A Thousand Flowers

Some people get a sense of satisfaction from solving puzzles. If a puzzle takes too long, I'm perfectly fine with going straight to the internet to find the answer.

Last night, my sister started a puzzle-type video game. She spent an hour clicking around a small chamber, figuring out the rules. I would go bonkers with impatience.

I prefer constrained puzzles where you know the rules and use them creatively. Sudoku, zebra puzzles, syllogisms. Playing Mastermind is my hidden talent.

I view it as: when I look up the answer to unconstrained puzzles, I am simply learning the rules for next time.

On a tenuously related note, our painting today is a garden maze.

Designing and engineering the maze was a big highlight of the process. The painting process itself was quite repetitive. The tricky part was that I couldn't tell if it was good until every section was filled out. Thusly, I had to redo a couple sections repeatedly, though it was worth it in the end.

My mom suggested to add a Pac-Man chomping through the maze. Cute idea, but rejected!

Inspired by a rainbow flower wall that I found in New York City.

If anyone is confused, the grassy green path is the maze and the colorful flowers are hedges. The bottom strip is a watering pool.

Flower inspirations (left to right):
Cherry Blossom, Sweet Pea, Ranunculus, Gerbera Daisy, generic field flower, Pansy, Morning Glory

Animal Motion Machine

Brainstorming for this project kept me up way past my bedtime for a couple nights. In the make-believe world of this painting, live spherical animals continuously roll through a ball run for perpetual fun.

Animals follow a specially-engineered path:
1. Vacuum tube sucks animal to the top

2. Swinging flap holds animal back until the next one bumps them through, thus regulating the pace between animals

3. Animals roll down paths on both sides, ideally at the same speed

4. Animal crosses sides through the drop turnstile, to enjoy both sides alternatingly

5. Bottom platform releases two animals when all six spots are filled, ensuring symmetrical release and throttled pacing

I chose 18 animals from a huge list, looking for variety in color, interesting traits and balanced representation of different ecosystems (safari, forest, sea). It was awesome to include more eclectic animals, like a peacock (which looks more like a robin with a headdress, as you will see).

Row 1: Panda, Hedgehog, Rhino, Giraffe

Row 2: Elephant, Lion, Koala, Alligator

Row 3: Manta Ray, Peacock, Walrus, Dino Egg

Row 4: Whale, Tiger, Bunny

Row 5: Jellyfish, Raccoon, Sheep

Some standouts:

- Best execution: Bunny

- Best idea: Dino egg

- Family's favorite animals: Koala, Lion, Elephant

- My real-life favorite animals: Hedgehog, Manta Ray

This painting took on a baby-nursery vibe, which was not intentional. I'm scared of bold colors, so everything went overly soft. Regardless, coming up with this concept was really fun and I'm happy with how it turned out.

Looking for Variety

Last year, I took a three-month sabbatical to travel, bouncing between city vs. nature destinations, nicer places vs. less nice places, traveling with people vs. traveling alone. The itinerary optimized on having variation, which is my MO.

This is a complete sidebar: In India, people say that foreigners get scammed into paying high prices. The bottom line is that you need to know the standard price to haggle properly, and it's actually quite easy to figure out. Let's say you want to buy a single clementine. Just take 1/7th of the US price as the approximate benchmark for what you should pay. (Per my experience in specific cities.) Clementines are around 50 cents in the US, so haggle towards 5-10 cents in the rupee equivalent. This rule of thumb works for every day goods. For products that only foreigners or rich people buy, like perhaps a Snickers bar, market price seems closer to 1/3 of US price. This is a ballpark guideline that worked for me. Most importantly when haggling, you must be willing to walk away, and if they call you back, you know that you haven't gone too low.

Back to the main point on needing variation, I always feel like I'm missing something if I'm not mixing it up. I made a quick piece to experiment with different art styles, on the subject of planets.

Order of planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune

Color Play

It is so satisfying to create colors. You just mix, mix, mix until you achieve the shade you have in mind.

Watching Bob Ross mix colors, he would just "dab a little of this, then dab a little of that". Well, my paint sessions are much less efficient, time-wise:
- 30% (time) Mix colors
- 5% Spritz to keep palette wet

- 40% Paint
- 5% Wait for painting to dry
- 20% Scrub off mistakes

For the sake of efficiency, it is very important that I avoid remixing colors. So, I bought a massive pile of tiny resealable containers to store mixed colors. Now I can store to my heart's content.

Onto the art of the day: I had rainbow colors left over from another painting. It took 45 minutes to mix 9 colors. I couldn't let the colors go to waste, so I made these super quick rainbow panels!

Oh look, a handy dandy color wheel for reference on color theory.

Word Art

Between the more labor-intensive paintings, it's nice to intersperse simpler ones that refresh the creative juices.

The center element of this painting is inspired by Braille. The border is lined with song lyrics. Braille and lyrics are two unrelated ideas smashed into one painting.

Today I Learned: Braille has a short-form that contracts common strings like "th" or "people" into single symbols. Thus, the online translator caveated that truly accurate short-form Braille ("Grade 2") has to be translated by hand.

I actually love how this painting turned out, as I think it looks nice from afar and up close. Super fun!

By the way, this is my second attempt at painting on wood and it worked much better this time.

I hope this painting is not cultural appropriation to the community of people who are blind. I wouldn't think so, but I hope not. The painting is in fact completely flat.