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 #21 - Slippery slope...



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 this burden I unwittingly placed on my shoulders. And now the question. Am I trying to prove something? Is there something that this energy is trying to satisfy from within me?

The usual suspect would be, being enough. If I did ____, I'd prove I'm good/smart/lovable/____ enough. But this isn't about smartness, skill, kindness, sex-appeal. If there is something, then it is that I might prove, that I can commit. But the trick again is in the impossibility of the task. I've done numerous such challenges for myself. Prove that I can clean my apartment every day for 365 days. Prove that I can journay for 365 days. But there is no end to it. And I think I know it. I don't think I want to prove I can commit. No, it's something deeper. I'm getting a whiff in the air of something related to emptiness, something related to proving I'm not a failure that I am by definition; something primordial, that I've failed and I'm looking for ways to redeem myself. Redeem myself with inhumane tasks. A self-punishment by the gods. What an irony, these gods must be twice amused!

Anyway. I had hoped today I would go to bed early; I was lucky enough to paint during the day. I went to a park and did some plein air study (which I used to do regularly before the quarantine but had completely stopped until today). Eventually it's 4:30am and I'm still typing so, not much luck with going to bed early.

But at least the artwork I like a lot. Many things that I've liked. I'm still very new to watercolors and don't know how to layer colors and build intensity but it has turned out nicely. At first I was trying to paint the colors that I see, but it was difficult when you are painting additively in layers but I did my best. After 7-8 layers, I wanted to give it some chroma/color vibrance so I had to introduce more unmixed colors and this started making the results more colorful than real. But then I allowed myself to go free with colors and not fret too much about it. Perhaps I'm not very good with realistic colors, but I had always enjoyed vibrant colors. However for reference, all these colorful flowers, are wheat. And wheat as we know, is all shaded of ochre.

Anyway; Lot's to love about this artwork. Composition is marginally okay (perhaps I'd put a bit more building/sky in the frame from the top; I like the shadow play of the buildings and the orange sign. I also like the contrasting shaded purplish area against the pink field behind (or you could say the lavender field in front of the bubblegum fields). But mostly I love that overall it was successful. Perhaps took me a couple of hours and lot's of pain on my back but it's one of those few that I'm proud of!
It's also the first one to try and remove objects from the frame that I don't like. It's not photography after all. What I don't like very much is the fact that I couldn't create the sense of a dense wheat-field. It feel more like a monochromatic surface, and on top of it some strokes that indicate leaves and stems. Which is exactly how I built it. Something tells me that few will notice.

Time for bed. Oh, oh no; I still need to prepare the artwork and upload it.

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