At the recent Manila Illustration Fair at the UP College of Fine Arts, Paul Klee’s dictum that “drawing is taking a line for a walk” found vivid expression.
For Klee, drawing was not merely an act of copying or imitation but a process of exploration into movement, space, and rhythm. It is a philosophical view that treats the line not as a rigid boundary but as an unfolding path of imagination—arranging forms playfully and organically rather than fixating on strict representation. To take a line for a walk is to allow it to lead you toward aspiration, documentation, or the registering of emotion.
Manila has steadily grown into a city teeming with conventions, fairs, and cultural gatherings. The Illustration Fair is part of this vibrancy, demonstrating that Filipinos are not only consuming art but also producing it—often as an act of persistence in the face of technological upheaval.
With artificial intelligence increasingly relied upon by corporations, one might assume that hand-drawn illustration risks obsolescence. Yet the fair proved the opposite: illustration is still vital to the creative ecosystem. It carries within it the human element of deliberation, accident, and memory, resisting the flattening tendencies of machine-generated images.
The role of illustration, after all, has always been about clarity and insight. The very word “illustration” shares roots with “illumination”—to shed light, to make something clear. From the earliest cave drawings that encoded memory on stone walls to the classroom doodles that researchers now recognize as aids to focus, drawing is more than mark-making.
Anthropologists and neurologists alike argue that it is also a form of thinking. To draw is to externalize thought, to make the invisible visible. The Manila Illustration Fair revealed the abundance of such thinking: diverse voices, varied media, and styles that embody the plurality of Philippine imagination.
Even established painters are embracing the medium’s possibilities. Rodel Tapaya, renowned for his sprawling canvases filled with myths, folklore, and fractured histories, has entered the realm of the graphic novel. His latest work, Alulong—launched at the fair—takes its title from the Filipino word for howl. It follows a dog named Chi-Chi who witnesses the violence and complications of modern life.
The howl becomes a metaphor: a cry against uncertainty, a call that echoes through the noise of the present. Tapaya’s move into sequential art shows how lines can shift scale—from monumental paintings to intimate panels—yet still carry the same urgency.
The fair also extended beyond the local. Palestinian illustrator Baraa Awoor, unable to travel to Manila, presented lush works from Egypt. Her drawings, reminiscent of magical books of tales, resonate all the more given the struggles of her homeland. That her lines still take flight, unbound by borders, is a testament to art’s capacity to imagine freedom even amid constraint.
In the end, the fair affirmed Klee’s insight. Every illustrator present had taken their line for a walk, and each path led somewhere distinct—toward myth, memory, protest, or wonder.
Together, they showed that drawing remains not only a form of seeing but a way of being in the world.
You may reach Chong Ardivilla at kartunistatonto@gmail.com or chonggo.bsky.social.
