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 #256 - Underwater Kingdom

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And here we are! After a long long time not having started anything on the ipad that went beyond the stage of sketching, here is a scene with narrative. And it seems to also be the first scene I'm doing over multiple sessions - I already did two different ones today (working on the iPad is very strenuous for my body) and plan on resuming today (depending on the mood).
In part the choice to work on the ipad was because I was starting to feel my "digital" work stash was staying empty, and I was tired of working with desaturated colors and my limited watercolor-mixing skills; I wanted to let loose!
I'm very proud of this one. It started as a sketch, and while I was thinking that I'd do mutliple ones, I was satisfied right from the start. That is essential for my mojo since by the time I get to the second, I loose the motivation to start the painting stage! My mind's eye was vivid enough today to run composition test inside my head, so after sketching I quickly skipped to the stage of color and values thumbnailing and lucking I was more than happy with the first attempt. So I scaled it up and started refining details. This is probably the first time that I work like that (scaling up the thumbnail and working on it).
One of the most interesting things about this piece is how "free" I've felt, overpainting things that I only-partially liked. This is probably a sign of overall levelling-up over the last few months. I'm not too precious with parts of the painting because I know I can redo them if need be; this is essential for the process to flow. I also loved the narrative aspect of the work, and the atmosphere! It kept me excited. I'd like to push the lights a bit more, and bring the surface rendering to the next level. This composition has multiple light sources, reflective surfaces, dark spots, luminous objects; I hope I can do justice to them all.
I'm using my favourite brush with both hands where my left hand is adjusting the tip size in real-time, effectlively allowing the same scattered-brush that I use, to vary a single stroke from diffused to tight and opaque to transparent; perhaps there is something more to this digital-painting technique! It's been very pleasant thus far, I hope I stay in this frame next time I resume it!

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