The Beginning

Heya!!

Wow! I am finally writing a blog and it feels so good! I would have started and ended around 5 different blogs on wordpress over the decade, on various topics- Craft, Parenting, School, Living away from home, Married life in India blah blah AND blah!... And at the age of 31, here I am, one more time to do it again but with some amount of focus (fingers crossed). Wish me luck so I don't tank this. 

Today, I thought I would write a little about my creative journey. 

It was a gloomy December afternoon in 2019 (I like being specific) when my kids and I started to engage ourselves with watercolors from the dollar store- very typical. Somehow, it kind of lingered in me for a while when I finally gave in and bought my first set of Gouache. The cheapest and quality option available was Aretza.

So around this time, I was leaning towards making books with watercolor papers and coffee stained papers using Coptic stitch book binding method (another hobby altogether).

I took one of those out and painted my first evert little piece of art - Rubber plant. 

Okay, this may sound absurd but I fell for how creamy and matte this paint was- How it covered the surface in one stroke. It was an instant obsession. AND From there it began....

My Initial days were spent at the make shift dining table which could accommodate very little.

Then came in the thrifted drafting table which belonged to some guy whose parents thought he was becoming an artist but ended up becoming a nurse no longer needing the table. I moved to the basement... Its there that I moved from self made floppy sketchbooks to painting on actual pieces of good quality papers.

Here is the first full painting I made with gouache. 

Four months in the basement with very little light in winter was not the best. I would come up often to take good pictures on the dining table. After a while, we were able to move around some furniture and accommodate my little table by the window which was GREAT with all that light.  

This is where it all started- making it in to a serious/expensive hobby. I took an 'actual sketchbook' to practice some brush strokes, work more on the colour palette and made my first dragon fly logo. Changed my Instagram handle from 'Teal Palette' to 'Nabeela Rumi', and began making prints. 

Not going to lie, Making prints was not an easy journey for me. Living in a small town with not many printers around, I struggled. It took a long time to figure out what paper to use, how the colours on screen work, Printer type and quality and what not. Nevertheless, I started my etsy with what I had in August of 2020. the $30 dollar printer was doing a good job and I had somehow figured out the best paper for it then - Epson Velvet Fine art Paper . 

A year later, Here I am sitting on a desk in my own sweet home 'studio' writing a blog pretending to have decades of art experience. 

I am going to end it abruptly. Thanks for reading.

Nabeela