166. Notes on Celeste Lecaroz's Portraits: #5 One Artwork a Day

During the heyday of the Beatles, each Beatle - or so the legend says - wrote one song a day. These songs, a lot of which could be crap, became the source of the 275 original songs that the Beatles recorded and released. It's basic math. They improved the probability of getting a good song done by populating the pool from which it would be drawn. When Celeste started considering the shift from adult coloring to full artist, I told her about this trivia from the Beatles. I challenged her to be the Beatle of art, "Do it. One artwork a day. Start now." What followed was an adventure of sorts. She geared up for it -- colored pencils, colored pens, water color, pastel, acrylic paint, oil paint, and coffee stains.

 

"Wait a minute," I told her as she painted the beautiful face of the young Susan Roces using coffee stains, "Why are using my coffee?" She told me a little story about how she overheard a comment from detractors (everyone has them) that the reason why she colors well is because she has expensive materials. "To prove them wrong, I'm using the most accessible and cheapest material any artist can get." And the resulting figure is this wonderful monochromatic image of the once and future first lady of the Philippines. "Fine, I said. That's still counted as one artwork." So. Celeste does it everyday. Paint, eat, draw, sleep, color, eat, sketch, sleep -- it's the rhythm of one artwork a day.  Sometimes, she does them in advance. And she is "getting so much better all the time." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.