Brain on Paint

By: Pauline A.

It’s Friday afternoon. You hop off your bus and make your merry way home. As you enter the halls of your house, you make it straight to the TV room, drop your backpack onto the floor, and plop on the couch. You tilt your head back, fatigued from the long day of 7 hours in school, and your thoughts meander to what you’re going to do for the weekend. You take out your phone and scroll through YouTube. As you wander through the plethora of video thumbnails, you spot an old low-fidelity 1980’s looking video cover of a man in a cool pale blue sleeved shirt, with a nice soft brown afro, smiling at the camera; before him stands his easel, with a mountain before it on a backdrop of a canvas. Your brows furrow, as your finger instinctively clicks upon it with the questions: “Why’s this in my video feed?”, but more importantly, “Is that Bob Ross?”. Which now leads to the final question: “How’d he do that?!”. What Bob Ross was doing back in the 80s was painting landscapes all by himself, with no guidance whatsoever, in front of a recording camera. The soothing sounds of paint scraping upon the canvas in the low-quality video have invoked the response of “I wish I could do that!” from many people. As it turns out, you can! When your brain is on paint, a plethora of glorious emotions and thoughts can render you speechless!

It may not be obvious at first, but there are many health benefits to painting. Some health benefits include the improvement of dexterity, memory, and encouragement of concentration. When one holds a paintbrush and strokes onto the canvas, the flexibility of their wrist, fingers, and their hands is heightened. Long periods of this repetitive movement can gradually steady your hand, and thus prevent it from shaking often. However, many overlook that painting or performing any other artistic craft is often done for a long period sitting down, so stretching your hands and resting your body is essential for pleasant painting experience! 

The improvement of memory and concentration go hand in hand. A person who is painting must focus on the meticulous details of what they’re painting and think on their subject matter, whether it’s from their own imagination or if they are using real-life references. Studies have shown that this repetition of focus can help lower the risk of memory loss illnesses at an older age. 

Photo by geralt on Pixabay is licensed under Pixabay License

From an artist’s perspective, I encourage anyone of any age to start painting (though this can be applicable to any hobby)! One of the main reasons why is because it encourages perseverance.  Making paintings enforces trial and error (believe it or not) and researching techniques. Additionally, being surrounded by those who are better than you is a beneficial experience. While many people are intimidated by this, it is ultimately one of the key points that lead to improvement. An essential point to learn is that failure isn’t such a terrible thing to experience. In fact, it can often help pivot an artist in the most successful path towards growth. 

Second, painting allows the expression of emotion. You have free will of what you can paint. From landscapes, to people, to characters, or just splashing stuff that’s on your mind at the moment onto the canvas is a safe outlet for expressing your ideas and pushing your imagination!

Photo by Ryan Hickox on Flickr is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Third, your perception of reality will evolve gradually over time. Studying and painting/drawing (whatever craft in the fine arts you choose), allows a person to see the world in different perspectives. If an artist has studied and built upon their craft, they are more likely to be able to deconstruct basic visual appeals in our daily life: from how the sunlight casts over trees/organisms, how everything one can see can be deconstructed into shapes, and how one can understand the textures of mundane objects. It’s details like these that build up from crafting pictures on the canvas. 

However, many choose not to start painting because it can be too overwhelming at once. Painting has a plethora of approaches and may not seem too linear for a beginner to understand or start on at first. Second, it doesn’t seem “technical” or applicable in many jobs. Paintings are often seen as just pictures on the wall, but they help branch out in different types of artistic careers, from an illustrator at a comic book company to a graphic designer for a marketing firm. Or, they can be used as simple decorations for houses. Last, painting supplies range in price. Like anything else, the better quality products are more expensive than the low-quality ones. A lot of beginners are overwhelmed on deciding which paint brands to choose, paint brushes to buy, and which canvases should be used. 

Photo on Pxhere is licensed under CC0

Although painting can seem overwhelming at first, you should try it out! It can help alleviate boredom, and it allows you to step out of your comfort zone! From personal experience, I got into drawing and painting by looking up “how to draw” and “how to paint” videos on YouTube. This helped a lot by showing me the different ways painting and drawing can be approached; plus, it offered a good introduction into the hobby. These videos are mostly aimed at people who’ve not drawn for long  or picked up a paintbrush, so there’s no need to worry about making something good right away. With materials, it’s a good idea to just buy cheaper materials (like in Walmart or your local dollar store), or “student-quality” materials (products aimed at the most affordable price), to explore your options and to get a feel of what you would like to paint. However, this doesn’t mean you should stick with cheaper qualities forever. Lastly, this is a controversial but common phenomenon, but believe it or not, many artists start out copying their favorite artist(s).  There’s no shame in copying or redrawing/repainting a piece so long as the artist is credited/recognized AND it is not being made for profit! 

Overall, whether or not you want to try out painting or a new hobby is all up to you! But just remember, with the vast Internet, many resources are at your fingertips. It’s up to you whether you use them to your advantage to develop your artistry. 

Art by zatsukii (Pauline A.) on Instagram. You can find her here: https://www.instagram.com/zatsukii/?hl=en

Artwork used (in clockwise order): https://www.instagram.com/p/Bgcfr6xlM5u/, https://www.instagram.com/p/BrZQlnwBUBQ/, https://www.instagram.com/p/Bsgx21LhGtv/ 

The Thrill of the Challenge

By Louisa C. 

Created by Natalie M. on Toondoo

Throughout my educational career, the math classroom had always been my safe haven, a place where I found myself the most confident in my mental abilities and comfortable with learning new material. That was until I was introduced to geometry.

For me, algebra had been a cakewalk. As monomials evolved into binomials, and then advanced to polynomials, I never once had to think twice about the numbers I was working with. I could practically graph, solve, multiply, and divide these entities in my sleep. I found myself the unofficial tutor of my algebra class, the “phone-a-friend” option for all of my peers who struggled with these concepts. Solving multiple equations by graphing was a particular favorite topic of mine. I would march up to the front of the class to present my graphing masterpiece on the board as my peers watched in awe, holding the perception that I had somehow been blessed with unbelievable mental abilities allowing me to so quickly comprehend novel topics we had just learned minutes before. I felt on top of the world; the algebra classroom was my track and I was Usain Bolt, sprinting to the finish line with ease, making my accomplishments look effortless.

On the first day of my geometry class, I waltzed in with the expectation that the course would be breeze. My classmates had already strategically positioned themselves to sit as close to me as possible, allowing easy to access to ask for help. For about the first month or so, I was able to hold on to the new material, but the deeper we went into the course, the less confident I began to feel in my abilities. The first topic that truly stumped me was the Pythagorean theorem. I found myself extremely frustrated, I had always been able to work problems with triangles easily in the past, so why was this new concept so challenging? Who was this Pythagoras anyway, and what made his ancient Greek discoveries so important? My reputation as the “go-to-the-head-of-the-class” student quickly began to slip, as my peers began to notice that I was just as perplexed, or possibly more so, than they were.

Embarrassed, I attended every after school tutoring sessions that was offered, hoping to regain the abilities that allowed math to come so easily to me. I was able to maintain an A in the geometry course, but I had to put in much more work than I had in the past in order to understand the math. As the class came to a close, I realized that even though the topics in geometry challenged me more than those of my past math classes and revoked my nickname of the “math genius”, my love for the subject never once faltered. I began to realize the true appreciation I had for math itself. Instead of enjoying the subject because it was historically so simple for me, I found myself having fun crafting equations and breaking down word problems, appreciating the times I ran into a dead end and celebrating the times I overcame those obstacles.

Even when I entered the second level of algebra, and math once again became easier to understand, I did not find that I loved the subject any more or less. I was just having fun being introduced to new theories, equations, and concepts, allowing new opportunities to see how math could be applied to my everyday life and new ways to approach problems I faced. That being said, in all my future math courses, I do not hope to find easily comprehensible and simply understood materials, but rather a mentally challenging experience that unlocks new ways to think about the nature of systems and structures within our world. I have discovered that not only in math classes, but in my all areas of my life as a whole, it is the challenges I face that present exciting situations which allow me to explore new information about both the surrounding environment and myself.