Hey everyone!
For those of you who are new here. I am Senneil Gomes, a doctor/artist/traveller/entrepreneur. The Crimson Canvas is my brainchild which I co-founded with Victor. Over the last one-and-a-half years we have been on a roller coaster exploring the potential of Crimson Canvas by franchising the concept to Bangalore, Surat and Goa, bringing in a handful of passionate individuals on board and meeting hundreds of amazing clients and collaborators. Despite the myriad challenges that the 2020 pandemic brought us we continued on our mission and became stronger for it. We focused on our Instagram growth strategy and grew by more than 14k followers; we collaborated with more than 100 artists and hosted some truly amazing workshops on the platform; and we even hosted contests, giveaways and challenges and distributed prizes worth Rs 2 lakhs.
In the process we realised that online was where our hearts lay—it is clearly where we can interact with all of you the best—and the future direction that we would take. But in the past few months, with so many around us suffering and dying due to the pandemic, we have started questioning what our purpose in life is. We spent a lot of time reflecting on what The Crimson Canvas meant to us and how we could make a difference in the world through it. Plus we really wanted to give back to the amazing Instagram community who gave us so much of love and support in 2020.
So yeah The Crimson Canvas is changing!
Find out everything about what Crimson Canvas will be this year. Hope to see you on board with us.
What is new?
1) We are launching a YouTube channel
The reason we have been quiet for a while now is because Victor, my team and I have been slogging to make this vision of ours a reality. And you have no idea how excited I am to be telling you that our dream is finally seeing the light of day. Both of us, Victor and I, are huge hodophiles (btw hodophile is a noun that means one who loves to travel :P) and our wanderlust is contagious. Between the two of us we have already visited 26 countries across 5 continents! And 15 states and 5 union territories in India! And yea, while our current professions gives a house, a car and security we hardly get to spend adequate time together and there always seems to be some emptiness caused due to the longing to globetrot. So yes, after months of brainstorming, Victor and I have finally decided to take the plunge and embark on an adventure exploring the world. And our new YouTube channel, ‘The Crimson Canvas’, will document our entire voyage across the world (and hopefully to Mars someday too :P) Well a lot of sleepless nights and anxiety filled days have gone in getting this ready for you. So I hope all of you’ll subscribe to it and enjoy what we show you. *Fingers crossed*
2) Victor’s digital art tips will be what’s trending
Yes you heard me right. Victor will be sharing his crazy digital art skills with you through our new segment called ‘Victor’s digital art tips’. Now all the questions you had about who created our kick-ass website and what software we use to make our posters will be revealed. I know you are excited! So are we! Our studio has never been readier and finally all of you who wanted Victor to come on screen will get to see him; I managed to nudge him in fulfilling your request.
3) Crimson travel tales will be your go to travel guide
Our Blog will now be called Crimson Travel Tales and will be the place where Victor and I, with the help of our team bloggers, will give you the latest tips and tricks on effective travelling. Travelling solo? Travelling as a couple? Travelling as a woman? We have done it all. And yea like I mentioned earlier 26 countries across 5 continents later we definitely know our travel stuff. And mind you we have uncovered many secrets and learned of many local stories along the way which we are dying to share with you. And in addition to that, don’t you want to read some quirky behind the scene memoirs of our time on the road? Don’t nod your head. I know everyone loves gossip *wink*
4) Visit our website store for a piece of our travels
My friends and family would call me the perfect gift giver because I am known to have a flair for picking up the best treasures from every place I visit. I love wandering through busy pathways of local bazaars while picking up rare finds unique to the place. So lucky for you our website store will now feature personally picked one of a kind art pieces and souvenirs so that you too can share a slice of our adventures. And the best part is that the income from the sale of these gorgeous limited addition pieces will go towards empowering the artisans that delicately create them. P.S. there will be giveaways as well :P
What is changing?
1) Weekly art workshops will be exclusively conducted by me (Senneil) in the segment ‘DIY by Senneil’. While our live videos have been great we want to bring you some extremely high quality tutorials from our studio which we simply cannot achieve through Instagram live. I love learning new art styles and brainstorming cute DIY ideas and am super excited about sharing them with you. The environment always inspires me in the art I create and therefore you can take a safe bet that the place I visit will strongly influence what I teach you. The possibilities are unlimited! And of course if I find someone’s work irresistible I will definitely invite them to conduct a guest workshop on our page.
Looking forward to encouragement from you to keep me going!
2) Crimson tips will be shared weekly as usual but will be based on Tips and Tricks we learn along our journeys. We have got so many messages asking about when they will restart. We won’t keep you waiting anymore! And challenges will be given occasionally with fun DIY gifts from Itsy Bitsy. So be sure to hit the bell icon to get notifications and learn something new while participating to get your work featured and perhaps win goodies as well.
3) The daily quizzes will continue being curated with love. However, they will now revolve around the place of the month. Keep a personal tab of how many you get right and expand your knowledge with facts that may someday be the reason you get a promotion when you get a new boss who loves travel.
4) The Crimson Canvas Surat will now be called Good Vibes By Nidhi and will be entirely owned by our award winning partner and incredible artist, Nidhi Wahi. She will continue to conduct the fantastic in person workshops she used to and will ensure that all of you’ll who join her get addicted to art. Victor, my team and I will continue to support her and guide her in every way possible. We wish her all the best in pursuing the rest of this journey as a proprietor. We will no longer conduct in person art workshops in Goa and Bangalore and will be exclusively online so that we can reach all of you out there effortlessly.
What will continue to remain?
1) 24 hour challenges
We know that all of you’ll absolutely love the thrill of receiving a topic and having to create something amazing in 24 hours so we do not plan of stealing this pleasure from you. Also I personally believe that the 24hour challenges are the way to stimulate a young artist’s mind and to help one explore his own hidden creativity. The creativity we see in the entries for the 24 hour challenges are mind boggling so after lengthy discussions Victor and I made up our mind that we have to keep them going. From now on the 24hour challenges will be released randomly a couple of times a month. So make sure you have pressed the bell icon to ensure that you receive notifications whenever we release a challenge. You don’t want to have FOMO. No you don’t!
2) Artist features
Everyone loves their work being appreciated and admired by others. If my work is featured it totally makes my day. And I know if yours is featured it will make your day too. So like always the process of getting your work eligible for a feature is simple. You post it on your feed, tag @the.crimson.canvas and use the hashtag #thecrimsoncanvas Every week we will search for this tag and hashtag and pick out our favourite artwork and feature it on our page. We will mostly choose artwork that has been created based on ‘Victor’s digital art tips’, ‘DIY with Senneil’ and the ‘Crimson Tip’. But if we feel like it every week we will also pick a random few that we can’t get out of our minds.
Note: We hate when you’ll send us DMs with your artwork and force us to put it up. It is so difficult for us to say No to you and disappoint you. And if we choose your work it is really unfair to the others. So we would really appreciate if you respect our wishes and stick to the guidelines to get your work featured.
3) Crimson Conversations
I love hosting the Crimson Conversations where I get to interact with you and get to know you better. I love playing games with you guys and sharing whatever knowledge I have with you. So obviously if I could I would have these live sessions every single day. Unfortunately life can be uncertain and I never have a guarantee that I will get time or internet to go live. But, whenever I can I will. I promise to bring in lots of guests with lots of stories and abundant skill and knowledge; Mostly guests from the road because I know you’ll love them
5) Paint to Empower
If you have been following us for a while you will know that The Crimson Canvas through its ‘Paint to Empower’ initiative, in collaboration with ReachLives, has over 500 underprivileged children under our wing where we give them vocational training in various forms of art with the help of volunteer art teachers across India. We do hope to continue bringing in more and more artists in our volunteer group ‘Friends of Crimson Canvas’ to continue this amazing work of mentoring and educating young children in the field of art.
We are super excited about our new and improved Crimson Canvas and we sincerely hope that you are too. Looking forward to getting to know you better this new year.
See you soon.
Happy New Year 2021!
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