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My Art Story in a Nut Shell Part 3

My wife, Tet, bought me a complete set of brushes, several canvases on board, oil and acrylic paint when she returned from her study leave from the Netherlands in 2010.  For many months I didn’t touch the stuff until December of 2010.  Yes, I was already 38 years old when I decided to give my failed aspirations a chance.  I have no formal training and relied only on the good genes that I think I got from my Lolo, the late Gabriel Reynoso.  My Lolo, I was told would have been a great Filipino artist had he not concentrated on commercial art.  He had my mother and a brood of eleven others to feed.

Here is a self-portrait my Lolo that he drew back in 84 while visiting my relatives (his daughter) in the US. 

The late Gabriel Reynoso - artist

And here is an oil painting of my Lola by my Lolo also in the 80's. 

My Lola Remedios Reynoso

Anyway, I experimented on using acrylics as it was (1) relatively cheaper than oil unless you buy the best brands of acrylic like Golden http://www.goldenpaints.com/index.php, (2) easier to clean brushes, (3) did not require adequately ventilated rooms to work with and (4) it dries up faster.

 I work in layers most of the time and get impatient waiting for paint to dry.  Sometimes I’ll direct an electric fan to the painting just to dry it up faster. Lastly, with acrylics the effects you can achieve can mimic watercolor or oil.  It’s almost impossible to differentiate it from watercolor.  With oils, you can blend and blend paint as long as you like which is difficult in acrylics to do.  You only have a window of about 5 to 15 minutes to do that unless you use a retarder to extend drying time.  Now all this may be boring you now so I’ll move on to my first piece done last Dec 2010.

Anak Araw. 10 x 10. Acrylic on canvas board.

This one was made under an hour and I used another canvas board as my palette (I didn’t have one yet). It’s a very simple painting since I was still trying out stuff. It is *significant in the long run because it is my first painting (*Caveat - might not be too significant if I dont make it hehe).

I’m happy for the lady who bought it. It was very cheap! Hehehe.

Now I don’t entirely remember the sequence of all the paintings that I have made since I only indicate the year in them.  The pieces that I will always remember of course are the first and the latest one. 

The latest one I'm working on now is a piece for the  Philippine Art Awards. 

See link for details for the competition. 

http://philippineartawards.org/competitionrules.php 

I am also finishing artwork number 6 for my exhibit in November 2011 entitled "Kapagka Palay na ang Lumapit sa Manok" at SM, Calamba City, Laguna, Philippines.  I will be featuring 15 to 20 pieces there along with another 10 to 15 pieces from artist Manuel "Jimboy" Bactong Jr.

The exhibit focuses on the influence and importance of rice in Asian culture by way of popular beliefs, proverbs, cinematic lines, and similar. The pieces needs some analytical/creative thinking to understand. In fact, those who have seen some of them cannot guess the titles of each one. They will only realise what the painting is telling them once the title is revealed. How do we do it? Just watch in November and you'll see why.

My next article will be about MakiSining: The Makiling Art Group. Its an art organization that we formed here in Los Banos.

Till next time...