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.

Ideal Reading Room

Last year, I bought a shirt with painted windows.

This shirt comes out of the closet whenever I need to break the monotony of wearing navy, head-to-toe for work. Because I love this shirt, the pattern became the inspiration for my next painting.

The original vision was to show a brick face of an apartment building with six windows peeking into six different-styled apartments. As the idea evolved, six apartments narrowed to three, and the windows themselves were nixed altogether.

In an informal poll, most people liked the top-right pink room the best out of the three.

My real-life room decor best resembles the pink room. However, I'm happier with how the other two rooms are painted, as they're more visually interesting.

Reading Rooms: Boho, Scandinavian, and Cottage Styles

Boho

Scandinavian

Cottage

This painting turned out quite faithful to what I had in mind, which is very satisfying. It is one of my favorites to date!

Too Complicated

I have decided to use only 12x16-sized canvases so that my art display is uniform. When I was younger, I had a recurring nightmare involving nothing but alphabet letters that grew and shrank randomly. I remember waking up in night sweats. Suffice to say, we should keep things the same size whenever possible.

I broke the rule and bought a bunch of small panels for fun. I initially intending to paint a Newton's Cradle on a small panel. Ill-advisedly, I expanded it to a full-sized painting.

Newton's Cradle doesn't work in a large space because good composition demands the swinging dots in the middle to be much larger than they are here. However, if I had made the balls larger, it would throw off realistic scaling compared to the rest of the scene.

Ultimately, the painting could have come together more coherently, however I still really like the individual components: the scene, the colors and the perspective. It didn't endure a lot of rework, so it's quite clean!


I present: Seven Dwarfs Dots on a Newton's Cradle in a Gymnastics Competition with Biased Judges.
Why settle for one idea when you can combine all of them.
From left to right:
- Grumpy (more
like Rage-y)
- Astonished
(replacing Dopey)
- Sneezy
- Anxious (replacing Bashful)
- Sleepy
- Doc
- Happy

Key skills challenged: Perspective

Eleven-in-One

I make lists for everything. I used to rate every granola bar I ate. I have documented every movie that I've seen since 2014.

On my list of favorite things in the universe, some random items include: golden doodle puppies and unicorn-themed color runs.

Wow, so basic. Let's try again. Some items on the list are: The Good Wife (TV) and Born a Crime (book).

BTW WARNING: Long post.

I painted 11 small vignettes of things I repeatedly enjoy, sadly excluding many TV shows that require drawing faces which I cannot do. As this is the first painting where I did extensive freehand, you can tell the quality improve as I slowly discover the right paintbrush to use. In painted order (click images to expand):

1. Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code
All-time favorite book when I was growing up. I reread it ad nauseum. At one point, if you flipped to any page and started reading me a portion, I could recite back the subsequent sentences either verbatim or close to it.


2. Imagine Dragons: Evolve & Night Visions
Some great songs.

3. Tangled
Not my favorite movie, just a pretty scene.




4. Armchair Expert podcast, by Dax Shepard
This podcast is totally up my alley. Episodes get released at 5am on Monday mornings, right as I leave for the airport every week (pre-COVID). The routine of listening to an episode makes the start of the week feel like a blanket that slowly unwraps instead of a bucket of cold water being dumped on my head.

The podcast thesis is that being famous and successful isn't as fulfilling as people would expect. Dax teases out all sorts of interesting stories and glimpses into the inner lives of interviewees, often famous people. Fantastic.

5. GMK Dots
I recently had a two-week foray into the mechanical keyboard community.

This keycap design is something of a cult classic and resells for $300 on the subreddit. Just for the plastic part with zero functioning components! I did not buy it.

6. The Little Prince
A beautiful piece of literature.

I was shocked and amazed to have recreated the cover art in a recognizable manner. All thanks to my little round brush, which I have finally figured out how to use.

7. Ocean's 8
Honestly, this movie is a bit overworked and disjointed. HOWEVER, it is incredibly easy to rewatch. I find myself playing it in the background when there's nothing else to do, and enjoying the incredible cast of actresses more with each repeat.


8. The Incredibles
Another childhood favorite, my sisters and I were obsessed with this movie. We watched it in multiple languages. We voice acted all the Edna scenes by heart. To this day, I can still recite swathes of Edna monologue, with inflections in all the right places.

9. Contre Jour soundtrack
Contre Jour is an app game that I never played, but I instantly fell in love with its soundtrack. If I really need to focus at work, this is what I put on repeat. It's has an ethereal quality – ethereal like the balloons in Up, not like the new Taylor Swift Lover album. (Note from future Faith: What I meant was 'whimsical'.)

10. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (HPMOR)
Fanfic at it's finest, HPMOR reimagines Harry Potter as a prodigy genius. My mind was actually blown with the ingenuity of it. The plotline has some uncanny links to canon, but diverges quite a bit into intricate plots based in real mathematical / scientific / strategic insanity.

It was still being written when I was in college. When it wrapped, I went to a physical, live wrap party with a bunch of strangers who also followed this fanfic. They were all nerds. It felt safe. But what in the world.

11. Sketch of designer dress with puffy sleeves
I love puffy sleeves. And I love the concept of designer clothing.




Finally, I added my favorite cup of mint tea and (now favorite) paintbrush to complete the illusion of an art studio desk.

When I finished the painting, I considered going back to redo the first few vignettes that were noticeably lower quality than the later ones. I ultimately decided not to, so that I can preserve evidence of my progression in skill. Additionally, I wanted to move on and not get stuck on refining the same piece forever. I think I stand by that approach, but it's hard.

I like the Contre Jour vignette the best. It's so weird and cute.

Rejected Gift

As a Mother's Day gift, I recreated an image (right) from the ethereal and imaginative app game, Monument Valley.

This is one of the few app games I enjoy. It is a puzzle game featuring Escher staircases and playing with perspective. The game is relaxing and mind-tickling, in perfect balance.

Is that a horrible adjective? Mind-tickling. It should be positive. But "tickling" sound a bit unnerving.

More to the point, I highly recommend the game.

I was dedicated to finishing this painting in time for Mother's Day. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been so motivated. It's almost a line-for-line recreation, which I find less interesting than designing original art.

Ironically, my mom didn't love this either compared to other paintings that I've done. She keeps asking me to trade.

No trades, Mom.

I agree the color selection is slightly bland, but I love how the characters turned out. And my Mom is just being facetious.

I learned a few new techniques:
1. Painting on hardwood board. Wood is much smoother than canvas, but you must prime it yourself, which requires a lot of time and patience in my amateur hands. Wood boards are good for special purposes, like to paint letters and tiny detail. Otherwise I prefer canvas better all around.
2. Using tracing paper. Tracing paper is handy but tracing is boring and hard.
3. Applying shadows. One good thing with copying art is it forces me to practice elements that are tough to figure out on my own. I understood shadows and perspectives a little better after this piece.

Offcuts

There have been some duds, I must admit.

I have excised these Frankenstein paintings from my collection and never want to see them again.


Scrap 1: This was supposed to be a brick wall, with a musical score transposed on it. I couldn't get the brick color right, as it creepily looks like skin color. Even worse than that, overlaying music notes just makes no sense whatsoever given the offset nature of bricks.

I later reimagined the brick wall into a better idea, and have high hopes for a musical score design as well. Good ideas should not go to waste.

Scrap 2: I pretended to be Bob Ross and scribbled on canvas, expecting it to magically look good. It did not magically look good.

I also don't like landscape paintings anyway. I like clean lines and crystal clear images, which is very hard to reconcile with nature stuff.

Evolution of the Painting Approach

Looking back, the moment I decided to paint less perfectly, I subconsciously compensated by spending more time drafting and sketching.

More sketching is generally a good approach. It's much much easier to revise ideas on PowerPoint or a sketchpad than on canvas.

It's just very interesting that I can't relax the need for excellence, even with painting and I find ways to compensate when I deliberately try to reduce the perfectionism.

In the PowerPoint mock-up for this painting, people could not recognize the mountains and river. Some people thought the whole thing was a frog.

Hopefully, it's clearer on canvas that these are rolling hills and mountains. I decided quite late in the game to make this a landscape of Iceland, so added a fun camper and waterfall as distinguishing features – actually, commemorating a great trip from a couple years back.

Some of my photos from Iceland: