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 #242 - Trainwreck and Angry Birds

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Today has been difficult day, that ended well. It's been an all-time low, a mini-burnout. I couldn't paint all day long, it feels as pointless and burdensome as ever. I was trying to be mindful of what would make it more appealing for me today. Spicing up my daily routine (with changing medium/location/subject) has taken me this far, but now I'm standing at a place that I need deeper variety. I was even considering stopping the daily painting and doing in 5 days per week or taking an indefinite break. Trying to solve the problem for today, I started asking myself: Would pastels make it interesting? No. Watercolors? No. Doodling online with other people on discord? No. Doing something 3D instead (no drawing)? Taking an art history lesson? This one was a Perhaps. Playing a video game? No. Reading a fantasy book? A graphic Novel? I even reached out to a friend comic artist in order to do a 1-2 day comic jam (this would had helped!) but the timing wasn't ideal. In other words I was considering doing something art-related, without it being painting and drawing.
At this low, I ended up on WetCanvas reading about other peoples' creative blocks. While reading (spent a good few hours) I noticed that at some points some micro-motivation did arise along with a vision of "doing something small, very small, with waterocolors and lineart; something stupid; perhaps draw an ugly childish fairy".
I took a sheet of watercolor paper, taped it and started painting in a garish, uncouth way - making sure that what I make is ugly and childish from the get go. This complete and temporary drop of expectations helped immensely, and as soon as I had filled the paper with the uglinesh, I put it aside and started a second equally ugly piece. As soon as first dried, I added some BLACK with my paintbrush and later I added black outlines to the second piece aswell. Both felt very alive.
The boldness, and naiveness of the two pieces make them very dear to me. The stark colors, the ridiculousness of the ear on the bird's head... The curly hair on the chest and the raised armpit... The skulls, the trainwreck, the sign, the people living under the bridge. I like both pieces. At the same time, I also got to revisit my dear "black ink on top of watercolors" approach. But the greatest success of the day, has been that I managed to overcome (live a day and fight another day) the block, without forcing myself to paint (though I also didn't allow myself to not paint) at the same time discovering that a big part of it, was (once again) expectations that were bogging me down. A night's rest well deserved.

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