I never came from an artistic background. I’m aware that there are many forms of art, and what I mean by “I never came from an artistic background” is that I was never exposed to drawing with pencil on paper as a kid. Sure, I drew and colored in school to work on my motor skills, but drawing wasn’t exactly on top of my list when I walked my little legs out of the gates of my elementary school. It’s not that I didn’t want to draw, it’s just simply the fact that I didn’t have proper paper at home. The only thing that was close to something I could draw on (other than the walls) were my dad’s mails, which I never bothered to touch. Growing up poor, I knew those mails always contained some government related information that were sent to my parents. It wasn’t until I was around first or second grade that I realized that everyone around me had one thing in common: they loved to draw, and they were good at it.

When I came home from school, I would go straight to my babysitter’s home as both of my parents were at work. I have a clear memory of this girl who was a little older than me, holding an origami piece in her hand. I thought it was the coolest thing ever since the piece was interactive even though it was paper, and it wouldn’t even rip while she played with it. With a warm smile, she asked me to pick a number, and that the number would determine my fortune. 

When I got home that day, I immediately got a napkin from the kitchen and started folding. It amazed me how paper can fold, and create a structure – and the structure can resemble anything I wanted. 

As a student in high school, it’s been a while since I’ve traced back to my childhood. With the butt-load of academic matters and extracurricular activities, I’ve only ever been worrying about the present, and the future. When my English teacher assigned a comic project to the class, I was a little worried. I can barely draw a portrait, let alone several panels of a comic. 

After much thought, I decided to do something that would heal my inner child. I traced back to my elementary school years, where I was obsessed with origami. I still have origami paper at my desk to this day, and I knew there were instructions on how to make certain animals out of the origami paper on the piece of cardboard that held all the paper together. Instead of doing a comic on origami animals, I decided to do a comic on how to make an origami fortune teller. As silly as it sounds, I picked the fortune teller because that’s the first origami piece I’ve ever learned to make and it’s the piece that got me into making little things into origami structures.

After many tries of perfecting the panels, I finally got to draw the instructions. It took a few minutes for me to realize that I have a bad sense of angles when it comes to drawing, so I took a piece of origami paper from my desk and decided to make the fortune teller as I was drawing. This would allow me to have a reference to draw from. I drew arrows to represent the direction at which the paper is supposed to fold and dotted lines to indicate creases on the paper. Originally, I was gonna leave the panels colorless and just add some shading with my pencil, but I realized that it would be easier for the audience to see the angles of the origami paper better if I added some color. 

As much as I dislike drawing, I’m glad that I was able to participate in the comic assignment. Not only did I enjoy creating something that would teach somebody one of my hobbies, but it also healed the child within me that was in need of healing.