Drawn to Life

MANILA, Philippines - Mater illustrator for The Philippine STAR’s Lifestyle section, Rey Rivera has been with the company for a solid 25 years already. Before being one of The STAR’s pioneers, he was fresh from his five-year stint at an advertising company in Saudi Arabia. Upon coming back to the Philippines, Rivera was quickly asked to try out (by a friend) to be part of a team of “paste-up artists” for a new broadsheet.

With everything going smoothly, Rivera soon found himself part of the eight-man team of artists of The Philippine STAR, initially working on the main section of the paper. After a few years, he then transferred to Starweek, the paper’s Sunday magazine, before eventually landing his position in The STAR’s Lifestyle Section, where he’s currently multi-tasking as illustrator, layout artist, and sometimes photographer/writer.

Rivera’s interest in art stems from his early childhood, having always enjoyed drawing pictures as a kid. He actually had his heart set on taking up Fine Arts in college when his uncle persuaded him to take up Architecture instead as both his uncle and his father were both architects. However, the lure to be an artist remained strong.

Fast forward to the present, Rivera has already established a good name for himself, thanks to his illustrated works of art being a part of one of the country’s top broadsheets on a daily basis. He says he usually comes up with about 17 to 20 artworks per month, depending on the needs of the Lifestyle Section (his work can be seen in the different sub-sections from Health & Family to YStar. On a good day, he can easily finish an illustration in just 20 minutes although he admits this is not always the case. For his illustrations, Rivera shares that he actually does everything on the spot wherein he waits for the stories that are supposed to be sent to the printers in just a matter of hours; reads them, and tries to come up with something that captures the essence of the article. While he’s free to come up with his own visual interpretations of the articles, there are still rare occasions when the workload becomes quite overwhelming.

With his 2pm to 10pm work schedule (sometimes even extending to the early hours of the morning when there are a lot of pages to close), Rivera says that weekends are always reserved for his wife and kids. A father of two grown boys, Rivera shares that while they never got into art, his sons do share a fondness for music and it’s what they use to sometimes bond. He shares that the three of them even play music together especially for the church.

Looking back on his 25 years at The STAR, Rivera shares that it has taken his career into very interesting turns. From being a paste up artist, doing the layouts manually to being an “all-around” artist, he says that the other welcome opportunities that have come his way have been through the encouragement of his boss, The STAR’s Lifestyle Editor, Millet Martinez-Mananquil, who started giving him and the other Lifestyle artists coverage assignments. Having always dabbled in film photography (and later, digital), Rivera considers these assignments as actual “perks” of the job wherein he gets to travel outside the country to famed Asian destinations like Palau, and take part in interesting events. While he already has the picture-taking part down pat, he still needs to get used to writing articles. But when asked if this is something that he’d like to pursue later on, Rivera is clear in saying that he’d still prefer to be an illustrator any day adding that he’ll always be an artist.

While his work life can indeed be hectic, Rivera ends the interview on a good note, saying that even after more than two decades, he still enjoys his job very much and for those rare times that the workload may be a tad overwhelming, he reverts to his simple solution of “Basta ‘pag ‘di na kaya, relax”. A true Star trooper all the way.