A story about bettering yourself, no matter the cost.

Everybody knows that growth comes from discomfort and throwing yourself into experiences outside of your norm. There are many reasons for this: new experiences, new perspectives, challenging yourself, and keeping that brain of yours active and flexible. Usually when talking about this phenomenon, we appeal to things like the body builder who pushes his muscles to the point of discomfort in order to grow stronger; or to the shy boy who decided to face his fears of public speaking. These examples are apt at helping people understand the concept, but I fear it does not truly represent the real pain that growth can inflict –it is not just muscle soreness and butterflies in your stomach. In many instances it can feel soul crushing, hopeless, and all consuming. The painting “Ascension” tells my own personal story with growth and discomfort, and how truly difficult it can be.

The Story Behind the Painting

“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty…” — Theodore Roosevelt

This was the mantra I would tell myself constantly when first developing my art practice and business. At first it was a struggle with self acceptance and confidence in my own voice (which I wrote about here); but as time went on, the discomfort shifted and grew. Once I began becoming more confident in myself and taking on more within my art practice, the discomfort no longer stemmed from my own fears and insecurities, and began manifesting through the experience itself.

As I got further into creating my art practice, the more I realized just how much work was needed to become successful. At the time, I was still working full-time as a website developer –a demanding field that requires on-call availability and overtime at a moment’s notice. I noticed quickly I did not have the amount of time I wished I had to spend on my art and my practice, and that’s when the true feeling of overwhelming discomfort began to grow.

It had felt like my job and my responsibilities in life were chaining me down, and I began believing that my job was keeping me from flourishing as an artist. The hardest part about this situation is that, to some degree, I was correct. Many times I have been forced to put my own dreams on hold because of the demands placed on me, and each time I felt hopeless, defeated, and uncomfortable.

In these moments, it feels as though everything in life is coming together to try and stop you from growing, from achieving your goals and dreams. And after a lifetime of being overworked and dejected, the discomfort was telling me that there was no point because if I don’t have the time, then it will never happen. That is the true power of discomfort; it is not just butterflies in your stomach as you get nervous before confronting a crowd, it is the feeling of imminent defeat as you question if what you want to do is even possible.

So what do you do when everything is conspiring against you? What do you do when you see others succeed and you know the only reason you’re falling behind is because you simply can’t ignore your other responsibilities?

Well, in that moment, I knew two things:

1. I could not quit my job because I needed it, and:
2. I could not continue living my life the way I have been. I was simply unhappy, and despite working in a technical, specialized field, I was still living in poverty. Simply put, the economy has gotten so bad that following my dreams felt like a better solution.

So I was left with one solution: continue. Continue working 14 to 16-hour days. Continue waking up tired. Continue embracing the discomfort my current life brought, because ultimately, I needed to believe that I could break through to the other side.

And it was in the middle of these feelings of discomfort and hope that Ascension was born.

Ascension: Confronting the Breaking Point

Ascension pictures a pigeon turned upside down in an alarming pose, with feathers flying away from its body. A red string wrapped around its neck and drawn taunt by something anchoring it down from below, preventing it from flying upwards towards the golden skies.

It is not hard to imagine this poor pigeon flying with all its might, to reach heights it has never seen before, only to feel the discomfort of its bindings tighten and drag it back down. Frantic, it tries time and again, only to be met over and over with the limitations imposed upon it. No one would be surprised for the pigeon to fall into learned helplessness. The pigeon does not control the string imposed upon it; it can only struggle.

What we, along with the pigeon, fail to remember is that most things that bind and tether are viscoelastic, meaning they can withstand quick panicked jerks but break when steady, consistent pressure is applied. It may take time and a lot of effort, but when you feel the string tighten around your neck, it is at that time you steady yourself and resist the quick jerk backward. It is that moment when you need to keep your path and continue flying forward. You may not move for a while, but eventually the pressure you apply on those tethers will cause them to break. Eventually, the pigeon will be free to fly.

But it is all dependent on how you handle the discomfort.

How This Painting Encapsulates the Pain of Growth was originally published in Share Your Creativity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Not the same after all.

Have you ever created a duplicate piece of your own artwork in a different color palette?

I usually don’t have the patience to create the same painting twice. Once I’ve completed something, it’s like I’ve closed the loop and I’m onto the next work.

So when a previous client of mine asked for a second piece to fit her new space, I stepped into unfamiliar territory.

The brief was exciting for me. The goal was to create a complimentary piece to the elephants painting that you see above. We discussed a few different possibilities including a mirror image, a different image altogether, or a different color scheme (as if there were a filter on the image). We eventually decided to change the color scheme since she didn’t want many different images competing on one wall.

I initially expected this second painting with same composition and different color scheme to be simple (and even slightly bland), but I didn’t realize how many creative decisions I would be making in the process, or how much I would enjoy the technical challenge of maintaining form and lighting.

Determining the colors for the elephants’ skin was relatively easy. We had decided on something like a cool blue-gray. Once I decided the darkest and lightest shades, I was able to tint the base color to achieve the full range.

Next, I outlined the image on the canvas. I used the grid method to get the forms as close to the original as possible. The basic idea is that you create a grid on your reference image digitally, and then you scale and create the same grid on your canvas (see the image above). I love using this technique whenever I’m aiming for a more realistic painting where the proportions matter.

The pre-work to painting brought some uncertainty, but actually starting to paint was the real leap of faith.

I didn’t have a direct color reference but just a theoretical one for the new blues that I was painting and I knew my layering and strokes would be different from 4 years ago, when I made the original painting. There was no knowing how it would turn out, and whether it would look like the original. This is how the elephants turned out:

In retrospect, I was a bit too focused on achieving the same EXACT painting, but through the process I realized it was never really just a reworked duplicate. It was a whole new painting in itself.

This distinction between the original painting and the new painting became most obvious when I started to work on the background.

My first instinct was to go with a warm terracotta color for the mud. However, if you look at the original painting, the mud color values track closely with the elephants’ skin. If I utilized a warm, clearly saturated terracotta for the mud, I felt that I would lose harmony between the two paintings. For this reason, I eventually settled on a similar blue-gray color scheme for the mud, leaning closer to gray and adding just a touch of warmth with burnt sienna.

Then came the background. In the original image I used muted green shades to create the illusion of shrubs and trees. In my new painting, I debated whether I should use green or whether I should use terracotta. I eventually decided to go with terracotta because I felt that it’s an analogous inversion to my original color composition. The result was unexpectedly striking.

Despite depicting the same image, the new painting is not the same.

In my eyes, it’s more visually striking, and evokes a different feeling than the original because of the changes in color. Yet, I feel there is harmony between the two works.

Maybe they are two different mother-calf elephant stories altogether. Or maybe they are the same elephants experiencing a hot dry afternoon in the savannah in one painting, and a cool breezy dawn in another. Whatever the story, the paintings seem to represent two different moments in time.

What do you think? Have you ever made an artwork that’s the same, but not really?

Same Painting, Different Colors was originally published in Share Your Creativity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s beats doomscrolling and wasting hours doing useless things online

I’m in my creative girl era, and boy is it bringing more life to my veins! Creating and sharing more of my work and insights is making my life much more fulfilling and allows me to live in vivid mode.

I’m loving creating things and sharing them online. Although I also create a lot offline. One aspect of my creative expansion is being motivated to grow my online presence and business. Regardless, that isn’t the all of it. I like to be more of a creator than a consumer in general. My life works better that way. It balances me out and makes me feel less of a void inside.

When we create more, life is richer, it’s as though we taste it more. We become active participants in our own lives, and see the value in our own contributions. Rather than constantly consuming the creative output of others.

Because the less we create, the more our voice and our ability to create gets stifled over time. We’re also more likely to become distracted with the currents of life, that doesn’t always serve us.

Creativity Is Making Me Live In Technicolor Mode Once Again

I’m realising more and more that I want to express as much of myself as I can. There is something so magical about sharing what’s within into the world. It’s keeps me inspired and I hope to bring inspiration to others to step into their creative powers.

Creating more can be seen as an act of radical self acceptance, and is countercultural. In the sense that it goes against the hyper-consumerist narrative, permeating the socioeconomic fibre of society.

The narrative that encourages us to be consumers...all the time.

I choose instead to create more than I consume. This fulfills me more than watching silly social media memes, brain rot videos or empty reels for hours on end.

• I want to write more
• draw more
• paint more
• move more and create space in my body
• do more art in various forms
• use my hands more
• bake more
• make new recipes
• learn new creative skills
• share my story
• use my voice
• and create in as many way as I can

On days where I haven’t created much, life feels emptier and less meaningful. As though wasted and shallow.

On most days you’ll find me

• cooking something
• indoor gardening or pressed flower making
• making natural remedies
• fermenting
• making natural skin and body care products form scratch
• reordering my home space in creative ways
• writing out new ideas
• creating a digital product
• tending to my plants
• publishing here on Me-di-um
• writing poetry
• working on my work in progress books or self publishing a new book or journal
• thinking up ways to grow my online projects
• doodling
• creating other visual art
• and more..

Creating makes my life richer, more fulfilled and expansive. It’s how I’d rather live.

Some of my (non digital/online) creative works in recent times

(raw vegan food creations, dried floral arrangements, indoor gardening and plant setup, visual art, natural skincare creations, tea elixirs)

✨Psst! If you enjoyed or gained something useful from what I wrote, I’d appreciate if you bought me some tea or kombucha. ☕
✨You can follow me here 📪

Thanks for reading.

Why I’m Loving My Creative Girl Era was originally published in Share Your Creativity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.