The Hideous Portrait: An Artistic Journey,
warts and all.

Trying to catch up. I feel awfully tired today (I might have a clue why that might be). Today's work has not been my top form. I keep observing that when I can't concentrate enough (I mean my eyes at least should be on the paper) the end result feels ...foreign. In any case, there have been certain good aspects in what I did today (after all we have to see the positive side of things) and that is primarily that I did paint, I didn't get fed up with it and I got to test my gold posca marker. Plus I mixed watercolors and ink, which I've been meaning for a long time but didn't dare to and revisited an old style of painting (that I used to do with my winsor and newton inks). Amazingly, while this is not my favourite piece, I do find it balanced and I guess it's pleasing to the eyes. Last day of the year tomorrow!

Oh oh, it's turning into a habit! Who knows what's next! Maybe I'll start piling up the entries for "a later date". I hope not. Today I resumed working on the pastel piece. I like that the forms are getting more defined and the color is clean and stark. I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out! I'll upload the photo tomorrow.

I was procrastinating today a lot. Eventually I decided that a good motivating way would be to log onto discord, and try and make it feel less like chore and more like doodling. I focused on narrative stuff today which is very good for a change. I was hoping that I would have the desire to clean up and paint the piece but I run out of steam. On the other hand, I can sense the fear of failing at doing another watercolor piece which probably is the subconscious reason that kept me from picking up the brush today. Regardless, there are quite a few things that I liked about today's work: The composition, the curved perspective, the mechanical design. I also enjoyed painting a turbine and how complex a constructive approach I used in this piece! Time for rest!

Today's artwork has been very good. While the end result is not 100% to my liking: While I love both the left and right sides, the transition from the high-constrast left one, to the soft right-one, doesn't make much sense in terms of 3D space. If I hadn't put away my paintbrushes I'd attemp a mini-fix. Other than that, this is a very interesting piece, that I enjoyed doing. I love the landscape rendering (I love creating imaginary rock formations!), the chromatic abberation in the light; the stark dark/light play and the very strong 3D sense of the space - it's very intrguing. Only worry that I've used lemon yellow and carmine red that are not very stable colors something that I usually avoid, and to be honest, I should had avoided this time too, in retrospection, it wasn't necessary. In any case, I love the texture (this is the kind of artwork that I see in digital and say "wow amazing brushwork") and it is also a surprise that I havve reached th

So this the most radical post ever. It's already 6am and I haven't resized and uploaded the image and there have been quite many today, so in a radical move I decided not to upload them right, and leave the post text only. It was a fun day, I did some pictionary doodles with some friends on zoom, and later on did some freestyle doodles. I like lots about it. The dog, the cannibal, the foxdog following the trail, the top-bottom voluptuous woman, the faces with the intense noses, the little spaceships, it was all good. What I will keep about today is two things: The kindness towards myself for not pushing me to finish uploading the images tonight in a ritualistic empty fashion, and the fact that today all my practice was doodles while I was on video call which is as relaxed and mindless as it gets! The extra thought of the day is the fact that I did numerous sheets which I normally avoid since it needs much more work in uploading the images, but then again, images that would oth

Very interesting this day. It's Christmas but this is not what I'm talking about. I decided not to paint in the balcony in order to go for a walk instead (remember, this is the age of covid19 and walking outdoors is a luxury)and committed to doing something after sunset, indoors. I picked up my gouaches and a sheet of Khadi cotton paper and started a new piece. After 2 or 3 hours I was tired and felt the piece was somewhat ready. I decided to call it a day. I like the composition and the palette, I like it overall; even the process did I enjoy (I felt like making a satellite view of a city) but can't say I feel proud of the piece. Of course this has to do with expectations. Judgements floating around in my head: "this is nothing, this is no art" - "this at best is a graphics design school brush and color contrast exercise" - "this doesn't even have depth/planes" - "this is all too pink, there is no real color contrast" - "ha

So here it is, I've finally decided to wrap up the last piece and start a new one, on big paper this time! Wrapping up was easy - I did some final (minor) additions, photographed, fixated and finally signed the piece. Now, the new piece is a new world. I like the colors a lot on that one, though the quick photos that I take with my phone really mess it up (the paper is pink not white). I'm not very excited about what I've created overall, and I'm trying hard to like the disproportionate loose figures, but I also find it a good opportunity to come to terms with it all. I now realize that my art has slowly become too precious to me: To the question "what prohibits me from wrapping up this not-so-nice new piece if I don't like it"; and starting something new in its stead, the answer to my surprise is that "nothing can go to waste". Sketchbook pieces, or pieces on the iPad can be thrown away, but big pieces of paper should be at the very least inter

I'm nearing the end of this piece. After all these days working small watercolors or on my iPad I can feel the excitement of working big again! A few days ago I wanted to go the extra mile with this piece, but now I don't feel like doing that. I don't know perhpas tomorrow I will. The good news is that now I can have multiple pieces in progress since I have bought myself 3 wooden slabs. The highlights of the day way mostly about remembering: Remembering that it's nice working bigger, that pastels are cool, getting some inspiration for some future acrylics piece and remembering that when I work too constrained (perspective, anatomy, small, precision materials such as gouache) then I get too judgemental and lose motivation. If I keep it somewhat abstract, I don't judgem myself that much I get more motivated!

I started with high hopes today; After the general feeling of tiredness building up over the last few days, I had felt that a change of direction would be very beneficial: I was eager to do something with a narrative, some panel. It quickly fell apart (the thought that I'm able to do something complete, was the culprit) and I found myself revising Scott Robertson's Ellipses' drawing chapters. In retrospection, after all these hours doing "technical drawing (and "analytical" studying), I can say I was duped: I got too scared, and fell back to something that felt measurable and thus something I could become competent in. Well, at least I saw that. Now regarding what was good about today's practice: The fact that I did revise my perspective a bit (still I feel I've forgotten lots of imporant stuff which saddens me) and the fact that I made the observation of the avoidance. Plus, I'm not angry at myself; I know it was stressful and scary. Another good

A laid back day today, rather unmotivated. I decided to do something story-related, only to find myself unable to think of anything. Eventually I did some rough sketches of characters, postures, hands, hats and headpieces and some vehicles. If I want to single out a few good stuff about the day, I'd say that some of the female postures were good and I like the last 3 panels particularly. The guy with the lizard, and the girl on the hoverbike. A day of cartooning I'll call it!

Today's piece has been a very bold one in the sense that I tried to let loose; to the point that I feel it didn't work out. Possibly one of the worse unpalatable pieces I've done in years. Then again, I'm glad about this since it's allowing me to come to terms with this aspect of my artmaking production. So how does this kind of artwork feel? They feel like blotches on top of some other painting - there are two levels in the painting and both are disconnected; the smooth one (low frequency) one and on topo high-frequency lines. These pieces are hit or miss; until the end there is always (?) hope that it might work out and some times it does. Others it's like today. So here we are! Now I have a piece that doesn't have some ugliness other than it's entirety and I need to somehow be okay with that. This is the long goal. Other positive things about this artwork is that while making it I had the opportunity to work with sharp and hidden edges a lot. Per

I think today I did a good job balancing crative work and not overexerting myself. This painting started with another underpainting (this time using pan-watercolors). The underpainting was ochre, burnt umber and raw sienna but I'm not sure there is much point in so "rich" underpaintings. In any case, it was very enjoyable trying to see what emerges out of this world; that are these things in the background, what are these rocks at the forefront. Adding color was a half-assed effort but I'm okay with it. When I put the brush down, I was not very satisfied with it, and was planning on overpainting it with a fineliner (something that I love doing but have been reluctant to attempt lately) but when I got back I realized that the piece looked good enough so as not to use it as cannon fodder. Overall I'm satisfied both with the world-explorative aspects of this piece, as well as the sense that there is growth taking place in my rendering technique. The fact that I man

Once again I worked on the pastel piece - I believe I need one or two more sessions until I can wrap up. I like seeing the polish that comes out of this extra work put in. Not sure if the particular painting deserves it, but then again, why not? Later on I did some doodling while I was playing with the neighbor's kid and then some more doodles (to test the apple pencil and keep myself occupied) but nothing very enthusiasticaly. Still, I want to put things in a optimistic perspective - so let's sum up: The pastel painting is going well, and I am seeing the point in going the extra mile with adding a bit polish. Using my pentel pocket brushpen reminded me how much I love the brush control it gives me and made me relax in knowing that not everything needs to be a painting/drawing. Sometimes it can be a pattern test, or a line on the paper. The digital doodles were fun doing (using both hands to control opacity, and size at the same time) and this approach of sketching is something

Today I resumed the pastel artwork. It's still not over, I'm mostly refining edges from here onwards. It's interesting seeing what a difference "sharp edges" can make to such a piece. I hope this practice will elevate my overall edge control level if nothing else. In the evening, again for the sake of testing the apple pencil (which I now see has been a big mistake, I feel drained - it's been a bit too much these double sessions) I did some ...more doodles. . I did lot's of stuff, gestures and bodytypes and a few vehicles. My favourite stuff for the day are some "rough brush" landscapes that I was creating in one continuous (figure of speech) stroke while my left hand was varying the brush size; giving myself a very rich texture with a single brush which is the closest to juggling I can do. I also enjoyed doing a treehouse scene and I did some ornaments on a pole in a scene which reminds me of Spirited Away meets Disney's Fantasia. What posit

This has been a good day. I resumed working on my pastel painting (I'm starting to feel it's dragging, but since natural light is limited I can't work more than 1-2h per day so it's not that long a painting altogether). I was done for the day, so I wasn't planning on doing anything else art-related today, but I got a substitute apple pencil that I wanted to test and logged onto Discord to do some extensive doodling. Eventualy I filled two sheets. I'm not even sure the pencil works better than mine. But in the process I did some extra, unexpected work. In other words, I'm happy with the production yield of the day. So, what did I like about my work today? The pastel painting has become a meditative act where I render bounce lights on solids and I am definitely enjoying it a lot. Good thing I'm not feeling eager to move on to some new piece (like the constant feeling merely a couple months ago in the studio). This painting also allows me to practice

Today's piece has been an experiment (aren't they all?). I decided to try the "underpainting" technique, something that I only recently found out! To my disbelief, the habit of laying tha values first before the colors is not something only photoshop artists use, but has been around since forever. So I created a monochromatic painting of mere red values. It was quite beautiful. I hesitated attempting to add color since I didn't know whether it would work out, but eventually I took the plunge: I started with the sky and the background mountains. I wasn't too happy with the tampering but it was already late to go back. I moved on to adding color to the ground, which worked amazingly well and fast since you don't need to be too precise! Apparently it's easier and nicer to "colorize" the complex ground than the minimalistic sky. Perhaps again, red plus blue (purple), and red plus green (gray) are not compatible. Perhaps I had used too much water

Today has been full of doodles. I'm fairly satisfied. At first I was a bit bored to do anything serious (choice 1: do something digital) and got onto discord. There I had some interesting laid back discussion which allowed me to ease back and strat producing random stuff. So what was good about today's work? I like the huge temple though it's a bit poor both in terms of composition and design. Still, it was a bit more advanced than usually, so I'll give me that. I did interesting spaceships, and buildings, a fun guy on a bicycle, a cool bird-feeder occupied by a tiny dragon (I liked the contrast too!) and finally an elaborate scene of a wall-e type of robot, and a second rover robot. Today has been a "productive" day, and nice revisiting perspective in a looser fashion than usually. Time for bed.

Today was a good day: I resumed the latest pastel piece and while I wasn't expecting it to reach any interesting point, I entered a phase of rendering light and shadow which is oddly satisfying and makes you feel cool doing it. Plus it's a nice puzzle trying to imagine what would be reflected onto a surface, and what color would result from the combination of the local color and the reflected light. I've only only edited certain parts of the piece but we shall see where it goes. After the sun set, I was still in the mood for more but the energy got wasted on other stuff so another time.

  Strangely I've discovered a white balance issue with affinity photo that I'm using. In any case, today's piece is a mixed bag. The final tasted is a sense of surprise; It came so close to becoming pretty, but eventually it fell apart. It was a difficult piece. I tried a compressed palette and a strange tree-form from above that was getting thicker as it was approaching to the view. At some point it felt as if it was almost going to work. In any case, what do I like? A lot! Most of the 3D volume of it. The hinted viridian light. The difficulty of the subject. The chance to work both with opaque gouache and gouache washes. I like gouache's versatility a lot! Plus, you're not in a hurry afraid of it drying which is great stress relief! I also liked a the brushwork; using the brush to create thin and thick forms, dry brush for texturing, it felt very awesome! I also enjoyed having to match values which I rarely do. It's nice as a challenge from time to time! Enoug

Finally! I've finished with the printings and all. In part it's been a big success: the printed watercolors look almost as good as the original ones. I got to try more paper-styles and kinds of artwork; it's very impressive seeing the amount of pieces I've done. On the other hand it's been a disappointment; cutting and printing the margins has been a dark art and the contrast-curve is not very good. I'll be trying to counter these issues next time, but I wonder if I'll be making things worse instead of better. In any case, not only did I manage to get all these things done today, I've also had the time to do some more daytime painting! And what is more,  I decided to take fate into my own hands, and not wait for the painting supplies to arrive by mail but instead went and bought new ones. This will allow me to work a bit more with pastels in the weeks to come which is good. Then again, watercolors and gouache haven't been all that bad so I should div

It's very late, the whole day passed in a hurry trying to get some things done (photographing artworks was part of it and preparing images for print) and only now did I manage to pick up my paintbrush and do a stroke on the paper for the sake of put the checkmark on my "done it today too" list. As I was finalizing the stroke (some sortf o mosquito face) I was thinking how it's okay once in a while to do near-zero effort, and how I should be careful from now on when I realized I had moved on to painting something that looked like a tire. From the there I was intrigued and I built a car, and before I knew it, I had something that was exceeding my initial hopes and would put to rest the judging voice. Something interesting came out of it! I like how I didn't mess up big time anything in particular, though now that I see the front part it is somewhat messed up. I'm not exactly sure what's wrong, perhaps the nose of the car is a bit too low (touching the groun

I didn't do any complete piece today which feels very regretful, but I did lots of sketches that were good. Consistent faces, skulls, warriors, sexy singers, pixies, female faces with nice noses, foreshortened aliens, and good-looking spaceships built with perspective and in a constructive manner. I also had the chance to look back in the works these past 217 days and found a lot of finished pieces. A lot, but sadly not that many: 40-50 all in all. While this is not a very bad ratio, it still is a bit low. Listening to myself I sound like a boss... Anyway, what is good today, has been that I revisited postures, head anatomy, eyes, noses and perspective and did some free-doodling which I haven't been doing much lately.

Today's artwork is both satisfying and distressing. A central symmetry form has emerged that I was hoping would be gone by the end of the piece but wasn't. I live the color palette and the fact that it's a complete piece, like yesterdays.I wish there was a bit more spatiality though. The second masking tape I've been trying now, still tears through the paper. I'm annoyed by that but can't find an artist's tape around here. I'm also starting to get annoyed by how the paper is buckling. I need to see what I should do about it. In any case, enough for today!

This seems the most complete piece in a long time! Come to think about it, I'd say it's the most complete piece since I left the studio. It's good once in a while to produce a piece that feels balanced. I am not saying that it's flawless and that I like everything about it! There are things I feel could evolve to be better (and I even have a direction). But it definitely feels balanced, without some major, shameful flaw. Needless to say I'm happy about it; I even was lucky enough to work on loose paper-sheets meaning that this particular one can leave the confines of my sketchbook. Moreover I like this style and the exploration of dynamism and light/shadow in the asbtract land and vegetation universe; I think I might keep exploring in that direction. I like the palette too, though it's a bit too "color-theoresque". Still, a good application with discrimination. I love how I was adding texture with the single flat brush that I had been using, by dri

Hmm, I don't like what I did today. I like that I did it, but the end result is what young people these days call ...cringe. But we are here to accept our work and I don't know if there is a person in this universe that might consider this piece pretty (today I'm particularly negative about my overall artistic level) - I will be impressed if somebody likes this. Anyway, what was good today? I used gouache for a more illustrative work. Despite my high hopes, I realized I don't have the same level of control I have with acrylic (not much to begin with, but still I wonder why, they feel so similar). Still I did a bit o shading and created a palette too, so this must amount to something. Plus (trying to think positively here) I did create a painting with a narrative, a certain degree of premeditation. At the same time, I did my dues today, which was more than yesterday or the day before that and above all I got another bad painting out of my system; I'm one painting c