The Hideous Portrait: An Artistic Journey,
warts and all.

Crazy days! Thankfully it's not in a negative way; on the contrary; I'm having some much sought after advancements in my life! Today's piece was started outdoors in park for 30 minutes and then I resumed it in the evening. It's not something I'm used to doing; continuing artwork. For some reason I always felt that things should be done in one sitting (spontaneity and all). I still don't feel that I like working a piece for a little, waiting for it to dry, resuming and so forth. That's why I've always liked digital (other than Undo and free materials) - You don't have to wait for the paint to dry and it never gets muddy from being overworked. Anyway, today's piece, I did in two sittings. I happy for the fact that I didn't give up on it, especially since after the first 30minutes it was ugly. It still is no beauty contestant, but it's slightly better. I also feel good that on a day that I was so pressured for time, I found myself time to pa

Seems I've found my hobby for my insomnias! Over the last two years I've been journaling which had soothing effects at first but doesn't anymore. Still, I do it when I wake up and can't sleep. However taking the time to paint a self-portrait (or come to think about it, why not paint in general?) that is something very interesting and it's been enjoyable these two times. After all I have a chair, a mirror and my iPad and I can put them to use; I don't need to be rested to paint. I am very proud of today's work. I didn't care for the proportions, I allowed it to become slightly wonky (it's what I pretent that gives personal style to my work, a bit of randomness). However the colors, oh my, I'm so happy about how it all turned out. The subtleties of the variations, and even though the face has a sense of being a collage - too sharp, cartooney and disproportionate compared to the rest of the elements, it adds. And the expression, I really feel it is

More doodles today on the iPad. But wait, there is more. I had a feeling that today might be the day for a bit of narrative. After all, I want to be able to paint, in order to create worlds, depict that which is not. Interestingly I had never thought to create a story/scene/feeling first into my mind and then try to work from there. Usually I start randomly and hope for a story/atmosphere to emerge but rarely is there any luck. Today, I focused on an idea, and feeling and started working towards that. I've done similar forays in the past, with the exception that back then I had a very specific vision I wanted to reproduce and any discrepancy would be a cause for distress. Today it was more like a feeling propelling me towards a direction. There was nothing I was trying to reach; I was merely trying to ride a train. I enjoyed it while it lasted. I've been stressed so I didn't enjoy today's work overall but I can see potential in the approach. I hope not to forget it and

Let's assume for once, that it is not some form of obsession that is driving me - keeping me committed to this commitment that I never made. Let's assume that it is some ancient Greek daemon or a muse that is pulling me. That is romantic (and interesting). In any case, as I was seeing myself unable to escape the clutches of indiscriminate commitment (funny, this is the most absurd kind of slavery - not very human; more fit for a machine or a djinn if you will) I had wondered whether reaching some milestone such as 30 days, or 60 days, or 90 days might satisfy this urge. Of course no number sounds enough, for this is an irrational compulsion; whether I do it for 30 days, 60 or 90, or 365, 3650 or 36500 days, I won't have proven anything for there is nothing that I'm looking to prove. Or is there? But before I try and answer that question, let me answer what will happen if I do reach only 29, 59, 364, 3649 or 36499 days. Then I will have failed. That is the nature of thi

A tough cookie to love. Completely uninterested and tired; were I not so uninterested, I'd probably complain about this irrational commitment. I picked up my brushpen and just started filling a page. At first I enjoyed the extremely fine lines that the pentel pocketbrush can produce. Now I've covered them all. I played with various brush strokes, and wrapped it up. Not much to say. Oh yeah, I need to do the positive talk; hmm... I like the upper right corner with the dot texture. I like also the pubic-hair-curly brushstrokes...

I had one of those insomnia. My personal demon never gives me trouble when falling asleep. But he well wake up after 30 to 120 minutes and then won't let me sleep again for the next 5-10hours. It conveniently so just happens that I feel drained and ready to fall asleep right about the time that I have to get up. Anyway, today I got up after 2h of sleep. Tried to sleep, no luck. Did some journalling than normally helps, but no luck either. After 3h I gave up completely and got off bed to get a head-start in my day. Then I remembered that I've been meaning for many months now to do a self-portrait in front of my new full-bodied mirror that is in my bed-room. However I only go there to sleep so I never had the opportunity until today. I had my iPad nearby, my chores wouldn't have to start for another 3 hours and I still hadn't announced my presence to the world. I moved the chair opposite of the mirror, picked up the ipad and started drawing. I'm usually not very loos

So here it is.I keep painting until it's too late for fun. I don't know what to do about that though, other than perhaps marking some days off as non-painting days. Or working with a timer at least a few of the days. Anyway, this seems to be my own brand of misery. But today I have another misery to share. During the 190minutes of doodling and rendering (though I guess the sketching must have been the first 10minutes) I was listening to youtube videos. For a big part of it I was listening to interviews of actors and a lengthy interview between two industry experts - the one being James Clyne of Lucasfilms. The said lots of interesting stuff, but the takeaway is a horrible feeling of dread, that I'll never make anything out of my art. By the time I decided it's time to wrap up for the day, my insides have been overflowing with this feeling of despair. Now I have to go to bed, and put myself to sleep with that feeling. Many are the inner struggles that I fight with, ever

Saturday. Today I managed not to do anything work-related. Even doodling I did casually, partially on the phone! I'm very glad about it. What can I say about it? I like the vehicles of the day; I've also never drawn a car so freely; until now it was a conforming to cubes and perspective and it was all so constructive and tight; now finally, there was a creativity, using the sketch for exploring curves! It's an interesting development because I had resigned to the thought that car-designers are a mystical being of artistic genius. Come to think about it, I had fallen into a trap. Before studying perspective using Scott Robertson's How to Draw book I could draw curvy vehicles. I lost that ability when I started working with the strictly accurate techniques that Scott Robertson teaches in his amazing otherwise book. I had imagined that I'd have to reach master-level before I could ever use perspective in a creative way, but then again I had forgotten that I could alre

It was already 3am and I was writing code; a power-cut (six actually) forced upon me that fact that I couldn't work anymore today. Oh yeah, then I remembered I still had work to do. Draw something, and post it. Probably I'm the opposite of all these social media artists. I make it sound tedious and unpleasant. And to a degree it is. I mean it's the 16th day in a row that I wished I wouldn't stay up to do a drawing, after 12hours of work and still counting... Imagine how many hours I'd work if I were being paid? Obsessiveness... Anyway, this is my blogging space to express myself so I don't want to water it down. It's funny. I have memory of times (not so long ago) that I'd feel guilt for not drawing every day. And now, I feel guilty for drawing. So today's piece was (thank God) forced by the power-cuts. Otherwise I'd still be coding now, and then I'd have to start drawing (it's almost 5am) - then again it could had been the day that I fin

I don't know if I should be happy with today's artwork or not. I'm especially happy with the vehicle - possibly the most complex shape I've done this far. Very happy! I'm also satisfied with the figure; well, I mean it was satisfying for a quick sketch - Within the first seconds I had a rider and a face with an expression. Then, at most 20-30mins later I had a hover-bike too. The character's face looks like manga to me, but hey, I'm not picky. A strong vehicle, a strong rider and I was confident that the background would fall into place without much effort. After 3 tighter and tighter sketches I had my character's outline, then I started blocking in the colors. That's were it started falling apart. While I'm studying light, I still don't know how to give material colors - it's as if I'm working in blender, shading textureless objects. Anyway, I tried to give a base color in each object and build color on that but I wasn't very su

I'm starting to come to terms with the fact that on the one hand I haven't committed to doing this blog daily, but on the other hand I can't seem to allow myself to not do it daily. Maybe today I wasn't too overwhelmed either, but (speaking for today at least) I can appreciate the fact that I'm doing "efforts" for my craft. Today's Artwork was rather satisfying. It is on rare occasions that I feel comfortable using the word artwork since most of the time I'm merely filling sheets with disjoint doodles; whereas today there is a story, a narrative; and not random objects in one composition page. Again, I went back to using the cheap paper where I feel so much more comfortable. In the last 20 years it's probably been less than 10 times that I've used pencil. Today, it's been one of these days; I did a pencil sketch, and only then did I put the fineliner to use. I erased the pencil (wow!) and then used the watercolors. I keep forgetting

Meh, I was hardly willing to paint today but I did it anyway. At some point a few years back, I heard an idea that as long as you are making steps in the direction you want, no matter how slow, you are bound to get there (if you live long enough adds the cynic). Since painting has been something I want to get better, back then I was okay as long as I did something painting-related every single day. It was a nice feeling; I don't know how it slipped out of my control again. Nowadays even subconsciously I count the hours I've worked. And no matter if I'm spending hours on building my new studio, or I'm too busy with my livelihood, I still feel it is a disgrace to put anything below 4 or 5 hours in painting. In that regard, today has been the most shameful one; I think it took me around 20minutes and preparing the blog post has been another 20minutes (which is very frustrating come to think about it). I've spent an eternity being very hard on myself, and I know I once

Lately I'm trying to resolve the issue of the implicit commitment towards painting daily for the blog, by simply avoiding the topic. I default to doing an artwork a day so that I don't have to solve it now. I dread deciding that I never committed, therefore I need to break the streak. It's a lame way of tackling life issues, yet it's my vice, and it is the opposite of what the majority of people do: Usually people give up commitments. For me it's about rushing through them with a bit too much fervor most of the time both unasked and detrimental. At the root of it it's all about the fear of not being enough. The very thought of giving up in something means I've failed. I've simply extended this to things I never picked up. In any case I started working on the piece are 3am - I was hoping to watch some Rick'n'Morty and read a bit of Asimov's the Foundation before bed but it will have to wait for another day. Other than the ugly backstory of thi

One of the few days that I started drawing before midnight. At first I just finished a page with doodley vehicles. I'm satisfied with the designs - something is starting to fall into place; I'm starting to discover a more organic way of creating vehicles that are not built on blocks like lego, but follow perspective. When I finished I decided to shade them since last time's shading had been very fun (and besides I need the practice with light). It also makes the end result much much more pleasing to the eye, and I'm all for creating things pleasing to my eyes. The second page was an attempt to make a perspective composition out of cubes in random/complex rotations. As I was stacking cubes I decided to plant other primaries (cone, disk, sphere) and some vehicles as well. I did one X-wing and one Enterprise for a balanced composition. Then I started creating a staircase and a building compound with gardens around it. When I finished it I wasn't very happy

No complaints today. Last night I went to bed satisfied that I had rendered two imaginary landscape thumbnails without internal friction. Usually such happy precedents, set me up for grave disappointment on the very next attempt when the internal friction comes back twice as strong. Such days I feel completely incompetent; my art looks the part too. However today it was equally smooth sailing. I painted 6 thumbnail imaginary landscapes (took me around 130mins). These are probably not the best landscapes ever created, and the lighting is a bit cartoony but it's pretty much the best I can do. I suppose if I was using references I could get more realistic, however I haven't come to terms with the fact that one might need to paint a lot of reality to produce imaginary realism without references. There is also a purist tendency in me that doesn't like the idea of photographs, and since I hate still life too, it's the occasional plein air study that is my only chance to study

Last night I went to bed under a lot of pressure. I was struggling with rigidness. On one hand I wasn't willing to post less systematically, and on the the other hand I wasn't willing to set a expiration date for this commitment. I was telling myself you will be doing it every single day for the rest of your life. I didn't manage to soften it or understand the insistence. For now it's still going on as a perilous march. Four years ago when I started therapy, it was psychotherapist the first person in my life to point out this very fact: You cannot be committing to something that is open-ended. Since then I've started a notebook where I write down all the things that I start along with the start date and when I finish them I write the end date. Even now however, I forget to set deadlines and for other projects such as this blog, I even forget to officially announce to myself that I've started. Because I haven't. It's my fear of inescapable commitment tha

For today a sheet of doodley vehicles that I decided to do as today's practice. The results are very satisfying per se. I've been struggling with downwards angled spaceship wings, but today I've been successful. I particularly like the curved ones, at the transport vehicle on the right. These were created by visualizing two circles - one vertical at the back and one angled at the front. Come to think about it, I could use the same technique with straight wings as well.The cars have funny perspective errors but I'm ok with it; I was more concerned with the cuteness. I like the planes too, particularly the bubbly one with the angled wings. Not sure how it could fly, but it has some Hayao Miyasaki vibe. I spent more time layering green to create a shading than actually drawing them. But I like that I'm playing with watercolors! And thank goodness, today I escaped from the R-Y-B palette from the last few days. These days, I'm seeing my painting/drawing practice redu

I haven't used crayons in 15 years. I doubt I had used it even back then. But I had a set of Van Gogh Oil Pastels and today I took them out and painted a bit. It was nice. Nice sensation, very physical. I also used a big sketchbook (that I had years now and wasn't very happy about it) so it was all a much larger experience compared to what I'm used; my A5 sketchbooks and my 9.7" iPad. Though to be fair, on the iPad I like zooming and doing all strokes bigger - so I'd say it's probably like working on A3 or something.., Back to the crayons. I didn't know how to use them, and I didn't manage to understand the philosophy behind the material. before filling up the page. The only thing I understand is that you need to press hard or do multiple passes to hide the paper texture. I'll like to try smudging/blending but I wouldn't want to get my hands dirty so for now I'll pass. Probably I'll need to watch some youtube videos to get the feel of h

Once again I find myself scared of risking a bad sketch. Semi-consciously I try and replicated the day before yesterday's success: Nice colors and composition.  I try not to stay to close so I fill my page with a different color. Yet, now that I see it, the sky has turned yellow once again. I don't even know what it is that I painted. A mashmellowish landscape? I don't know. Even though I tried really hard to create variety in colors (and there are dozens on suptle hues and tones), the end results looks like an "right of the tube red, yellow and blue" palette. I'm not very proud of those. Or at least I stopped being when my father commented on an older painting. I like the bluegreenish spill towards into the sky the appears at the dead center of the sketch. It wasn't intentional; it just happened because I had too much water. But it looks very intentional: It's dead center, and the fuzzy silhouette contrasts nicely with the very well-defined silhouette

I was ready to go to bed; this had been one of those very tiring days that I'd normally go to bed early. And then I remembered that I hadn't painted or drawn anything today (yet I was cleaning up a space that was to be my first every studio!). I felt like I needed something safe. I'm always ashamed when I pick safe things to paint. I started with some doodles - characters, vehicles... I was to bored, but I couldn't present another sheet of doodle. I decided to add some color. I played a bit with two-tones and values; it was an overall insecure process; until I reached the composition at the bottom. This one just clicked. The values, the grass, the background. I enjoyed it a lot. Suddenly I had long exceeded my initial plan to just pick up the brush. It's not a story about making it another day and not breaking the painting streak. It's a story about not being able to let go. About getting too attached to certain things, to my own detriment. I was tired, I had m

Day 4. This is not really day #4, in the sense that I've been drawing almost daily for the past 2 years - and with somewhat less consistency, for three decades before that. I started struggling with motivation 15 years ago in my early 20s. By then painting had slowly turned from my superpower , into a Soul-crushing experience. The days of my creative youth when each piece painted was not only admired by others, but admired by myself aswell, had stealthily been replaced by doubt. Would the next painting be able to recapture the satisfaction and surprise that I felt while making the last piece, or was it just a fluke and me an impostor? I stared suspecting that I was merely being lucky from time to time - on "good days". And "good days" were becoming fewer and fewer the more I doubted and struggled to outperform myself. I reached a point that I dreaded lifting the paintbrush. The taste of painting was so bitter, that I tried putting painting behind and quit; I man

Some days I don't feel like drawing. Such days I need to ease myself in, and the trickery I use to achieve that is try and reproduce a success. This is not a conscious effort, but an unconscious one. At least this time. I had a nice memory, where I parked next to an ice cream van, painting it from inside my car at the very early days of the covid19 pandemic. Though I tried not to go to the same spot, I ended up driving right there. At least I managed to avoid painting the van that I had painted last time, and kept my eyes on the paper drawing something from imagination. I was somewhat happy with the result. Lots of issues, and a horrible angled horizon (maybe I should had drawn a plane or a flock of birds to indicate some free-flight happening) but I liked how I layered the watercolors until I got a darker green for the forest. The composition itself was merely something random. I started drawing shapes and this came up alright. Onc

Days like today, I feel as if there is a race I need to excel at. I was watching a video on the very impressive Kim Jung Gi and suddenly here I am again, trying to improve my skills at drawing things into perspective. Some days (most days in the recent past one year or so) I work for hours inside small digital gray boxes (so I don't feel the pressure of wasting paper), filling them up with skulls, faces, body postures, vehicles, architecture and all things into perspective. This has been an improvement since two years ago. Back then, I'd fill sheets of paper with hand-drawn lines, triangles and ellipses. A whole lot of pages. I wish I could call this warming up and maybe it is too, but the truth is that it's a self-worth deficiency response mechanism (in my own words). When I don't feel enough (worthy of, capable of) doing anything remotely creative, I tend to do repetitive and measurable things that I call practice. On one hand I get the feeling that eventually I will

How does this make me feel? It describes this blog wonderfully. I wasn't to eager to draw, paint or practice today; not after a long stressful day. I chose to do something with ink; start with a few random strokes, nice dynamic brushwork and intense black and sometimes this combination ignites something. There is beauty in glossy black, and I love brushes. I was hopeful (and fearful) this time too. The first strokes were the bold ones. Then I started discovering this female form and the fur. Nothing went terribly wrong; no catastrophic accident, no elevating happy discovery either. No flow, and no drag. It turned out equal parts confused and mildly interesting composition. I mostly don't feel aversion towards it. At times (if I let my eyes wander) I start loathing the composition and lack of three-dimensionality, but if I focus on anything in particular, it all settles down. As long as I am vigilant, I can live with the confusion on the paper. I  keep all sorts of materials ins