#40Things
Number 28.
Do a Painting.

Sasa wacha niwaambie. Mimi I thought painting ni kama ile ya coloring book just this time with wetter, stickier applicants. First of all, painting ya coloring book has got lines. You just need to color within the lines and if you’re a coloring pro like me, and when I say pro I mean stadadi three level, you will color in one direction… yes, like the band.

Sasa, the advantage of painting is that there are no mistakes, they say. If you make a mistake, you can just merge it into the painting and boom you have a master piece. Now what they didn’t tell us is that it could be “boom! And you have a piece”. Si master piece. Ni piece tu. Sijui piece of work.

“Ile ni nini inakaa mbaazi pale kwa corner? Ebu toa uweke hapo nje.”

“Ati nini?”

“Ile nini” *asking no one in particular* “mbaazi inaitwa nini in English”

“You mean Peas?”

“Eeeh peas.”

…

Okay I’ll see myself out. Ata msiniambie. Nimeona hii ni dad joke kabisaaaaa.

This one was really exciting to do. It took a while to eventually get to do it. Mostly because I was wondering what to paint. My idea kept changing in my head. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to paint. But at least I knew I would like to do pallet knives so that I can get those thick textures. But sasa sikujua where to start.

I met Gigi at a breakfast and cocktail thingy. When she said she was a painter I told her about my plan to do my first painting with pallet knifes. I had never done a painting before let alone touched a pallet knife. We talked about the ideas then switched to Tom, her husband who’s a woodworker and we talked endlessly about woodwork.

But now we never seemed to find time, either Gigi was out of the country, or I had a project I was working on or they had a project they were working on. Then finally almost a year later we decided to set a date within a month and finally it was time to do the painting. First of all painting is more expensive than I thought. I thought like 1k should cover everything. We hadn’t discussed budget so sikuwa na idea. Sasa nilisema haya I’ll spare like 2k. A kay for the paints and stuff and the other kay for anything that might come up. The paints themselves cost me over 4k. Na ata that was not enough. Gigi had to give me some of hers. And still I started on a pre layered canvas, yaani si canvas empty. That means it would maybe cost me another 2k or more of paint to layer the canvas. Alafu bei ya canvas na frames na pallet knifes, na brushes. But then again my painting is huge. It’s 5ft by 3ft. Just incase you want to do a huge painting for the 1st time and you want to use acrylic paint, zile zinakaa toothpaste, now you know around what budget to work with.

We started painting at around 11am. After about 2 hours of trying out ideas, what we had come up with was not exciting at all. Remember it was my first time painting and I wanted everything on my canvas. If it was up to me, hiyo canvas ingukuwa na tumawe, bracelets, kitambaa tatu na maindi choma.

Actually it wasn’t my first time painting. Just a few months before this I had done my first painting at a Sip & Paint event. Kapainting kadogo. Kapaintingette. Lakini it was a different kind of painting. Na brushes.

Haya wacha niwaelezee the difference. Ya brushes the painting is picture that you can see. Ya pallet knives, you can touch the textures. Iko na bumps bumps. Kama ni mkono ya mtu imepaintiwa, you can touch it and feel it. Those are the ones I like.

So we decided to take a break, got alcohol and talked about exes wa kutoka huko high school, uni, first loves and all other mathogothanio that alcohol pushes people to laugh about. Sijui kwa nini alcohol has these tendencies. The only time dudes express love to each other is when there’s pool full o’ liquor then we dive in it..

“Bro! I love you bro”

Ama if you’re more ghetto..

“Mato, si unajua wewe ni msee wangu”

Wah si tulikumbuka tu story. Kwanza those high school crushes that we were too shy to express. Ebu kwanza wako wapi ni niwatafute. Shyness imeisha sasa. Ebu nitumie inbox, kuna kitu nataka kukushow.

Soon ideas started flowing. We tried a style that pulls off the top layer of paint and reveals the dried lower layers… I still don’t know the painters lingo. I’m sure hizi vitu zote ziko na proper names and descriptions. Anywho, I realised that it looked like wood and that made me so excited. Forty Wood inanifuata tu all over. Fundi wa mbao, painter. Painter wa mbao. No, that’s not it. Fundi Painter. Mbao Fundi Painter. Mbao Painter. Mbappe…

Soon we were all in a painting mood. Tom worked on his canvas, painting with his fingers, Gigi the guru, pulled out brushes and painted the sunset… hivo tu. Nikiangalia. Oh, so Gigi is a professional painter. She sells her work to hotels and individuals in Kenya, London na kadhalika.

By the time we were done, it was already night. We celebrated with a couple of beers, dinner and lots of laughter. I went home, straight to bed. It was a very fulfilling day.

I call the painting, Blue Wood. Blue Wood because it was interesting how it came about, how it looks like wood. To some people it looks like a river, to others it looks like the neck of a Swan. I was just enjoying myself and it just brought itself just like Forty Wood did. It was just me enjoying myself doing timber and boom, kidogo kidogo niko kwa expo.

Ladies and gentlemen, Blue Wood.

My first Master Piece.

The 1st of more.