Take it from 40-year-old female artist Airees Rondain: It’s never too late to learn to draw.

Her love of color and drawing female figures and her advocacy of empowering women inspired her to produce a limited-edition calendar that sold well last Christmas season.

Dubbed “Dream Big,” the calendar consists of Rondain’s pen-and-watercolor illustrations of 12 women corresponding to the 12 months of the year.

Clad in bright, colorful separates and statement boots, her faceless drawings bare bohemian and preppy inspirations.

“Except for the lips, my women have no facial features,” said the budding artist. “It’s my style. They’re not self-portraits, but a combination of images I see all around. I’m not at all into fashion.”

Each drawing comes with inspirational texts she lifted from the Internet. They include such gems as “Being yourself is the prettiest thing you can be”; “You matter”; “She believed she could, so she did”; and “Believe in yourself.”

Using a Canon digital printer and commercially available paper, Rondain reproduced her drawings and was able to sell 125 calendars over the holidays in a Christmas bazaar. Majority of her customers were women in search of unique gifts.

“It’s already February, but I’m still getting orders,” she said. “Just the other day, I shipped two calendars abroad to an American client.”

What’s amazing is before joining an online class conducted by an American artist last April, Rondain was limited to drawing stick figures. But she’s always loved to doodle and combine colors since high school.

Rondain was discouraged by her parents from taking up Fine Arts in favor of a more “stable, traditional” course. She ended up finishing a degree in Computer Science at De La Salle University.

Frustration

Said the self-employed mother of two: “I’ve always loved to draw, but one of my frustrations was drawing a human figure. Enrolling in that online class was my 40th birthday gift to myself.”

She also loves doing illustrated journals and working on various crafts. Just the other day, she finished, in one sitting, illustrating and coloring various baked goodies displayed at a coffee shop.

“I also like to write,” she said. “I always encourage my friends to keep a journal. We only live once. I feel that it’s important to keep a record of things that matter to us.”

Before working on her calendar, Rondain sold tear-resistant wallets and passport holders made of handmade paper and abaca, which she adorned with a collage of paper cutouts.

She collaborated with a longtime supplier in Mindanao to produce the material.

“I was inspired by similar tear-resistant products I saw in Singapore,” she said.

But while those are folded, origami-style, Rondain’s items are sturdier because they are machine-sewn. Her collages give them a personalized touch, since no two items are exactly alike.

She also took online lessons in web design soon after finishing college. For more than a decade, she ran a small printing business in Biñan, Laguna, designing and laying out newsletters, business cards, advertising collaterals and wedding invitations.

“I never got to practice my degree, but I’m quite comfortable working with computers and combining them with my art,” she said.

One of the things she learned more recently from her online art teacher was how to draw from the foot up instead of the other way around. To make her drawings more interesting, she initially decided to focus on fashion-savvy women wearing all sorts of boots.

“You should see my first attempts,” she said with almost child-like glee. “They were really bad! But I kept on drawing at least one woman every day even after the three-week online course was over.”

With her close friends as her critics, Rondain plodded on until she was able to produce more than 30 illustrations on sheets of “old mill” paper.

The idea of making a calendar came to her in October while she was thinking of something new to offer clients during Christmas.

It was difficult for her to trim the number of drawings to 12. It was like choosing from among her children, she said.

“I consider it a culmination of my journey,” she said. “In less than a year, I was able to draw images I couldn’t draw before.”

Not only is it a useful form of expression, but a calendar is also an effective medium to advance her advocacy of empowering women.

Portraits

Soon after finishing the calendar, Rondain started following the Instagram accounts of famous people like Gretchen Barretto, Anne Curtis and Reese Fernandez Ruiz, one of the founders of Rags2Riches.

When she saw a striking picture of Ruiz dressed in bold stripes while riding a bike, Rondain drew it using pen and watercolor based on her trademark style: bold, whimsical and faceless.

She calls such impressionist drawings, which she can finish in less than an hour, custom portraits.

“I posted the drawing on Instagram and tagged Reese,” she said. “We didn’t know each other then. She liked the drawing and asked if she could have it.”

After she did a few more custom portraits of friends for free, word spread and she was soon getting requests from other friends.

“There was one time a subject really insisted on paying me,” she said. “I reluctantly ended up charging her P1,000. Her custom portrait now hangs in her condo.”

From then on, Rondain started charging people for her work.

You can view more of Airees Rondain’s artworks at www.aireescreates.com