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 #69 - Again, no movie

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It's been very frustrating that I still haven't found the time to watch a movie. Both painting and movies compete for my past-midnight freetime and though today I had the opportunity to do the gesture practice in the afternoon, doing the painting past midnight was enough to once again make it impossible for me to find the time for a movie. I feel it's been building up for far too long; drawing every day, is a fortunate development as far as my progress is concerned (or so I hope) but my mental health? It doesn't help much. I feel in need a break, vacation, a weekend, call it whatever; I need to find more time for fun in my day, and definitely painting doesn't even come close. At the very best it's surprising, satisfying or educational. I feel very sad and frustrated inside.

Anyway, since this is not my mental health diary, aside from reiterating the fact that my artistic development is competing against my happiness, I'll proceed to reviewing the merits of my work today (one type of frustration is enough for today, I don't want to go to bed also feeling angry about the quality of my work). So what can I see here?

I did 10x30sec gestures, 10x45sec postures and finally 10x3min postures. I still find the simplicity of gestures surprising, and satisfying (let's see if I'll use the word educational too). I like how these simple forms have life. I'm also satisfied with the quick skeletons and the fleshed out postures. I still struggle with reading the pelvis' tilt but I think I'm improving with understanding the rib-cage's orientation.

The watercolor painting of the day, was done in the "good" sketchbook, after 17 days of avoiding it, which in itself is a success since it had once again become very scary. I've overcome it once again. What about the work? I like the flat brush that I've been using (I've always loved flat brushes) and how I layered colors while staying in close hues. In that respect I've avoided one of my typical last-minute pitfalls! I also produced a very beautiful deep bluish/green for the shadows. Composition-wise it's passable and I'm happy that I manged to decrease the contrast and the floating-islands effect by darkening the grass. Anyway, it's not a very inspiring piece (maybe I'll change my opinion in the future) but at least I managed to save it from multiple glaring defects. It's a successful cover-up, a good ugly one.

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