We Pretend We're Artists Sometimes: The Untamable Beast

Awhile back my boyfriend, Tyler, my roommate and I went to the beach. We had plans to just hang out on the sand, read, and take in the sunset. But before settling in, I wanted to dip my head in the ocean, get a little water on me. Well, a dip turned into about half an hour of playing in the waves. It was fantastic feeling the power of the ocean sweep me up and carry me to shore time after time.

Tyler and our roommate at the beach.

The truly fantastic part, however, was that this random, pretty normal trip to the beach inspired some artistry in Tyler. And then Tyler’s artistry inspired some artistry in me. 

When I returned to my beach chair after the ocean, Tyler had said that he had left me a couple of voice memos I should listen to. I found them, held the phone up to my ear and pressed play. Immediately I recognized the fact that these voice memos were poetry Tyler had “written” on the spot. And the poetry was about me. I was floored and flattered. No one had ever been inspired to create art about me before.

I wanted to paint something that could partner with his words. And I somehow wanted to display his words with the painting. I’ve always wanted to try the Pinterest mirror thing where you put stickers on a mirror, spray paint the mirror, then peel off the stickers so the mirror shows through where the stickers are. So I decided I would try that with this project. 

I started by painting. I gathered some reference photos (which is really easy to do on Pinterest. You just search what you're looking for then create a board to save them all) so I could visualize what I wanted to do and I spent a Saturday putting paint to canvas. Originally, the woman was going to be clothed, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that none of the clothes I would put on her felt right. So she ended up naked. It wasn’t anything too fancy when it was finished, but I was happy with the result:

The plethora of reference photos for this painting

The final painting

I then started working on the mirror. I wrote out Tyler’s spoken poem and, with his help, picked out a stanza that we both liked and thought would look good next to the painting.

My first mirror, all broken and stuff :(

I luckily found a mirror the exact same size as my canvas at the dollar store. How fortunate that I only had to spend $1 on this mirror! (Well, $2. I tried to take the frame off my first mirror and it broke into tiny pieces. I was much more careful taking the frame off my second mirror.) I bought letter stickers from Michael’s (two packs so I knew I had enough of each letter I needed…but now I have extra letter stickers up the wazoo, haha) and went to work.

The mirror once all the stickers were put on.

I measured each line to make sure everything was centered. I counted the number of letters in a line and made sure to put the letter half way down the amount of letters in a line right in the middle of the mirror. So for example: the mirror was 11x14in and I knew the middle of the mirror was 7in in. If I had 16 letters in a line, the 8th letter in the line would go 7in into the frame and I would put the other letters down around the middle letter. Does that make sense?

Anyway, this took a LONG time. Definitely a whole days work. And at the end of the sticking I was worried because some stickers weren’t holding to the mirror well. I knew that if they didn’t stick they wouldn’t prevent the spray paint from covering that area. So I put the mirror on the floor and put some heavy books on top of it in an attempt to get all the letters to stick well. I left the mirror that way for 24 hours. 

The mirror right after spray painting.

Then came the fun part! I took the mirror outside and started spray painting! I put about 3 to 4 coats on and left the mirror outside in the sun to dry for several hours. It was probably longer than it needed to be out there, I didn’t want to risk messing up the paint. 

The second hardest part was getting all the stickers off. I anxiously pulled the the first sticker off and to my surprise it came off cleanly AND succeeded in leaving beautiful crisp lines between where the sticker was and the spray paint. I was so happy that none of the paint seemed to run under the sticker! The rest of the letters were a little harder to get off. A LOT of the stickers were stubborn and wouldn’t come off just by peeling. I ended up using a combination of a pencil eraser, Q-Tip, and GooGone to get all the sticker residue off The GooGone worked great! It loosened the sticker adhesive without really affecting the spray paint!

After peeling off the first sticker. It looked so good!

Finally my mirror was done and it was wonderful! I couldn’t wait to hang it next to my painting! But here in lied another problem. When I took the frame off the mirror at the beginning of this project, I took with it any means of hanging. The back of the mirror was naked: no hooks, no holes, nothing. I didn’t want to use traditional mirror hangings because I knew this would scratch the spray paint. I tried to super glue a hook, and then some wire to the back of the mirror but the super glue was just not sticking to the mirror back.

I eventually ended up getting a frame of it and sticking it in that. It’s not ideal, but I wanted to get the project hung and done. I can always revisit it if I want to but I’m just happy it’s all finally up on my wall. It looks beautiful and I am so proud of the fact that it’s a combination of both Tyler and my artistic talents. I’m also happy that something I’ve always wanted to try from Pinterest worked out! 

The poetry and painting together at last!

Here’s the entirety of Tyler’s spoken poem from the beach:

Even through a moments hesitation

She walked down the sand wall

As a heroine, she stood in front of it

It roared at her

She jumped back a little

The sand sifted under her feet

She did not move

She immerses herself in it

With wooshes it rushes at her

She finds herself

Torn asunder

But revived

Rejuvenated

She resurfaces

Triumphantly

She feels as if she has tamed the beast

Even if for a moment

It congratulates her

With little taps on her legs

It pats her gently

As she victoriously leaves the darkness

And the lightness

The only place where blue can be white

Through friction

It is our ocean

Ending’s flubbed

As she walks away from the crashing waves

Victorious

She welcomes the full light of the sun

And decides to try and tame another untamable beast

Even though it made her weaker

More tired

She kept going because she knew it would make her stronger

Wiser

And be able to endure the harsh times that were ahead

The Color Run: June 21, 2014

I have always wanted to do a color run but never thought I could do it because I was never really a runner. And I have too much pride to walk. Granted, I also didn’t realize that walking 3 miles (The Color Run is a 5K, a 5K is 3.1 miles) was as do-able as it was. But I started training for the LA Marathon last fall as as soon as I realized how easy running 3.1 miles was I immediately started looking for the next opportunity to sign up for a color run. 

In February I signed up for The Color Run on June 21st, 2014 and I couldn’t wait! I tried to get others to sign up with me, but it ended up being just me. That made me a little nervous because from all the pictures I’ve seen on Facebook (which made me want to do this in the first place…that and my enthusiasm for the Indian holiday Holi) were of friends running the race together and getting all colorful and smiling and having a great time. And when I first arrived, all I saw were people with family or friends. But being stag ended up ok in the end; I had to ask a lot of people to take pictures of me, but being by myself didn’t detract from the race at all.

I checked in early so I had all my Color Run race gear: a shirt, a sweatband, some temporary tattoos reading “HAPPY” and “The Color Run,” a bracelet, and my bib number. I went all out and wore everything on race day. I put the temporary tattoos on my cheeks in the morning, but the “HAPPY” tattoo was too big for my cheek. The “H” didn’t stick on, so my cheek read “APPY.” I was going to wipe it off but instead I just rocked the “APPY” with pride. Weird looks be damned! (The “Color Run” face tattoo came out great.) 

I arrived as early as you could, 6:30am, to Dodgers Stadium. I had book club to get to at 10am (which ended up being cancelled) so I wanted to be in the start queue right at 8am so I could race, do all the activities, and still make it to book club. I think I was the fourth person to park their car. I had checked in the previous day so I was all set and ready to go (most people who came early still had to check in). There were a few vendors and I took advantage of their free stuff (I think I ended up with 3 free dinners at Wahoos). There wasn’t much there so I sat down for a bit in front of their party main stage.

Of course, then their MC came on the mic and started urging us to “SMILE! DANCE! NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO STOP DANCING! THIS IS THE BEST DAY OF YOUR LIFE!” It was rather annoying, because I just wanted the race to start. They had warm up Zumba set to the toppiest top 40 songs and although I participated to get warmed up I REALLY just wanted to start the race. I decided to head over to the start line to await the race and I was happy to see I wasn’t the only one. Of course there was another MC at the starting line, just as annoying. We were encouraged to “HASHTAG! DANCE FOR SOME FREE SWAG!” Just let me run already…

And finally, I got to! And let me tell you, the course was a little tough. It was around Dodgers Stadium and it is hilly. Very hilly. So the uphills were awful. But I was glad I was able to take advantage of the downhills. There were 5 color areas: Blue, Pink, Orange, Purple, and Yellow. They were spread out around the course. As I came upon the first color, blue, I was pumped! Volunteers cheered as I came upon the color station, so I cheered with them. Mistake. The dried colored paint went right into my lungs. It tasted awful and I’m sure it wasn’t good for me. I swigged some water and spit it out to wash out my mouth. The next color, pink, I breathed in through my nose while passing through the color. Again, mistake. I eventually learned to not breathe or open my mouth through the color. I tried to take some pictures of the volunteers squirting color at us from plastic bottles, but I wasn’t very successful.

The course was beautiful. There were awesome views of LA which made for awesome pictures. And of course, it was SO MUCH FUN to get all colored! Motivation to get to the next color pushed my feet forward. I finished quickly…too quickly, and when I looked at my running app I noticed I only ran 2.5 miles. So not a true 5K color run…kinda not cool. 

At the finish line, all colored up, they gave you a packet of the dried paint (mine was blue) and told you that over by the main stage there would be a color throw soon. I stopped by some booths for some very cool photo ops; the Zappos booth had drums with dried paint on the top some when you drummed on them a cloud of color flew in the air and Shout had a 360 degree camera where I jumped in the air and was texted a video that traveled 360 degrees around the moment. Then I made my way over to the stage.

The crowd there was dancing and responding to the MC and I danced a little (though I never listened to what the MC wanted us to do dancing wise. I know, REBEL!) and I was just really looking forward to the color throw. “Soon! It will be soon! Get ready!” I kept hearing over and over. “Let’s just do it!” I thought. People randomly started throwing their color, overtaken by excitement and impatience. I ended up throwing my color (blue and orange, which I got from the Shout booth) with a bunch of other people at once, but it hilariously enough wasn’t when we were supposed to. Oh well. I was able to take a video on the actual color throw though, since I was colorless, which I was grateful for. Then I was hit right in the face by a huge wad of blue paint. It went all up in my mouth and lungs. And then I knew it was time to leave the crowd.

I took my official race photos. One photographer told me to stick out my tongue and make a silly face. After the picture he said I looked awesome because my tongue was all different colors. “Great,” I thought, “That’s probably not healthy.” It was time to leave for book club and so I made my way to the Shout clean off tent. A man with a leaf blower blew all the extra paint off of you so that you didn’t track excess paint into your car. The workers of that tent were impressed by my blue, Smurf-like face. I got to my car, put some trash bags over my front seat, took some final pictures, and then heard a large bang. Not five feet away from me, a girl turned her car into a large truck and destroyed the whole front of her car. Not five feet away. It was crazy. 

I drove home and jumped right in the shower. I was blue all over my body. I scrubbed hard but barely made a dent in getting the color off my body. But I didn’t care. I was happy. It was awesome. I posted a bunch to Instagram. All in all it was a great experience and I can’t WAIT to do it again next year!