Another thing that I wanted to write about from last year is the #DrawNativeTrees contest held by the Forest Foundation Philippines in order to raise awareness of our beautiful local trees. They posted a list of the trees that anyone can traditionally draw or paint. You can post as many paintings as you want as long as you follow their rules of using the hashtag and tagging @forestfoundationph and their representative artist Cynthia Arre (the amazing wife of graphic novel artist Arnold Arre).
I have never painted a tree seriously. All I ever did during my “Interior Plantscaping and Flower Arrangement” subject back in college were careless and loose strokes. But what motivated me was the prize. I really, really wanted the Bamboo tumbler HAHAHA.
Honestly, I never knew that we had so many endemic flowering trees in the Philippines. I even thought that the champaca was endemic here. The common among the list was Narra (our National Tree) and the Ylang-ylang.
So I researched more about the said list and got surprising results. I painted a bunch to submit to the contest:
And do you know the amazing part? I was one of the winners! Woohoo! I got the pretty bamboo tumbler and 2 copies of the Forest Blooms planner. ♥