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 #122 - the Prophet and the bookknight

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Today I was able to start painting (avoiding practice and the iPad) early. I started randomly thinking that I should try and do a piece with shades of ochre but soon I started adding browns, and then decided to give a yellow and green tint to the background. Later on I added blue and a bit of red. This has probably been thus far the most successful palette that I'm managed to create with watercolors, in the sense that all colors are to be found, but I managed to steer away from a pure-Red-Blue-Yellow mess. The praying prophet (or is it shams tabrizi?) popped up spontaneously. While the framing is off (since the initial blob was up there) I like it overall and I find that the framing is challenging the viewer in a positive way.

I like lots about this piece; the halo around the head, the translucent fingers, the angle of the head, the branches in the background... the vegetation is very pleasant and of course the palette; I love the palette.

The second piece, has been a random doodle where I started with a green silhouette and then added the background. After that I started building up the chroma and darkness of the form until I was stronger than the background. I like the sense of volume, how I managed to use payne's gray (black) without it appearing too out of place and the fact that this is some strange creature. It has a book-illustrative quality to it.

Today has been another day of calm; the crisis of the past week (or was it two weeks ago?) is still feeling recent but it's beginning to sink back into the depths. Nothing has been solved, but the despair is less and less and I can now imagine that at some point I'll be back to my "productive" and "practicing" self. Not sure I'm eager to get there, but I can see it happening.

I'll refrain from saying more, since I feel things are very raw for any conclusion to be had. Enough for today.

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