Abstract Expressionism - Blog Posts
Besame Mucho
colored pencil & pen, calbayog city, 2025
Not gonna lie, I really like this one. It has a deeply blue, blue, and the red.. the red was an accident. I love accidents.
Lisa Ono - Besame Mucho
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Lavender Pink Tangerine
colored pencil & ballpoint pen, calbayog city, 2025
You see Doc, I tell myself that I'm not going to draw another one, and then, I just... do it.
Red, lavender, pink and tangerine.
C0l03 - Tezeta
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Relax
PEDRO UK
In the 1980's I played bass guitar in a reggae band. That was a trip let me tell you. To this day I still have dreams that I'm back in the studio with those guys.
Pedro, our riddim guitarist, and I are still in close contact. He continues to put out music from his home studio in Birmingham, England. He uses some of my art for his videos. This one looks nice.
More of Pedro's music here:
black sharpie, los angeles, 2022
Esparanza
colored pencil, calbayog city, 2025
A new one. This time red, lavender and pink.
The pink bleeds off yellow when I rub it with alcohol. Strange. Another mystery for me to ponder.
I wake up early each morning and draw to the sounds of roosters crowing.
I draw, in solitude, drunk on colors and black coffee.
It's summertime here so the kids are on break. After everyone wakes up we go down to the beach and hang out.
Hermanos Gutierez - Esparanza
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Lavender
colored pencil, calbayog city, 2025
Ok, its done. I added one more layer of lavender just because lavender is lovely.
Even Sean, my nine year old son, and harshest critic, likes it. So.. it's done.
Leila Pinneiro - Chega de Saudada
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Don't Let Babylon Use You
FRED LOCKS & the CREATION STEPPERS
colored pencil, calbayog city, 2025
I've got five layers on this drawing. Im amazed the paper is holding up.
Thank you Arches paper & Prisma pencils.
Don't let Babylon use you
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Tropical diving
colored pencil, calbayog city, 2025
I added more to this one. I love playing with these colored pencil pigments.
I brought heavy duty art paper from America that can put up with some abuse. I draw with the pencils and then rub them with alcohol. The colors smear around and blend together. When the alcohol dries I draw more and then smear again. It's so satisfying.
Lately I'm inspired by the blue of the Philippine sea near my home. I went diving a few days ago. The colors of the tropical waters were just like this drawing. As I dove around in a pastel coral forest I actually met a tropical sea snake. It calmly swam about ten feet from me. The snake, the coral forest and the tropical blue ocean were breathtaking.
Hermanos Gutierez - Esperanza
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colored pencil, calbayog city, 2025
A new one. I'm waiting for the first layer to dry but it's pretty now. More later.
Jacob Miller - Please Mr Officer
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love hate
colored pencil & pen, calbayog, 2025
I gave up on this drawing, and then I liked it.
Well, I liked the blue part. To me, the entire drawing is there just to make the blue part look good.
And it does.
Then again, the red and yellow parts are nice too..
Everything in life comes down to red, yellow and blue. And browns.
It was my brother who pointed out to me that browns bring out color.
Which is true, on several levels.
I love this song by the way.
Manenberg Revisited - David Williams
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And then I remembered
black sharpie on paper, rosemead, 2011
As I've been working on my latest drawings, I've been having this strange sense of having been here before. Not exactly deja vu but there was something. And then I remembered this drawing.
This drawing used to be my favorite drawing. I spent some time on it and looking at it now it still looks pretty cool. I hate to explain my art so I won't. It just, to me, looks cool.
When I drew it I was living in this cute little back house in Rosemead California surrounded by avacado trees. Not that that has anything to do with the drawing, but the avacados were great.
With my new drawings, if you look at them, it seems I have been unwitingly redrawing this older drawing, over again. Same thing only different.
Like I said it used to be my favorite drawing. Maybe deep down it still is..
Same thing only different
colored pencil, calbayog city, 2025
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Urge for going
colored pencil, calbayog city, 2025
I really enjoyed making these drawings, and I think they're beautiful, but I'm feeling that urge to move on. Or maybe it's just that I want to do more but I'm not certain how.
Let me think.
In any case these were fun.
Budos Band - T.I.B.W.F
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T.I.B.W.F.
The BUDOS BAND
colored pencil, calbayog city, 2025
I was doing this one all in reds and yellows, and it was on fire!
So, I decided to give the fire a bit of definition with dark blue lines, and, I might have gotten a bit carried away with the blue, but then, and I'm not sure why I didn't expect this but, I got these lovely browns.
We call that serendipity.
As a side note, Sean, my nine year old son says this is the worst drawing I've ever made..
He's a harsh critic.
before the blue
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Sean wanted blue
colored pencil, calbayog city, 2025
Sean, my nine year old son, told me he wanted a drawing that was just blue, so I'm drawing this. I've used four different blue pencils so far, but hear me out. As I worked the pigments with alcohol, I could see that the darker blue was bleeding off some purple, which was lovely. So I went back to my pencil box and found a lavender pencil, which is not exactly blue, but it made the drawing look just like the ocean off the coast here which is way cool.
Sean likes it, so far, so..
I'm going to add more. I think. But I seriously love these colors.
Brian Wilson - The Lonely Sea
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The Sari Sari store
One of the more lovely aspects of Filipino culture are the Sari Sari stores. Small family businesses that operate out of a home window. The streets are lined with them. Little window shops selling snacks, drinks, canned goods and what not. In my early trips to the Philippines the colorful item filled windows reminded me of the repetitive motifs of my own art. I thought about this for the entire trip once back in 2016, and then when I got home I sat down drew this.
Sari Sari, watercolor and sharpie, los angeles, 2016
Sari Sari store
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pigments
colored pencil, calbayog city, 2025
A few days ago I had a thought. These pigments are so great, FTW, let's just have fun with color for a while.
Midnite - Musi to honor my King
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It was a good week
Chezidek - Beat Them
colored pencil drawings, calbayog city, 2025
Making these drawings, this past week, has been all together liberating. I am taking a short break while I consider what colors to explore next.
That photo is me in 2014.
full sun photo
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final layer
colored pencil, calbayog city, 2025
I added another layer to this drawing, and I'm thinking it's done. Not gonna lie, I like it.
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Next
colored pencil, calbayog city, 2025
These drawing are like playing with finger paints but with maybe a little more intectual input.
I work in layers. The above drawings is made of five layers. Below is the drawing after three layers. Really fun to watch them grow.
black and white
Massive Attack/Horace Andy - Man Next Door
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not only by words
colored pencil, calbayog city, 2025
A man can live for a hundred years or more
A hundred years and he's scored
Not only by the words of his mouth
But the meditations of his heart
-- The Gatherers
The Gatherers - Words of your mouth
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being that
colored pencil, calbayog city, 2025
Being that my kids were busy building a pillow and blanket fortress this morning, I had unfettered access to the colored pencils.
No other reason.
I drew this in layers. This was the first layer.
black and white
Midnite - Music to honor I king
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Today
colored pencil & pen, monrovia 1996
I started drawing these swirls. And then I went nuts drawing swirls. I must have drawn 50 of these swirl drawings. I drew them at work and at home. On my napkin at the restaurant. It was all I wanted to do. One day a friend came to my place. When she saw I was drawing another swirl drawing she made this sound of exacerbation and said, "Pat! what's going on?"
Tbh I felt a little embarassed. So I moved on to drawing squares...
I still have a bunch of those swirl drawings.
I really like this one.
detail
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Non-thinking
Alan Watts - Non-thinking
black pen, monrovia, 1996
Alan Watts
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Unicorns and Jellyfish
colored pencil, Monrovia, 1997
This morning Sean, my nine year old son asked me,
"Dad, what's more believable, a unicorn or a jellyfish?"
My son's gone to school now but I'm still mulling that one over.
Here's a couple of older drawings.
Happy Friday.
still life
pencil drawing, Hollywood, 2017
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Power of the Trinity
AKAE BEKA
watercolor, los angeles, 2017
Once upon a time you were floating in a warm sea of amniotic fluid, dreaming.
watercolor, los angeles, 2017
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colored pencil & pen, Los Angeles 2016
I'm a big admirer of Paul Klee.
I don't think Klee ever used this motif but as I drew this I was thinking about him.
Embrionic Journey - Jorma Kaukonen (Jefferson Airplane)
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midnites
watercolor and pen, westwood, 1985
I used to have bad insomnia. I'd toss and turn in the middle of the night and finally, in frustration, I'd roll over and draw. I kept a drawing lying next to me just for this purpose. In the middle of the night I'd drawn until sleep came. The above drawing is one such piece. Slowly drawn in the wee hours of the morning during bouts of insomnia.
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Of Mice and Men
black sharpie on beige paper
Rosemead, 2011
This drawing is actually petty big. About 36 inches in length. I spent some time on it.
Let me tell you a story.
A year or so after I made this drawing, I met a guy who loved my art. He told me he had connections in Hollywood. He was friends with a guy who owned a gallery. He was going to arrange for a showing of my drawings. This, of course, sounded great to me, so I went out and had six of my best pieces professionally framed, including this drawing.
And then... the guy went crazy.
Seriously.
The guy had a complete mental break down.
Babbling crazy kind of breakdown. Dude!
The last I heard about the guy he was being taken to his family's home in New York where he was going to be committed to a mental hospital.
I still have the pieces framed.
Kind of funny.
I made a few nice inverse color prints of this drawing.
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Feel Good Inc
Happy New Years to everyone on Earth.
I'm lying here recovering from four days of bing excess. The Filipinos like to stay up all night eating, drinking whiskey and singing karaoke and God bless them.
Whew.
I've been on Tumblr for a year now. Thank you everyone for all your likes and follows. Here is a recap of some of the drawings I have shared. The dates of the pieces range from 1977 to 2024. In no particular order.
Gorillaz - Feel Good Inc.
"The best is yet to come" - Frank Sinatra
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Blaze Foley - If I could only fly
black sharpie on paper
Monrovia 1996
Almost felt you touching me just now
Wish I knew which way to turn and go
Feel so good, then I feel so bad
Wonder what I ought to do
If I could only fly, if I could only fly
I'd bid this place goodbye
to come and be with you
But I can hardly stand,
I got no where to run
Another sinking sun,
one more lonely night
- Blaze Foley
black sharpie and colored pencils
Westwood 1986
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Infinite Ovum
black sharpie
Los Angeles 2013
Did you know that the ovum that went on to become you was quietly resting in your mother's overy when your mother was a fetus inside your grandmothers womb?
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