December, 2006:

When I was a little kid, I used to admire my elder sister’s collection of sketches and drawings of different images, mostly humans, because I don’t know, maybe she’s fascinated with the beauty of human anatomy of something, the curves and all that. Seen on almost everywhere, but most of them, she found on magazines. She likes fictional characters, especially odd, so she would grab a pencil (sometimes pen), and scribbles her way to its completion. And when it’s done, I can’t help but to stare at it and wishes to draw like her. “Man, she’s good!”, i used to think.

And when she’s really at it, she would put finishing touches, like grabbing markers or pastel colors, or water colors, whatever her crafty hands hover on, she would use it. She would put them all together in her thick brown envelope and keep in her drawer, a collection sort of stuff.

Until I had this comic magazine which a friend gave me, and was sold then I believe about $1.30 or so. Can’t really remember what magazine that was, but I’m pretty sure it was a DC, where you would see Dark Wing and Midnight fight. Sure is a treasure for 7-year old art fanatic. And so I would read it so often that I remembered every single line. So I thought cool graphics and all, and since my family is in fond of drawing/sketching and everything, like I’ve seen my father draw images of his plumbing projects, like those you see on a blue print ala Leonardo Da Vinci, my sisters who did my school projects so cartoony, and my brothers did drawings similar to that of my father, only better, I thought I’m gonna give it a shot.

It’s kind of hard that it required patience and huge percent of passion (for a kid) to produce images like those, with all the shadowing stuff, the fluidity of the movement that looked so natural (which made me once think that maybe STAN LEE is a god in disguise), the reaction of clothes and how they react to the movement of the character wearing it (although most of them wears spandex, you know, the usual superhero stuff), above many that some, I don’t have an idea what to call them. Though if you’re in this field, I bet you know what I’m pertaining to.

It didn’t come out satisfying enough because they had small heads and large bodies, but I sure was proud to discover the blood runs through the veins. I kept in mind it’ll get better eventually, and of course it did.

So you never really know what big things might come from small ones. And you know, I still have that inspiration mag, or so I think… (now where did I keep it?)

Boredom kills. Right. Especially when we’re at home alone or maybe in an establishment, waiting for someone in the lobby of a hotel, or being the next patient at a dentist clinic, we seek for something to kill time. Sure, we have internet, television, radio, even cellphones have taken a huge leap in technology that it now have quite numerous features to keep you occupied, among a lot. Yup, magazines still got the charm.

Almost everything under the stars, you can find them in magazines. Topics, features, and articles about things around you, it’s there. It is unbelievably broad, that I think you’d agree when I say there isn’t any topic that hasn’t been discussed. Broad that it is impossible to enumerate all the things you can see and read in it. Round of applause to the publishers of magazines.

What I find fun to read are the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) topics (that, of course, comes after computers, gadgets, and automobile), which are usually found on magazines that are about hobbies, or home improvement. As a homebody type of person, I find them educating, and interesting that you never would know that you are capable of doing something unless you’ve tried it, right?
So DIYs… although there are topics that I find too easy to do, like HOW TOs, directions on how to repair this and that, that the question, “how dummy could a person be to ask for step by step procedures like this when they should have figured out how to fix things up themselves?”, crosses your mind (quite funny but not to laugh at, I think the editors have their reasons), I find most of them challenging, that you know it took a lot of creativity to come up with an idea like that. Making chandelier from scrap, chairs and tables with the 60′s character, or a work of art from spoons and forks. Wouldn’t you be impressed?

And what better time to read them? I, personally prefer reading them during lazy afternoons, or at bedtime. When you’re done with the day’s work, done with the chores, and ready to call it a night.

One of the first magazines was the German Erbauliche Monaths-Unterredungen, issued from 1663 to 1668. In the early 18th century Joseph Addison and Richard Steele brought out the influential periodicals The Tatler and The Spectator; other critical reviews began in the mid 1700s.