Grade 11 Media and Visual Arts Strand student, Adrian Tubuan, has had a challenging artistic journey. While his grade school chose him to enter competitions, Adrian only won a few of these and ended up questioning his skills. But in CIIT’s Senior High School (SHS), Adrian found a place where he could refine his artistic talent and even better, restore his confidence!
Read on to discover how — despite his setbacks — Adrian is determinedly working towards a career in the multimedia field:
Tell us a little about yourself
Aside from being a workaholic student leader and art student, I’m honestly just a regular teenager with excessive screen time. My hobbies consist of watching cooking videos on YouTube, curating Spotify playlists for myself, and making paintings for my friends.
How did you become interested in art?
Actually, my enthusiasm for art and multimedia was kind of on-and-off.
It started when I was a little kid who liked to draw Adventure Time characters on the back of my notebook. Eventually, my classmates noticed my doodles and I was chosen to represent my elementary school in poster-making contests a bunch of times. Sadly, I lost pretty much all of them. I won’t lie, I was disheartened from these experiences.
How did you bounce back from this experience?
When I reached high school, I didn’t pay attention to art until I was sixteen. At this point, I met a friend who loved art and I guess, all I needed was another artist friend to reignite my passion. I started getting into watercolors and gouache and from there, I found different art mediums that led me to discover my passion for writing and graphic design.
So when I stumbled on CIIT’s website and discovered they were offering senior high school programs, I was intrigued. Now, here I am! Studying as a Media and Visual Arts student.
How has CIIT encouraged your passion for art?
What gives me the best sense of achievement is creating and CIIT’s SHS gives you so many chances to create! Whether it is writing articles for our school publication or ideating concepts for my design projects, the act of creating is very fulfilling to me. In fact, I’m often commended by CIIT’s instructors for my creative works, which I really appreciate given the amount of time, effort, and thought I put into every output.
Why do you think art is necessary for society and a sound career choice?
I think art has always been great at expressing how we think and perceive things as a society at any point in time.
With CIIT’s Media and Visual Arts Strand especially, students can be equipped with the necessary skills to represent our generation, our culture, and other important groups through the different art mediums, to make something that resonates with them. So, with these skills learned in CIIT, I look forward to a career that will serve my advocacies and principles.
Can you share a sample of one of your best works?
One of my favorite outputs during my first year as an CIIT SHS student is this cultural guide, entitled “Kulturang Bulakenyo”. This is about my lovely province, Bulacan. It’s a six page infographic that provides a brief description of Bulacan, what it’s known for, its popular cuisine, and its tourist attractions.
This assignment is important to me not just because it turned out to be aesthetically pleasing. With this guide, I created something significant to my community, something that would showcase our country’s culture proudly.
To view the whole infographic, click here.
What advice would you give to your peers?
You may encounter challenges that will really make you question your capabilities. I certainly did. But amidst all that, I found comfort in the thought that I gave enough time and effort to something I am passionate about. Hopefully you will too!
Just like Adrian, do you want to be part of a school that will polish your latent talents, recognize your effort, and give you the chance to apply your skills to advocacies you care about? Then what are you waiting for? Learn more about CIIT SHS’ Media and Visual Arts Strand here or enroll here.
