FROM THE STUDIO
HARÁN-ON
THE RESIDUE OF THE SOUL / PRESENCE / ORNAMENT AS REGALIA
This drawing started with the lion. Its frontal face gave me a stable structure to work from, but what kept me interested was the way it held its position. The eyes, mouth, and symmetry created a kind of composure before the ornament was even there.
01 / STRUCTURE
WHY THE LION
The first stage was still mostly proportion. I wanted the eyes wide enough to control the upper half of the face, the mouth low enough to give it weight, and the silhouette strong enough to survive once the surface became dense.
The lion worked because a frontal face already carries a certain authority. It does not need much movement to feel present. The strength is not only in the teeth or expression. It is in the fact that the face stays fixed and holds the center of the drawing.
That became the first connection to the idea of what remains of the soul. Not something untouched by pressure, but the part that stays recognizable after it.
02 / ORNAMENT
REGALIA, NOT FILLER
Once the face settled, the pattern came in sections. Arcs around the eyes, bead rows, scales, petals, dots, and repeated curves started as separate decisions, then slowly began to work as one surface. I kept asking whether each new layer strengthened the face or only occupied space.
The references are mixed. Some come from Philippine folk ornament, carved surfaces, tattooing, plants, devotional objects, textiles, and old illustrations. I am less interested in copying a specific motif than in understanding how repetition, symmetry, and borders can build a sense of order.
As the drawing filled out, the ornament started to feel less like decoration and more like regalia. It gives the lion bearing. The stars work the same way. They break the black fields, create small points of orientation, and give the eye somewhere to return when the surface becomes crowded.
I like that those signs can carry feeling without needing a fixed mythology. They guide the composition first. Any meaning beyond that can stay open.
03 / NAME
HARÁN-ON AND BEARING
The name came after most of the drawing was already there. Harán-on carries the sense of something regal or majestic. What interested me was not royalty itself, but bearing: the way something can feel composed, substantial, and difficult to diminish.
That fit the lion better than trying to make the animal stand for a complicated mythology. The figure does not need a biography. Its role in the piece is simpler. It holds its ground and gives the ornament a center strong enough to build around.
For BKNWA, the lion became a way to think about the residue of the soul. Not an untouched self, but the part that carries pressure, wear, memory, and change without disappearing into them.
The drawing supported that reading without much forcing. The eyes stay forward, the mouth remains open, the black gives the face weight, and the pattern gathers around it without dissolving the form underneath.
04 / FINAL
WHAT THE WEIGHT LEAVES BEHIND
The flower inside the mouth was not planned as a symbol. I kept it because it changed the rhythm of the center. Against the teeth, stars, and black fields, it gives the image a quieter point. For this piece, that contrast became useful: strength does not have to remove softness to remain strong.
By the final stage I was paying less attention to perfect symmetry and more attention to agreement. Both sides had to feel related, but they did not need to match line for line. Small shifts in spacing and line weight kept the drawing from becoming mechanical.
The harder decision was knowing when the surface had enough. Dense work can always accept another mark. That does not mean the mark improves it. I started judging the piece by whether the lion still read before the detail did, and whether a new line changed the structure or only made the image busier.
That also clarified the idea of the residue of the soul. The drawing is full of marks, interruptions, heavy blacks, and small irregularities. What matters is what persists through them. The figure carries everything added to it without becoming unrecognizable.
Harán-on remains an original BKNWA figure. The lion, the regalia-like ornament, the stars, and the flower all serve the same study of presence, endurance, and what remains. The meaning is clear enough to hold the piece together, but open enough that the drawing can still do some of the work on its own.
