Wow, its been a while hasn’t it?! I’ve been busy making the most of my summer because as you know with the blink of an eye there’s only a couple weeks of summer left. Every time I hear that phrase I cringe a little…Moving on!

For the past couple of weeks, the weather has been AMAZING, fluctuating between 25-30 degrees celsius with humidity. I’m not complaining : ) As a testament to this beautiful weather, I’ve actually gotten myself into a colourfully fun personal project that I deemed Geek Rainbow. This is how it all started.

As some of you know, I work as an interactive designer at Espresso. One sunny afternoon, the art director, Jigisha and I took a walk out to buy some art supplies she needed. She bought three canvases hoping to paint self portraits for a contest. Myself, having never taken a painting lesson or formal art training was quite overwhelmed by the amount of supplies that were in the store! I told her that I’ve never painted on a canvas in my life. She grabbed an extra canvas and convinced me to give it a try. I hesitantly agreed to it because I knew it would be fun but wasn’t sure where to start. I had no art supplies that weren’t for kids! I was also concerned about her paying for it. But I was excited to have a blank canvas, something to signify a new start…

For more than several weeks the canvas laid there on my dresser collecting dust. But I knew that I wanted to paint on it eventually. I’m going to back track a couple weeks before this to give some context to this story. Lately, I had been stuck in a mundane routine of going to work and home with nothing really to look forward to but another weekend of “No plans, really”. I wasn’t entirely happy or entirely sad. I was feeling mediocre. Uninspired. I knew I wanted to change that. I wanted to do something with my time. With myself. This new state of mind came into play July 1st. I made a list of what I needed to do:

1. Stop limiting myself: Remove mental barriers that have been impeding on my abilities and drive to do things.

• I’ve been putting off buying paint supplies because I keep making up excuses or assumptions for myself. “I won’t have the car, because my mom will be using it over the weekend.” When I could’ve simply asked to borrow the car for an hour to go buy it!

2. Re-evaluate what to spend money on: A lot of times money is my reason for putting something off. I feel that my (asian) upbringing had made me so conscious of saving money that I had been using it as an excuse.

• Even though I am currently working, I had still been preventing myself in doing the things I dream to do just because it would cost a slice of my pay check. Then I realized that I eventually just end up spending that money on clothing or shoes! (Clearly, my girly side taking over) So, I decided to myself, “You know what? It doesn’t matter how much the paint/brushes/canvases cost (although I did buy a smaller paint pack for a good deal!), I needed this in order to follow through with my plan.”

3. Put myself first Love myself: I have always had a tendency to put others first, but I realized the ultimate disadvantage of this when I started to feel unhappy with myself. Unconditional love from anyone is amazing for support and I love being the provider of that to family and friends. However, I’ve been neglecting to support myself and my own needs in order to grow as a person. I started thinking, had I given myself that much unconditional love and time I could have benefited from it much earlier. I now understand that you are your own caregiver. Your body and soul relies on you to give it what it needs. Whether it is food/exercise or even TLC! : )

• It made me happy to finally be able to focus on myself and do something I wanted to do. To follow through with my own plans. To give myself what I want. To paint what I wanted to paint. This Geek Rainbow project was something I could proudly call my own.

Here are three of the rainbow canvases completed so far! Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver. I’ve also had a fourth done up in red (Flash) but I haven’t had a chance to take a picture of it in natural light (which looks 100x better, darn iPhone camera and energy saving lightbulbs). For those of you who don’t know, these are the Adobe CS4 Icons. I wanted to paint these real life icons because I felt that coming from a digital background I wanted to transcend my creativity into this traditional art form.

After buying all the materials and supplies, starting the project was SO easy and fun! I could barely wait! Squirting globs of yellow paint onto the surface of a 12×12″ 100% cotton stretched canvas felt good. Real good. I helped me escape into a world of colours, mixing shades, and detailed perfection. It also made me realize how easy Adobe has made art out to be! How easy it is just to create swatches with an eyedropper rather than mixing your own colours a million times. How easy it is to choose your brush and brush size with a click of the trackpad. Cleaning up on photoshop/illustrator is as simple as cmd+Q. Keeping your files neatly stored away in a 15″ laptop. But there is an indescribable joy about using your hands, feeling the tools, the smell of fresh paint and genuinely experiencing the essence of art.

So, after weeks of putting it off, I’ve finally done it. I’m very happy with myself and this project because it has helped me learn more about my abilities not only as a designer, but as an artist. It has opened up my mind to a whole new world of creativity and a whole new way of thinking. This project has gone above and beyond my own expectations. From never having painted on a canvas to painting four within a week I think is quite commendable, wouldn’t you agree? : )

Charlotte