Power Chocolates

Amirasolo and Other Essays

Part 2. My Trip Around the Art World

Essay 23. GOURMET TAMALES AND POWER CHOCOLATES

Cafe Ysabel's quaint ambiance suited well the event. That was where Tahanan Books held the book signing for DIdith Tan Rodrigo's "Tamales Day". The dainty pre-war architecture of the place complemented finely with the merienda served during the event---the Tan family's heirloom delicacy I called 'gourmet tamales'.

It was a grand affair amply covered by media,  I felt like a celebrity that night because plenty of people were asking me to autograph the books they bought. Add to that my fifteen-minutes-of-fame moment when writer Natasha Vizcarra interviewed me. Her write-up on me appeared a few days later in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

I have already completed the Illustrations for another book, "The Brothers Wu and the Good-luck Eel", at the time of the book signing for Tamales Day. While I was occupied with my Illustration tasks, Tahanan Books publisher Reni Roxas had been busy herself reading closely and editing three new manuscripts she had on hand.

When she was through, she called me to a meeting. She had another project for me, she said---their fairy tale trilogy. This trilogy includes ten stories each by Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, and Charles Perrault, all retold by Fran Ng.

That was an exciting project, a dream come true for me. Ever since I bought books on the fairy tale art of Edmund Dulac and Kay Nielsen--- two of the leading lights of the so-called golden age of children's illustrated books, a period dating from 1880 to the early 1900s---I began to entertain the ambition of being able one day to do similar fairy tale Illustrations.

The first book I'll illustrate will be the compilation of ten Andersen fairy tales. Reni made it clear that they're going to pay me not only for the publishing right but also for the copyright. That's the reason why I got a pretty substantial amount for this project. I don't remember the exact amount, but I think I was paid 66 thousand pesos. I retain ownership of the original illustrations of course, which I can exhibit and sell later on.

Since the rights to the illustrations were already bought outright by Reni, I'm no longer entitled to any royalty from the sales of the book and subsequent reproductions of the images. But Reni was very generous. When Tahanan Books received a grant from the World Bank for their Library Hub Project, and three of the books I did for them were chosen for reprinting and distribution to school libraries nationwide, Reni shared what she got from the World Bank. She paid me hefty royalty fees even if I'm no longer entitled to them.

It took me five months to complete the illustrations for "The Brothers Wu and the Good-luck Eel", which I thought then was quite a long time to be working on a book. I was wrong. This Andersen book, titled "Once Upon a Time", took me longer to finish---one year more or less.

Reni Roxas was very exacting. She knew precisely how the illustrations should look. Before starting on an illustration for a certain story she would first asked me to read the manuscript closely and then submit a pencil study. Of the ten stories, the studies for "The Farmer and his Wife, "Thumbelina", "The Wild Swans", "The Nightingale", "The Little Match Girl", and "The Emperor's New Clothes", got by without incident, so to speak. The rest she rejected. I was asked to make minor revisions like removing or changing certain elements in the picture, or major ones like drawing an entirely new composition.

In the original pencil drawing for the "Little Mermaid" I drew the sea witch with her right hand forefinger pointed at the mermaid as if scolding her. Reni said that it is over-acting: no need to show the pointing finger. So, I revised it and just show the sea witch's hand caressing the head of the oarfish entwined around her body.

For the "Princess and the Pea", I submitted a pencil study showing the prince and the princess inside a room. In the room was a four-poster bed on which were placed on top of one another more than a dozen mattresses. Propped against the side of the mattresses is a ladder which the princess is about to climb.

Reni didn't like it. She had a better composition in mind. She whipped out her pen and made a sketch on a small piece of paper. What she drew was a rough line drawing of a princess atop the mattresses. The scene was depicted frontally, with the bedposts curtains drawn aside to show the princess.

The scene she had in mind was magical. It reminds one of a theater or a puppet show scene. I admit that what she sketched was superior to the study I made. Reni said that she can't draw, but what she drew revealed the artist in her---her instinctive grasp of composition and eye for beauty.

I was asked to do two illustrations for the longest story in the book, "The Traveling Companion'". The study for the first illustration was rejected. I drew there the princess going down the stairs on both sides of which were lined up skulls of her executed suitors. At the bottom of the stairs waiting for her is her king father and the hero of the story. Reni asked me to remove the two men. The emphasis she said should be on the princess and the skulls alone, with the beauty of the princess in stark contrast to the gruesomeness of the skulls.

My study for "The Ugly Duckling" underwent the most number of revisions. I first submitted a scenic but rather bland lake scene showing swans gathered around in a circle, while the still ugly duckling hidden among the reeds watch from afar. But Reni wanted an interior scene. So, I depicted in the second study the housewife in the story and her two children chasing the duckling running on the floor. This was rejected again.

Reni told me what scene she wanted exactly. I drew it, and the study I submitted showing the duckling jumping out of the cauldron hanging inside the fireplace and the startled mother and children was finally approved by her.

I painted the final illustrations using acrylic on Canson Montval paper. The illustrations are quite small, with nine of them measuring just 10 X 12.5 inches. Since the illustrations for "The Emperor's New Clothes" and "The Farmer and his Wife" were double page-spreads, I have to make them bigger.

Before starting this project, Reni lent me several picture books illustrated by foreign artists. The one that caught my fancy was the book "Once Upon a Tree", written by Natalia Romanova and illustrated by that celebrated Russian illustrator Gennady Spirin. Spirin's illustrations were truly after my own heart, with all their "kutkutan", or obsessive depiction in minute detail of even the littlest elements of the pictures.

The first illustration I submitted was for "The Farmer and his Wife", which she bought together with "The Wild Swans" when I exhibited them with the rest of the artworks in 2001. While I used a palette of mostly bright colors for my previous Illustrations, I adopted for the Farmer and His Wife Gennady Spirin's  rather somber color scheme of earth hues.

I spent three weeks working on the Farmer and His Wife. But it was worth everyone's wait. When I submitted it, Reni sent me a note saying, "if the illustrations you'll submit next are as beautiful as this, we're on our way to producing a world class picture book." She sent with this note a can of imported chocolates which she hoped would give me the energy to continue producing what she deemed as amazing work. She called those chocolates, power chocolates.