Parmita's Blog

Someone noticed my art! Yesterday, I was contacted by a Health Blog called Lupus Chick ( link ) to draw a little promo picture for them. It felt so cool to have someone reach out to me an ask for this. Someone noticed all my art and liked it enough that they wanted to ask me to make something for them! Here's what I came up with: Hope you like it too! :)

Finally selling the finished product! For a while now, I've been working towards ArtReach's sale at the Lynbrook Craft Faire. The sale is only one day, but it was really incredible seeing how in order to create that one good day, many different people had to put in countless hours of work.  We sold watercolor mugs at a table in the Craft Faire. Sounds simple, right? But really, there were so many other steps that had to be taken to reach that goal.  We had to r egister as vendors for the Faire, m anage and complete all required paperwork, f und for the mug-decorating materials, p aint the actual mugs, c reate advertisements and posters, b ook a table, and c reate vendor shifts so someone was present for all 8 hours of the faire.  The fact that so much goes into making this possible makes it that much more rewarding in the end. It was really great seeing all of our efforts finally put into one thing.  We ended up selling all of our mugs and we ha...

Working to make sets for SHOK ArtReach decided to do a fun little collaboration project with SHOK (Student Health Outreach for Kids). Basically, SHOK holds skits and plays for kids at different schools to educate them about health and health issues. This year, they were doing a "Despicable Me" themed play, so ArtReach stepped in to paint the props.  On the left is Gru's house and the right is Vector's It was really fun creating this. Usually, I do digital art, so it was pretty different having to paint something for once. There's something so therapeutic about the repetitive motions of painting. In digital art, I could have achieved the same final outcome  much faster, but I wouldn't have gone through the patient process of painting.  Patiently getting in all the little white spaces All in all, it was super fun, and it's so great knowing that my work is going towards a good cause!

An ink drawing a day for the whole of October This year I decided to participate in Inktober. ( More info here ). Basically I had to create a drawing in ink for every single day of October.  It was both easier and more difficult than I thought.  Easier: I thought drawing in ink would be this crazy new experience that I wouldn't be able to handle very well since all the art I do is either digital or with a pencil. But really, a lot of the same principles apply; they're just modified a little bit. You still have to think about form, shape, contrast, value, but just in a different medium.  I also thought I would probably give up after the first couple days, but I actually stuck with it for the whole of October! It was easier to continue than I thought. The main thing is really just getting it into a habit. Once you develop that habit, it becomes so much easier.  Harder: Though many of the same ideas from drawing digitally/with pencil apply in drawing with ...

Yup, there's more! Quick little ad for more of ArtReach's fundraising:

Yet another little project Here's a pic of the board I made to advertise ArtReach's fundraising:

Another process post  Here's the process behind the making of my second ArtReach poster: I'm proud of the minimalistic look I managed to pull off on this piece. 

The process behind one poster.  As the Public Relations officer for Lynbrook's ArtReach club, I have to make a lot of posters, flyers, and other ads to promote our club. I recently spent about two days working on one specific poster that I'm really proud of.  It started off with as a simple  idea, and grew into an amazing project.  Here is the very first preliminary sketch of what I wanted it to look like: It would say ArtReach in really big letters, but instead of having the letters painted, everything else would be painted and the letters would be left white, taking advantage of negative space.  In order to do this, I would need to use painter's tape to cover up the letters.  Then came the fun part...painting! But I didn't want it to look like regular brush strokes. I really wanted this poster to pop, so instead of painting normally, I used paintbrushes and sponges to throw the paint onto the poster, creating a splatter effect....

The end of a long journey Camp went amazing! It was a huge success! I feel so happy and invigorated right now. I can’t believe how much of an impact I was able to make! At the very end of camp, parents were asking for my email, contact info, to take a picture with their girl. It means so much to me to have parents come and personally thank me. The entire experience was so amazing and I just felt so important. It makes me so proud to know that I made such an impact on so many people. And we raised over $1400 in donations!!!! Honestly, when we were first starting the camp, I thought I would be happiest when I was finally counting the money! And to tell the truth, I was pretty happy when I was counting the money. It was immense proudness in my achievement! After all, I actually earned this money. Still, that happiness could never match up to the happiness I got when the girls and their parents came up to me, asking for pictures, hugs, and giving thank you cards. That happ...

A little update on how the GWC Summer Camp has gone Our summer camp has been going pretty well so far. The girls are all so amazing. They manage to pick up complex concepts at alarming speeds. One girl had never seen a line of code in her entire life, but now, in just a few days, she understands every single topic we covered perfectly as well as all the challenging concepts I gave her as extra work! They are so incredibly smart, sometimes I forget how young they are! Young children can unwittingly be so funny sometimes. Some of the girls this age have not yet developed a sense of personal boundaries and ask me and the speakers the strangest questions. Yesterday while our speaker, Rod Begbie , was talking about the social changes needed to bring women and minorities into CS fields, one girl cut him off to ask, “Are you married?” He was very tactful though, and answered the question along with the myriad of other questions (some relevant and some not-so-much) that the girls a...

Everybody learns a little differently   In a past post, I talked about how I tutor a kid named Max. When I gave Max algebra problems to solve, I noticed that he took the right steps--but in the wrong order. For example: After correcting him, and guiding him through some sample problems, I asked him to again try some algebra problems on his own, but he made the same mistake. I realized that now, I shouldn't just explain  how  to solve it the right way, but  why  we do it the way we do. So I spent a couple minutes thinking of the best way to explain why we do certain operations first. I talked about the order of operations, and isolating the variable. Max seemed to understand this, but when given another problem, he froze again. So I tried adding visuals: I turned the problem into an onion! With many different layers: the middle layer was the one closest to the variable, and the outer layers were farther from the variable. To solve the problem, y...

A lot of hard work!  Me and my fellow Girl Who Code officers have decided to hold a Summer Camp for girls in 4th through 6th grade. And of course, as president, this means I have had a lot of work to do. So many things had to be taken care of: How should we advertise and promote publicity? Where can we book a place with 50 computers? When should we hold it--what time and dates? How much should we teach? What topics should we cover? How do we explain these topics to 4th, 5th, and 6th graders? It took a lot of hard work, late nights, and determination, but we've planned nearly everything out! Here's a flyer I designed with my officer team and created on my own (with Photoshop): This was a lot of work! I'm really proud of how much we've accomplished and I will update more on how the camp goes.

An absolutely amazing experience  I just got the amazing opportunity to teach kids aged 5 to 12 coding at LinkenIN's super fun Inday Event.  Though I was slightly nervous at first, the moment I got up there and started, I felt so awesome! I was so glad that the kids found coding as fun and interesting as I did.  It was so incredible speaking in front of so many people. The kids were all really engaged and came up with smart, thought-provoking questions.  As a bonus, LinkedIn also gave me a whole bunch of cool swag for coming in to teach! I'm so incredibly grateful that I got this wonderful opportunity to share my knowledge and passion with so many other people. I hope everyone else had as much fun as I did!

How teaching helped me learn  For a couple weeks now, I've been tutoring a student, named...well, for the sake of confidentiality, let's call him "Max." Max has been having trouble with algebra for a while and his dad thought it might be helpful to have me help him so he's prepared for school next year. A lot of times, when I asked if he understood a concept, he said yes, but in reality, he didn't really get it at all. I told him that it was totally fine if he didn't understand a concept right away. It would be better to tell the truth and have me re-explain it than to lie and then struggle with the topic in the future. However, he kept lying and saying he understood things when he actually didn't. I had to change my strategy and start assuming that when he said that he understood something, he really didn't. I was getting kind of irritated and annoyed when I realized... I do this too!!!!! I was being such a hypocrite, when in fact, I often...

My experience as a teacher  Four weeks ago, I taught my very first coding class with Coding for Kids. Math and Coding organized this class. Their mission is to prove that anyone can learn to code--in just a few weeks!  Basically, three high school kids teach about twenty elementary and middle school kids basic programming skills using Tynker, a simple drag-n-drop form of block-coding. I was the lead teacher of the class.  To be honest, I was terrified at first. I wanted to teach, but at the same time, I was so scared. Standing in front of 20 people with all eyes on you can be nerve-wracking--even if they are just third graders.  I started off with a pretty negative mentality: I felt like the students were judging me. Noting my mistakes, my slip-ups.  Of course, this kind of thinking got me nowhere-- I just had to change. After about half and hour of all my negative thinking, I decided it wasn't worth it. Then I completely changed my mi...

Beautiful campus full of amazing people I got to visit UC Berkeley today and it was amazing! The campus is absolutely stunning. Many of the buildings are inspired off old architecture. Their grandeur is truly awe-inspiring.   Not to mention this huuuuuge library! A friends tells me this is her favorite place to study: The gigantic windows let you see the sky change colors into the night.  The gate at the front of the school was used as inspiration for Monster's University: See the resemblance? The biology building has a must-see Tyrannosaurus-Rex fossil: I love how the seemingly ancient buildings at the heart of the campus balance out the more modern ones on the outskirts of campus.  One of Berkeley's 33 libraries has this statue of Mark Twain: He's reading one of his own books: Huckleberry Finn Did you know that Nobel Prize winners get free parking at Berkeley? One Nobel Prize winne r, Saul Perlmutter, ev...

An incredible experience  In order to become a certified Yoga Instructor through Yoga Bharati , you have to: Attend eight hours of instruction per week for twelve weeks (That's 96 hours) Go on a yoga retreat for 2 days and one night (Camping in the woods) Teach a class for 30 hours over the course of 4 months Write a 25-page report Seems daunting at first, but little by little I accomplished all of it. 1. Attending the instruction was so difficult at first. I had to wake up at 6:30am every weekend! But soon, I got to know my classmates and I began to like the lessons. Some parts were pretty interesting. 2. The yoga retreat was by far my favorite part. Though I usually don't like camping, I'm really glad that I got to have this wonderful experience. I also got to see some pretty cool wildlife. 3. Teaching a class was a period of transformation for me. As a student, I see teachers everyday, but only after this, do I really appreciate what they do....