In contrary to John Locke’s philosophy that our minds at birth is a Tabula Rasa “Clean Slate”, John Michael Medrano, JM for short, thinks otherwise. He believes that we have innate capabilities we can unlock and discover if we have the will and patience to explore them. In JM’s case, he discovered his talent in art.
JM is one of our new scholars from this year’s batch of 2020. As far as he can remember, he loved coloring books when he was in kindergarten. And he loved asking his mom to draw a face on his thumb. In school, he thought he had a pretty decent art. He gets compliments from his classmates and teacher. When he was in 7th grade, he wanted to compete in a poster making contest. Unfortunately he couldn’t afford to buy oil pastels to use for it.
His determination not only led him save for and buy those oil pastels but win 2nd place in poster making in his school competition the following year. He was not the champion yet he was not disheartened. It was a milestone. His perseverance led him to become the school champion, Municipal champion and 2nd place winner in the Division level poster making contests in the following years.
He was also chosen to represent his school for Modulo Art Contests for 4 consecutive years and won at the cluster and division level. He was determined to leave a winning legacy in school, and he sure had.
He then wanted to explore Sketching portraits. The first time he tried, it didn’t go as well as he wanted and was utterly disappointed. He stopped for a few months until he was ready to try again.
He posted his first portrait of a famous celebrity, Ms. Liza Soberano, in a group on Facebook called Guhit Pinas and received a lot of encouragement. Since then, he had continued to sketch more portraits.
He is a believer of this quote from Milton Berle – “If opportunities do not knock, build a door.” He wanted to show his talent and inspire others to do the same so he started a YouTube channel where we can binge on watching his tutorials and learn from drawing process.
I absolutely find JM’s perseverance inspiring. If he quit the first time he didn’t win in his school contest, we would’ve never seen him take off.
Thank you for sharing JM! Keep inspiring. And ‘til then, Stay Blissful everyone!