day #365 - the end of an era

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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

day #18 - The ghoulish King


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, every day; yet the biggest I have identified is the feeling that I'm not good enough, and no matter what, I'll never be good enough. Enough, has a very broad meaning. Enough to be loved, accepted... Enough (competent) to survive. Enough to be working as an artist.

And yet I just can't turn my attention elsewhere and put it to rest. I can't focus onto something else and live with myself in the thought that I failed becoming an artist. And I can't be a hobbyist. I just can't live with the though. Funnily, I've completely forgone the definition of the artist as a creative individual and have solely focused on the "professional" artist; the craftsman that gets on a payroll of a studio in order to produce artistic assets for a specific product.

Now these feelings I'll have to work with alone, but before I go to bed, this doodle sheet needs some reflection. I'm afraid that if I keep working on the iPad, I'm going to lose again the fun in drawing/painting. As I may (or may have not) mentioned earlier, I have discovered that working with physical media (paper, ink etc) renews my interest in drawing/painting whereas the iPad is completely empty calories. If I work on the iPad for some days in the row, I'm bound to feel it's all pointless. On the other hand, physical media make me feel I'm creating something. It may have with the smell, or the physical existence of what I create on paper, or something completely metaphysical; but it's just not the same on the iPad.

So why paint on the iPad? Other than it being an excellent sketchbook for doodles, I'm extremely productive and fast; I enter a sort of flow that I don't enter when working with paper; everything seems to be falling in place. And yet, it's not fun. The only way that working on the iPad could inspire me to work again, is for me to produce something so pretty that I'll want to recapture the success. On paper it's different. It rarely comes out as nice since it's a imperfect, there is no eraser, or undo but even though the end result is weaker, the process itself is more satisfying.

Again, let's get back to the artwork. As I was sketching heads, I sketches something that reminded me the headrest of a throne. I started drawing the throne, the drooping figure and then I had the idea of somebody holding his hand. This reminded me of these renaissance paintings of ailing kings and doctors surrounding them and I decided to create a crowd. I decided it would be good practice to try and render from imagination again and try and capture the color of materials. I think I did better than the day before yesterday (there are red, yellow, green and blue clothes as well as skin and hair colors) but I still can't bring realism to it. It's silly, I expect to learn realism by not drawing realism! Still, I insist, so what can I say! I don't like the overall palette, but the composition while not inspiring (the 3/4 angle is a bit to undramatic) is probably the most complex assembly of characters I've attempted and I'm happy with it. Anyway, enough for tonight.

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