Parmita's Blog

I've had the honor of being featured in SCS Day my first and second year and again this time! It was a lot of fun! Here are a few of the comics that were on display: I even got featured in the CMU SCS Instagram page !  Can't wait for next year!

I was featured in SCS Day again!!! Last year (link) I had a small display with a handful of my comics. It was a lot of fun being featured as well as attending and seeing everyone else’s diverse range of talents.  This year, I got the opportunity to be featured again and had a lot more art to share. I got an entire wall of my art and comics and to be honest it was almost overwhelming! I’ve openly shared my art online to thousands of people, but that has never really been nerve-wracking since I don’t actually know those people. But here, my work was blown up and put on the walls of the Gates computer science building--the same building I practically live in and seen by all the people I work with and respect. That has a completely different feeling to it and while I was proud of my work I also felt a little scared. Would they like it? What if my students saw it? Will people see me differently? Would people think of me as less of a serious computer scientist if they saw this ...

I’ve been making fun comic strips and fanart for as long as I can remember. This has mostly been a solo activity since I didn’t know any other people who were interested in making them too. But then last year at CMU’s Activity Fair I came across Artist Alley--a club dedicated to people making fanart like I do! Of course, I immediately joined and it has been so much fun. And this year, I even tabled at the Activity Fair myself! Some of the art pieces are mine :) It has been such a great experience being with a community of people who enjoy the same niche things that I do. One of the biggest benefits has been the structured improvement of my art skills. I have never actually taken an art class, so everything I’ve learned about art has been through online tutorials and just looking at a lot of other artist’s work. But at Artist Alley, I joined a mentor-mentee program where I get weekly assignments and critique from a more experienced artist. Until now, I never really had the o...

I just met one of my artistic idols! I’ve been following Katherine Tsai aka http://chuwenjie.tumblr.com/ for a more than a couple years now and I have always admired her art. Especially the way she does gorgeous lighting effects and the way she uses color. I recently found out that she also goes to CMU! And I was lucky enough to meet her right before she graduates and goes off to LA for her job at Dreamworks . She was super sweet and told me fun stories about her times at CMU and an intern at Cartoon Network. She also drew and signed this little card for me! (which I will treasure forever! <3 ) I think it’s amazing that through this stroke of serendipity I happened to meet her. I’m so happy and grateful to have had that opportunity. And who knows? Maybe I’ll meet her again in California!?

I'm super proud of these gifs that I made for my friend's birthday. I learned a whole lot of new Photoshop techniques in order to create them and I had a lot of fun! I'm proud of all my improvement and the new art I've been able to create :)

Creating a financial plan for a lifetime I just finished my Life Plan for Economics class. Basically, I had to create a detailed spreadsheet explaining how I would budget 7 different stages of my life. I also created fun little visuals to go with each stage. Here they are: University Life Single and working Married! Life as a couple First Child Second Child Life until retirement

Guión Gráfico para una cuenta de Isabel Allende I'm super proud of this comic I made for Spanish class illustrating "Dos Palabras" by Isabel Allende.  (Click to read)

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....

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.

Still Stunningly Intricate Quite a while ago, I wrote about being introduces to Zentangles. Here's that old post: ( X ). Now I want to show you how much difference a few months can make: Here are some of my new-and-improved Zentangles Though I may not be as good as some Zentangle masters out there... I've definitely improved a lot... And I'm so proud of my work!