This is Dr. Barcelo, former Dean and former Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. We worked on delivering university courses (including health science courses), via distance education.

Now that we have Zoom, Teams, quarantine and social distancing, we don’t think twice about online learning. Way back then, year 2000-2007, it was a fight to get online activities recognized and implemented within the university system.

I don’t know how she managed Roderic, Sheila, and me, her unwieldy multidisciplinary junior faculty during those years she was our boss. I remember long rides to Los Baños and back to Manila, which we did almost weekly. The talks on those trips were part brainstorm, part confessional, and always instructive.

Dr. Barcelo wants her students to “learn how to learn.” She describes research work as a way to contribute to one’s academic field. I think what she really taught me was that I can find a balance between being demanding and being generous in the academe.

The drawing was done on 17 May. I thought the painting was finished on 1 August, but then I visited the Van Gogh Museum in September and realized that I held back on the colors. The version above was finished on 10 October 2021.

This is the reference photograph, heavily cropped, low resolution, but it was her favorite from all the photos we went through.	The line drawing establishes the main shapes. The portrait has two parts: the face and the dress.	The outlines are redrawn with burnt umber. The goal is to make sure the shapes are intact and ready for the next phase.
The face is yellow, red, and blue to start with. The dress and background are complementary colors blue and orange, but I had to experiment to get the right tints of periwinkle and salmon.	The face is made more human using white and burnt umber on top of the base colors. I aim for some likeness by correcting the placements of the eyes, eyebrows, nose and mouth.	I add highlights and shadows on the face and dress. The dark areas under the glasses have to be convincing.
I lighten the background and experiment on shadows. As the face becomes more red, the shadows become more green.	Detail work on the face, neck and dress. The dark green on the necklace is the same green shadow on the face. I figure I’m done and sign out.	I get back from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and realize I am afraid of color. I change the background. The dress had to shift to a deeper blue.