The League of Gentlemen, Monty Python, Joey de Leon’s Longganisang Maong, Aliwan Comics, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, Robert Williams, the Joker, R.K. Sloane, Twilight Zone, fantastic art, Chiquito’s Estong Tutong, Dante’s Inferno, zombies, voodoo, Hipgnosis, Pan’s Labyrinth, Nazi scientists… and things that go bump in the night. If you siphon them away from my psyche, I would be in a different field right now — vulcanizing, most likely. Or maybe a mortician or a life insurance salesman.

In most days, you won’t find me doing drawings in hot pink dripping with cuteness, or cuddlesome saccharine shit. If you find a bunny in my work, chances are it would be a crucified and flayed rabbit — something resembling the barbecued dogs on crosses in Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain, something that would make normal moms retch or thank God that their kid is a wizard in math instead of the wizard of odd.

I am so fortunate to be working for The STAR’s Lifestyle section with such a hip editor, Millet. Well, for one, she digs the fraught imagery of Frida Kahlo. Another thing: Seven years ago when a priest complained that my illustrations are “disturbing and demonic,” she found the comment amusing. No burning at the stake for me. No exorcism rites (punctuated with “The power of Christ compels you!” chant). No setting of the hounds of the Inquisition upon my computer table.

In my opinion, the word “demonic” should refer to child molesters and fascist dictators. (Leaders like Stalin and Pol Pot have even out-deviled the devil.) What I make are simply, well, drawings. That’s what artist Jojo Legaspi said when somebody commented about the shock appeal of his paintings. Drawings lang ’yan, he said, shrugging the whole thing off.

Rightly so. My drawings don’t go walking in the night while everyone’s asleep to steal your money and break your hearts. When robbers broke into my apartment last year, the monsters, zombies and skeletons in my paintings didn’t come to life to chase those thieving bastards away. That would be illogical. That would be Hellraiser.

Although, come to think of it, that would be neat.

Photoshock

When I paint, there are times I get so frustrated with oil or acrylic that I wish there was a History Brush Tool so I could undo the whole thing, just like when I do computer graphics using Adobe Photoshop. Or maybe move images around, lasso the whole thing, and go crazy with swatches, layers and blurs. (Special thanks to Abner Oquendo and Elmer Bacasmas for teaching me how to use the program nine years ago.)

What’s great about Photoshop is that you could start with a line drawing, have it scanned, download textures or images from the Internet and tweak them, combine everything in one syrupy graphic soup, use the pencil or pen tools to draw more figures, and then add an image or some texture above it with only, say, 30-percent opacity to give the illustration more meat. (The Photoshop Creative Suite 4 even allows users to wrap 2D images on 3D shapes, as well as paint directly on 3D models, etc. Time to go woodshedding once I get the program.)

But I’d like to go old school with new technology. Nothing beats a well-balanced composition and an impeccable color choice. The key is to incorporate traditional painting techniques into one’s computer graphic work such as underpainting (using brushes with different opacities), line weight (vary the thickness of the line to give more life and depth to the figure), vanishing points (to establish perspective, to situate the figure), and blending (not as messy as when daubing with turpentine and linseed), as well as preparing studies (play around with sketches and rough ideas).  

When I interviewed some computer graphic experts a couple of years ago, they deluged me with so much Adobe jargon and showers of errant saliva that I wished secretly for a raincoat. I don’t get easily fascinated with tricks, plug-ins and sophistry. Some people get so swept up in technological overkill that they use the entire arsenal of drop shadows, outer glows and eye candy. (Good for them if they want their graphics to look like rejected posters from Transformers 2 or billboards proclaiming this and that road was built by this and that congressman.) Reminds me of contemporary Filipino painters who dab their canvases with tacky gold paint, or those whose kitschy works (peppered with Filipiniana beauties, flowers, fruits, rice fields, brightly-plumed birds, etc.) which can be used as illustrations for Ibong Adarna coffee-table books. When I work I like to think about Mark Rothko and what he said about colors as not just tools but mainly “performers.” Or what Francis Bacon said about his paintings as not windows but (self-contained) objects.

I still suck at graphics, though. I cringe when I see my old illustrations. Stuff I drew, say, yesterday. There’s much regretful twitching involved. A good thing the Lifestyle section has unselfish layout artists (Jojo, Boy, Rey and Jerry) whom I bug for computer tips from time to time. I also look at the work of excellent graphic artists like Rom Villaseran or Miguel Mari to learn a thing or 10.

My most important advice about using Adobe Photoshop (or, say, Adobe Illustrator or Corel Painter X) is to have fun with the whole process. If you can’t be as good as Giger, then at least don’t be unoriginal. Shake things up. Think of the program as a sandbox of sorts and you are a kid with a stick, or a blackboard and you are Bart Simpson with long fingernails. Once it stops being fun for me, I’d rather sell life insurance on the avenues of the dead.

And all the time carrying a Manila folder filled with doodles of Dracula.