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 #52 - Frantic

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Today, I feel productive. Or prolific, whatever. I stopped painting only because my back hurt. I was so in the moment, full of tension (be it excitement or stress, they smell the same in the beginning) and had to stop.  It's not uncommon and I'm not sure if it's psychosomatic or a physical ailment. In any case, I'm happy with what I did today.

First of all, I did an imaginary landscape with shades of red and a bit of of colors. Towards the end, I tried bringing some more definition to the trees on the left, and I fell into my typical bane - The last few strokes, trowing the piece out of balance. Suddenly I had off-center elements with much finer detail. I had to even it out, to save what I can. I added the tress and scrubs only for that reason. This ruined my desert landscape. Still, it's okay. I love the sky being darker that the highlight on the mountains (though in theory it can't be so). I like the mountains, and the foreground rock formation. Though I feel the composition has fallen out of balance, when I started, it was very strong and probably this is one of the few times in my recent years that I pay attention to how I lead the eye. Anyway. I like the little flowers in the foreground and the fact that the palette was different to what I usually make.

Later on I took out my iPad, and tried to render in perspective some ruins that were in front of me. It tried to confine them in box shapes and tried to reproduce them by focusing on angles and the shape of negative space - and not directly measuring proportions. Finally, I stood up and did a quick value study and some ruins, trees and a field. I tried to capture the light coming against me. It's a rough painting; it took me 25 minutes which is the limit of my ability to be standing and hold the iPad extended in my left hand. Were I in better physical shape, I'd be able to work on it more. Even like that however, I'm happy about the result; I feel I have leveled up since the last times I had been doing iPad plein air studies - B.Q (before quarantine).

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