PAINTING OUR TRAVELS: MELBOURNE'S BRIGHTEST BLOOMS

The extended lockdowns have made me reach for things to do, especially because we have had to cancel our trips. In fact, I had so much time on my hands that I was able to publish a book about travels that run deep within us: Cruising Past Seventy. It's Not Only about Outer Journeys. It's Also about Inner Ones. But other hobbies have also taken center stage: cooking and photography. I have thus started three new series on this blog. I kicked off the first in my last post with this: Veggies from Other Lands: Air Fryer Vegetable Tempura.

This week, I begin the second series: “Travel Tales through Pictures.” It was way back in 2019 when I already wrote about photography in Remarkable Photos: Reliving the Story More than Words can Ever Weave. But there is another kind of picture besides photos. And it opens another way of telling my stories. Last Christmas, somebody in the family got a Paint by Numbers kit. My interest was piqued; I decided to try, too. But, I opted for the custom version where you can choose one of your favorite photos and the service provider runs it through their software to produce a pattern just for you.

Other people choose photos of their pets, their grandkids, or themselves as a couple. And you guessed it right. I chose to favorite travel photos, those that had excellently captured the intrinsic beauty of the places we had visited. I came up with ten, some of which have even won awards in the Photo Shows I joined. Surely, painting the scenes is another way to remember our travels. Yes, I can say it with paintings, not just photos! 

To produce my first one, I chose the simplest of the ten photos. It was taken in Melbourne, Australia where I spent a few months babysitting my youngest grandson (he was not yet two at the time) while his parents began their new life with new jobs and a new home after migrating from the Philippines. During weekends, my husband and I toured the nooks and corners of the city, all the surrounding towns in Victoria, the many vineyards, the outstanding beaches, and the different parks and gardens. 

Being an avowed xanthophile  (a person who loves the color yellow), I was hugely ecstatic when I was greeted with huge trees crowned with tons of yellow flowers everywhere I went. Before I had come to Australia, I didn't know that the country's national tree is what they call the golden wattle. It was my tremendous luck that during the few months I was there, they were brightly blooming! 

I have a ton of pictures of those trees but I didn't use any of those. Australia has plenty of botanic gardens and we were able to visit the large and diverse one called The Royal Botanic Gardens. That's where I found a large bush bearing flowers I have never seen before. The flowers had immaculate white petals punctuated by large yellow stripes. After some research, I found out that the flower is aptly known as Superbells lemon slice! Ordinary yellow and white combos such as you what you might find in daisies and plumeria don't catch my attention as these ones did.

I sent the custom paint by number provider my photo and then they sent me the above-framed canvass etched with the pattern. They also sent me two paintbrushes and 34 tiny plastic tubs of ready-to-use acrylic paints. There was no instruction sheet provided so I googled the usual steps to take and asked the family members who had done it for some tips. 

This was my work when I had used about 1/3 of the colors. By this time, I learned that going top to down and left to right made so much sense. It made sure that the side of your right hand does not smudge any new area just painted. Acrylic is easier to use because it dries much faster than either oil or watercolor. By going this way, by the time you go back to the top left with the next color, the areas you had painted with the lighter color are already dry.

This is the piece with about 2/3 of the colors painted in. By this time, I had learned that going from lighter to darker colors made cleaning the brushes for the next color much easier. It didn’t have to be extra clean since the lighter color would not materially affect the next one. I also learned how the varying shades of each color determined the effects. There was a science to the numbers! And I could work at my own pace, making and correcting mistakes. It was particularly instructive.

And the final photo now hangs in my reading corner. It was a good enough first effort to copy the original travel photo. The exercise made me comfortable with the canvass, the brushes, and paint as a medium. But a painting tells a story more than words can ever tell; more than photos can. Whether it be a calming beach or a majestic mountain, the painting may not be as realistic as a photograph but it reveals more of the traveler and how he worked with his own hands to put all the colors together.

I may not be good enough yet, in fact, I may never become good at all, but the process allowed me to relive the ecstasy I felt when the color yellow greeted me everywhere I went around Melbourne that year. Perhaps later I would gradually leave the science of Paint by Numbers as I move from one travel photo to another. First speaking, then writing, followed by photography, and finally, painting. My journey from words to pictures does not really take the place of my outer journeys; it wonderfully complements them.

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