A Birthday Gift From Russia

on the 31st January earlier this year, I received a birthday gift from my Russian host family that I had been staying with for a week. I happened to be going back to Norway on my birthday so they got me some Russian condensed milk that I really loved to have with homemade pancakes and a painting that I had to well... paint.

My host sister had a painting of a town that she was working on and she told me it had taken her a long time, few of months because she was busy with school and after school activities. I obsessed a little, if not too much, over the painting. The cool part was that there were numbers on the portrait, each specifying which color should be used on which part of the painting and all you had to do was 'paint in'. I could understand why she had still not finished, it was a lot of work, time and took a lot of patience too!

Now you can imagine my surprise when I woke up that morning, on my birthday, and got a big bag of something that I had no idea about. As soon as I opened it, a wide smiled appeared on my face, but not before I watched at it in awe. How was that possible? How did she know, I was so happy and that my friends, was how I got a hold of what I will be writing about in today's post.

I had to paint a dog, a small boat, three birds, some clouds and lots of grass. I looked at the picture once, just after I got it, and put it away. I knew that I would never get time to actually finish it, things were just hectic with school and during my free-time I really needed to sleep or something, so I said no to getting to work right away.

Soon after the students had to leave the school premises due to the coronavirus, I tried to find as many ways as possible to keep myself busy and entertain myself, that's when the painting hit the jackpot!.

Within a few days I had started painting already, a litlle dot or one grass at a time. It was the slowest project I've worked on in a while and it frustrated me a lot, especially in the beginning when it looked like nothing was happening. I would skip some days and try and paint some other days, the one thing that kept me going was having the end result in mind. I was eager to see how it would turn out, so over time as I got more area covered with the painting, I spent more and more time painting.

I had ruined one of the paints, I didn't see that they had an extra paint that helped 'revive' the others in case they dried out so my dumb butt went ahead and poured perfume into the paint. A water-based paint. Well, RIP to my purple paint, I never got to use it again. Lesson learned.

Over my painting period, I listened to a lot of music and did simple workouts, especially on days when I hadn't been outside. Other days I would just lay down on the floor and get a glimpse of the sunlight through the window, and take horrible selfies that I am confident enough to show to my readers:)

Anyway, I finished yesterday with my painting and couldn't be more proud of myself. I had to mix some colors to replace the purple but I don't think there is much of a difference anyway, I think it looks great. I couldn't help but smile to the back of my ear when I painted one of the last blocks, it was amazing seeing that painting come to life right infront of me, from zero to a hundred I'd say!

If I've learned anything from this project, it has taught me that I can be patient too and that the results are best when I 'ta det med ro' like the Norwegians say. Means take it easy. My self-criticism has been active but I chose to shut it out, this here is something that I am really proud of and all my bad vibes shouldn't hang around it.

Challenge yourself. What have you been procrastinating because you can't keep up with the waiting time? Confront yourself and grab the bull my the horns sommer nou! Go for it, keep the end goal in mind and let that energy drive you, goodluck!

P.S I started painting around the 15th of March and finally I can put my paintbrush down, for now*wink wink*

hearts, Queen

#paintings #selfies #norway #namibia #russia #blogging #birthdaygift #friendship #hostfamily