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 #77 - The ridiculous challenge

I'm annoyed by how I'm approaching the 90 days, and I can't seem to be able to stop. It's not that doodling is the most taxing thing these days; after all I have no job ...oh cramps, I just remembered that I haven't done anything for the daily gesture/posture drawing streak (it's 16th day in a row).  Now it's getting taxing; It's already 2:35am and I've done my dues (probably around 2h today) - I barely had enough time to watch some 45min anime and now I realize I have to do hit the 30 minutes milestone of extra posture practice. The annoying thing, is that I already did posture/gesture practice with actual people at the beach, so in theory, I've done my dues, but the quickposes timer didn't count it. And I could run quickposes in the background, for 20-30minutes (which is pretty much how long I practiced today) but it feels like cheating.
Arggh, I'm angry. Cheating what? Whom? This is absurd, like so many other things in my head. Damn me. Now I feel compelled to wasted my TVtainmaint for the day just so that I play by a silly system's rules. Deep breaths, I need to solve this, it's not okay. Let's do some debugging while writing.
So here's the thing. This is the progression of my obsessive commitments: It started with making a blog documenting the struggles of artmaking. After a few days, it turned into a blog documenting the struggles of artmaking without ever missing a day's post. For what reason? I don't know, I never did. I just feel that if I miss one day, or drop the blog, I'll have failed in something. Something? What?
Then I wanted it to be at the same time practice (skill-improving) and creative. I'm more successful in the first that later. Then I started working again with quickposes.com. Then I started having streaks. And streaks again mean that I can't miss one practice; so now I've created an impasse for myself: I have to practice 30-60minutes every day, and also find the time to do extra creative stuff. And I also have the following issue: Practice that is not done on quickposes.com doesn't count; be it gestures or something else, it won't count. I am furious. The thought of dropping the streak, hurts. Fills me with sadness; how can I stop it? it would mean... it would mean... I don't know what it would mean. It's so scary.
At the same time, if I assume that posture practice counts regardless of whether it's in front of the computer or live (which I DO believe), and if I want to retain the streak I could simply run the timer for 20-30minutes, the time I did practice today, I feel like a cheater. And here I am, stuck between two horrible prospects: The quitter, or the cheater.

By merely saying that, I feel like I need to finally overcome this madness, and be both: Become a cheater and a quitter to save myself.

So where does this all start? Beyond the irrational fear of the situation, there is some truthfulness to it: I want to be able to express myself through drawing, I believe that I cannot do so with my current level and therefor I need to practice in order improve and I am afraid of my ability to sustain effort without commitment. So far so good. But why does commitment have to be opened? Why does it have to be so inflexible? Why can't it be a general commitment towards a direction? I can't answer any of that. I just feel sadness at the thought of losing the streak. Losing the streak would mean.... [I'm worthless, I'm a quitter] Cheating (rightfully) the website would mean... [I'm not entitled to the reward of the system the reward of truthfully saying "you've practiced 9h31m".]. If I break the streak of blogging every single day, it would mean I've stopped progressing, and I'm untrustworthy. Then there would be fear about whether I'll ever practice again. And then there is the thought that "you are quitter", "you'll never improve, you'll never get good enough". It's already 3:00am; no time for watching an anime...

So here I am, very sad, and very fearful of the prospect of being a quitter, a cheater and never becoming good enough. It hurts...

I feel though a bit more connected to my feelings after all this writing. I feel it will do me good to drop the streak on quickposes for a start. Then again the streak was a practical necessity - so that I would increase my practice limit for each day. Perhaps thinking rationally I should cheat?

There, it is done. As I write now, I've just enabled the quickposes timer and on the right half of my display postures flash in front of my eye. Oh the craving of picking up my iPad and noting down these beautiful physiques! It hurts.. Now there is an additional sadness, that of the floodgates that have opened; I've done endless hours over the last two years of posture/gesture practice, live in athletic centers and parks trying to capture the posture and gestures of real moving people. And all these hours haven't counted, I've probably accumulated manyfold the hours of actual practice. And now I understand my hesitance: This means that the timer on quickposes means nothing anymore. It's stopped being an indication of my progress, it's just a broken watch that sometimes counts and sometimes doesn't. And today, it does again.

I feel empty, I feel sad. The satisfaction I'd get out of the quickposes certificates for reaching certain milestones, now is broken. My attempt at building reward mechanisms, has once again failed.
An idea comes to my mind: What if I scan through my notebooks and procreate files and award myself 30 minutes of practice-time for each practice sheet? And then run the timer to include these too? Or forget quickposes timer; use my own certification system? How feasible is that?

Cramps... It all feels so futile now, so fake...

Anyway let's get to the soothing words of the day. First of all, the decision to break the pattern "and cheat",  has been a huge leap forward. I should pat myself on the back. Perhaps this will allow me one day to move to a more healthy way of commitment. Hurts says Smeagol...Hurts... It hurts not being able to feel a sense of achievement for the long years you put into practice.

Oh the soothing words... Were where we.. So yes, breaking the patters, this gets extra credit! I don't know what credit that is, it feels immaterial, but it should be important. Time to more forwards, otherwise I'll willow again in self-pity. So what else has been great today? I liked painting bodies at the beach, I find it beautiful. When I came back in the evening and did this imaginary desert-village, I went big: As I was walking a few days ago, I saw birds flying high during the golden hour and the setting-sun coloring their underbellies; and it felt so magical in the dullness of the hour. So I had the image turning in my head. Today I saw a frog-view a cactus, the sky and the birds in my minds-eye so I decided to do that one as an illustration. Another thing worth mentioning is that I took out a sheet of luxurious paper that I had, and did it there; not my tiny, cheap sketchbooks! I'm happy for choosing to celebrate my art.  I'm even happier that it turned out nice, no mistakes, no stray lines; straight final lineart with the brush-pen; decent perspective, decent composition, nice detail balance, and not too far from the initial feeling. And narrative-wise, it's a story, it has an atmosphere so I am happy for that too.

Before I wrap up, wwo deep breaths. The 30mins "cheating" practice concluded, I retained the streak, by it I also announced that today's live gesture practice counts towards my certificate. It feels all wrong; I'm thinking that perhaps tomorrow I could do an extra non-timed 30mins on quickposes to offset today's cheating, and throw out the live-gesture practice, or alternatively feed into the system all the extra practice I've been doing in parallel. But it feels too scary - very distabilizing. I'm more peaceful that 45mins ago (speaking to my brother helped too) - I feel numb and unable to touch the issue in my head. I'll have to come back to it and resolve it.


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