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
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day #43 - Insomniac Self-Portrait

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Another day that my sleep was cut short; As soon as I realized that I wasn't going to fall asleep again, I got up and sat to have another self-portrait. It's very motivating knowing that at least I won't have to paint late at night. I picked up the iPad (though I wished that I had an easel and actual colors next to my bed - still dreaming) and decided to do a bit of warm-up sketches first. Yeap, these sketches were a warm-up. I'd consider them finished though; I don't much understand the concept of warm-up if it's not about drawing perfect circles and drawing straight lines. Speaking of which, the iPad gives me the flexibility to rotate the canvas just like an A4 page which took me 25+ years to accept as not-cheating. In this case however, since I'm drawing from life, I can't rotate, which makes me feel that this is an actual painting, just like on an easel.
Yes, I still feel that painting in the iPad is cheating (meaning easier) - a remnant of my childhood where people after the initial positive comments, they would say "oh, the computer did it for you".

Anyway, today's painting, was very successful when I finished it. The 5 first minutes after completing it, I would constantly light the display to have another look at it; "wow, it's good -isn't it?" I'd think to myself.
Now that I see it, I find it ridiculous how disproportionately big the body turned out; which totally escaped me at the time I was making it! Come to think about it, I didn't think of measuring the size of the shoulders in relationship to the head.

Anyway, what do I like about it? I like the face; it feels like me, and the rendering of it too. I like the compressed tonal-range from the darkest shadows to the lightest ones. I like the colors; and the framing - The face is to the top-left but I wouldn't want it centered at all - too dull. I like the flat background too.
I can't help comparing it to the last rendered self-portrait which was a bit less realistic but more stylized; this one looks like some blant photo-reproduction, no heart. Anyway, the good stuff! I like the sketch with the thick shaded-lines; it's fast and complete. For the record, the first sketch was 2 minutes, the second 5 minutes and the painting 1h52m.
Shit, just looking at the painting makes me disgust - How uninteresting and devoid of personality has my work become!

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