much ado about a wall

-
One of the things Garr Reynolds emphasized in his book "Presentation Zen" was the importance of great images in one's slide presentation. During the course of my preparation, the nursery rhyme about Humpty Dumpty sitting on the wall and falling over just kept playing over and over in my head. I immediately realized that this would become my presentation's theme; I had to get a good photo of a wall as soon as possible.

The numerous online images I had pored over neither felt like the wall photo I was looking for nor sparked an idea in my head. So, I thought, I might as well try sketching one. After all, I do have a drawing application in my tablet computer and a stylus in my bag. In case I wasn't happy with my sketch, at least I'd know what I was looking for.

Wacom's Bamboo Paper application came in handy for the sketches I needed to make. After drawing several drafts, I finally settled on a doodle of a stone wall (in side view) inspired by the firewall at Atoy's Porkchop, a restaurant chain which has a branch along the national highway in my hometown. I've never eaten there but I'm fascinated by the gray stones forming its firewall.

 

Drawing the view from the side was an idea I borrowed from the movie adaptation of Neil Gaiman's "Stardust". The rest of my artistic efforts (energy largely deflated after wall doodles) resulted in stick figures representing people. Yes, stick figures.

This wall, roughly drawn, is hardly a masterpiece; however, I was happy with it; happy enough to use it in my slide deck. Finally, I had the centerpiece of my talk!

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for dropping by!

Before moving on, please share your thoughts or comments about the post. :)

Thanks again!

Popular posts from this blog

Skyflakes

-
One of the more famous Philippine exports is Skyflakes , a wheat-based, salty cracker. It is one of my emergency food items: I typically have some stocked at home and in my handbag in case I become hungry (like in traffic jams). When there's no electricity and it's impractical to cook rice (because the leftover would spoil), I'd open a pack of Skyflakes and generously coat each cracker with Cheez Whiz... if I had a bottle of it within reach. Anyway, each time I spent more than two weeks outside the Philippines, I'd be elated to see boxes of Skyflakes inside Asian stores (particularly when in I was Australia and in the USA). Back then, I took it as a sign of homesickness. When I moved to California, I didn't miss Skyflakes because Mommy made sure that there's a steady supply in the house. Skyflakes is embedded in Filipino gastronomy as a snack, a panawid-gutom , that anyone who reacts positively upon seeing Skyflakes outside the Philippines must have spe
Read more

10 things I learned while driving on Marcos Highway to Baguio City

-
I went on a day trip to the City of Pines, which was around a 700-km drive from my house. I drove  going up there and then from the city to Victoria, Tarlac. After that, my dad took over the driving duties. It was day trip with Tita Ising and Tito Sibing with us. Anyway, this trip was my first time to go to Baguio City with me behind the wheel. As everyone who drives up knows, there are three main routes to Baguio from the lowlands: Kennon Road, which ascends from Rosario, La Union. It was out of my options because it's too dangerous to use that road in the rainy season. The second route is via Naguilian Road, which makes my trip a lot longer because the beginning of the ascent is in Bauang, La Union (further north). The last route, and the one I took, was the Marcos Highway, now known as the Aspiras-Palispis Highway. This 47-km road starts from Agoo, La Union and is touted as the safest route among the three.  As I drove up and then down (on the same day; we were in Bagu
Read more

Surat Mangyan

-
Image
In high school, part of the Filipino curriculum was learning about one of the country's ancient native scripts called Baybayin . I learned back then that this script was eventually abandoned because the Spanish, and eventually the Americans, encouraged the use of the Latin script for written communications. But that's in the lowlands; the rules were different up in the mountains. In the lush mountains of Mindoro, groups of indigenous people called Mangyans  live largely in isolation away from the Christianised Filipinos. This isolation has led to the continuous development of the Mangyans' old script, Surat Mangyan . As I walked inside the Ayala Museum , I saw this bamboo tube (I'm not sure if it's an instrument) with Mangyan script written all over it. I suppose that this was equivalent to a book or a song. But I haven't figured out what's written yet, despite the translation guide provided. What I can do, however, is write my name in Ma
Read more