As you might be aware already, I entered The Catholic Register’s Easter Drawing Competition. I drew my sketch during the March Break and submitted it the Monday following the break, with high hopes and fingers crossed. I waited a couple of weeks, with high hopes, but not really nervous one bit. Finally, the Monday before Easter, I received a phone call regarding the drawing contest. She had called to let me deliver the news in person, not that I had lost… no, kidding, but the fantastic news that my drawing had won, very much to no surprise to me actually. I was confident in my drawing. I am going to share the heart-filled story of my rise from unknown doodler to a renowned-for-a-couple-of-minutes artistic mastermind of the resurrection of Jesus.

Home I came with the submission form after one dreadfully short school day (I believe school should be much longer). I handed it to my mother who in turn gave me some guidelines. No picture of Jesus on the cross for it was an Easter drawing contest, not a Good Friday drawing contest. It also had to be completed by the Friday of March Break. Easy enough, I thought.

I planned throughout the week, numerous rough copies flooding the dust pail in the bathroom, and come Friday, I was still deciding on what to draw. Frustrated, that late, late night, I attempted, yet again, another rough copy. This time, I go for the black Jesus approach. Upon constructing our Lord’s facial features, my mind unconsciously informs my hands to draw His hair wavy like. I know. A black man with wavy, not curly, hair is not an everyday sight. But then again, I unconsciously thought, Jesus isn’t an everyday man. And so the sketching continued.

Before I knew it, Mary Magdalene was grasping the Son’s pierced hands, a tear of joy rolling down her cheek, His hair that of a white man yet the face of a true saviour, His robes radiating his holiness among all, the tomb was wide open, an angel shining with heavenly awesomeness upon the mortal world, the grass was waving, flowers blooming, trees shaking, leaves dancing in the majestic wind, (possibly all the effects of Christ’s haircare products?) and upon a distant hill, a reenactment of the gruesome Good Friday, the thunderous clouds pouring a flood of sorrowful tears in the form of rain, the crosses and their strings being blown by the hurricane-like winds, definitely the Lord’s fury being unleashed, and several demonic souls leaving the hill of skulls, moaning and crying out for salvation. Yes, the drawing was indeed a masterpiece.

And then I found out I had to…colour my sketch. My heart sank and I thought my life was over. Why me, I thought. If you don’t already know, I hate colouring and one of the competitions requirements was to colour your submission. And that was not the worst of my problems either. After completing my drawing, I realized I had drawn it on the back of a sheet of paper I received from a Human Trafficking presentation I had visited the Wednesday during March break. At the time, it wasn’t much of a problem. At least, not now, considering that the drawing won the prize.

It was 1:30 am on Saturday morning and I knew I had no choice but to go to sleep before facing any trouble. So, after a hearty rest, I woke up that morning ready to rumble. I photocopied the photo twice just in case and prepared myself to indulge in my most hated task of colouring. I decided to go with the original since I didn’t really care about the other side of it. About half-way into the colouring, my mom comes into my room to check it only to see the Human Trafficking info on the back. She had a fit. It was crazy. She went on saying stuff like “DON’T SUBMITT A HALF-USED PAPER! THEY’LL THINK YOU ARE SAYING JESUS WAS A HUMAN TRAFFICKER, WHICH HE WASN’T!” Now, words cannot describe her anger. To trim a long story short, she wanted me to restart everything from scratch. Luckily, I had the photocopies so I was safe, or so I thought.

Apparently, when I photocopied it on the scanning thingy, the Human Trafficking info kind of seeped through onto the front of the photocopies. Basically, some little words here and there from the original were visible on the FRONT of the photocopies. I was devastated when my mom told me they were no good. Alas, I persevered and attempted to colour one of the “tainted” copies. After another hour or so of colouring, I completed my drawing. It looked pretty good. I, again, photocopied the completed drawing JUST IN CASE something bad happened. Something bad did happen.

My mother believed the now colored drawing still showed some of the words from before so she suggested I colour Jesus completely yellow to cover some of the words appearing on him. I did so and it looked TERRIBLE! Luckily, I had the photocopy of the completed drawing, the photocopy of the photocopy. I took that, did some shading here and there, and bingo. The drawing you now see is the one I touched up a bit to make extra perfecto.

Just in case photocopies were not allowed, I finished colouring the original and took in the original, yellow Jesus, and copy of copy to the teacher in charge on the Monday after March Break to ask her opinion on the one I should submit. Like me, she chose the copy of the copy after I explained my drastic story. A couple weeks later, I have won.

I am still waiting on my $50 movie card prize and my copy of the Easter Catholic Register newspaper. The mail appears to be pretty slow nowadays, because I have been checking the mail everyday since Easter Tuesday (if at all Easter Tuesday exists) but to no avail, none the less, I am proud of myself. I have received a lot of congratulations and it feels cool knowing my sister also won the Christmas drawing contest. Yes, there was a lot of hardship. As my mother always says, “Try and fail but never fail to try.” And I failed A LOT on this journey. But ultimately, I succeeded.

Enjoy the picture, and for more, see http://www.catholicregister.org/features/featureseries/item/20010-easter-parade-of-winners-in-register-art-contest

Angelous Ginanena.