day #365 - the end of an era

-
Image
I thought I was on top of it; I had finished early and was looking for a movie to watch already 3 hours ago. And I don't know how time went by. A phonecall, some networking studying, some online shopping and here we are, already past the time for an early movie. Regardless, today is a special day. The blog is over! I finished 365 days of daily painting and recording it, whatever that means. A big part of the process I will have to keep doing mainly for myself. Perhaps taking daily photos of my work and saving it on some folder. This has provem useful many times when I trying to date a piece I've been working on. Also making a small diary of today's achievements. It's still useful. But this will be done for my eyes only. I also don't know if I will be continuing my obsessively daily painting. How would life be if I had days off? Now for example that I'm moving out and I have to daily chores that until now were completely taken care of, perhaps I'll allow my
Post a Comment

day #14 - Super Chicken, Victorious

-
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 that pencil is not my enemy, but  I picked the habit of working always with ink in order to build up confidence and acceptance of mistakes. However good as a practice this might be (I recommend it) it's an unnecessary handicap for final pieces: why make do with faulty perspective or wrong bodily proportions just in an attempt to never undo?
I just realized that this is a reflection of my obsession with commitment too. The way even doodles and loose sketches are made in ink, preventing me from ever revoking any line, the same way I won't allow myself to revoke things such as this blog. Probably one should know when to use ink and when to use pencil.

Anyway, I enjoyed making something complete -a character, clothes and a little hamlet in the background. I realize now that the horizon is a bit low, and at least the left part doesn't recede too nicely towards the horizon. Also what kind of a flat world is that? No mountains whatsoever? As a sidenote I was inspired by the hamlets and churches that Van Gogh was sketching/painting. Finally the banner doesn't say "Sup(e)r Chick" but Sup(e)r Chicken Victorious". Don't ask, I just wanted to write something.
I like the color palette - again sky is yellow, but what can I say!

As a side-note I spent more time writing the javascript to keep the archive expanded on the sidebar, than I did for this blog-post which tells a bit about my conflicting interests.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

day #2 - Skulls, Perspective and Vehicles

-
Image
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
Read more

day #223 - Colorizing

-
Image
Today's piece has been an experiment (aren't they all?). I decided to try the "underpainting" technique, something that I only recently found out! To my disbelief, the habit of laying tha values first before the colors is not something only photoshop artists use, but has been around since forever. So I created a monochromatic painting of mere red values. It was quite beautiful. I hesitated attempting to add color since I didn't know whether it would work out, but eventually I took the plunge: I started with the sky and the background mountains. I wasn't too happy with the tampering but it was already late to go back. I moved on to adding color to the ground, which worked amazingly well and fast since you don't need to be too precise! Apparently it's easier and nicer to "colorize" the complex ground than the minimalistic sky. Perhaps again, red plus blue (purple), and red plus green (gray) are not compatible. Perhaps I had used too much water
Read more

day #283 - Ancient City of Zor

-
Image
Today's highlight has been this explorative piece that I did with the new iPad. The new apple pencil, has a button (unlike the first which had none). This allowed me to remap some other functions, and I suddeny have an ever more streamlined way of switching between drawing, erasing, and smudging (that I hadn't used until now) in an instant! I enjoyed a lot creating this piece (though I don't like it much), feeling a lot in command of everything down to the texture. What's most important though is that the details were coming easily. As if I was discovering the details of the architecture. This is my favourite way of painting/drawing! How I wish this was more frequent! I even got somewhat transported to that realm. The rest of the sheets are my attempts at comparing the two ipads/pencils; the old and the new one. I'm a tools-guy. I still like the old so much more but I hope I get used to the new one since spec-wise it's so much much better. Both sheets, carry ve
Read more