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 #258 - That Underwater world v3

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Third day, working on the same piece. I'm starting to fear that I might get iPad fatigue (since I have the experience of loosing my steam when working continuous days on the ipad). At the same time I can see it become more and more precious, meaning that placing strokes down is more taxing than before and that it no longer feels possible to be "repainting whole sections that I don't like" as I did the first day.
Today I worked the ocean and the water surface mostly. The jellyfish look very unrealistic; I'll need to redo them. Working on the piece is no longer exciting, at this point I wish I could move on. A trick I've started practicing this year that I'm taking daily photos of my work, is to compare the piece's evolution over the sessions as I make it: This allows me to see the progress made, which is particularly important on days that I can't see it by myself without comparing them. Eventually, it's a relief knowing that the piece is somewhat better than yesterday, and yesterday was better than the day before.
So, what did I like about today? First of all, I managed to further break the "purist" attitude in my digital art, by using masks (for repainting the water without destroying the fine details of the rocks. I've also added an "Overlay" layer to brighten the scene outside the window. Did extensive use of the smudge tool too. I liked creating the small ripples in the water, the schools of fish, the flaps of the whale (oh how I love bright or dark strokes that create the illusion of texture!). I also enjoyed creating the semi-sharp rocks at the ocean floor. I'm finally coming to terms with the fact that this isn't going to be an awesome piece, but for now I'm satisfied with it being "good enough".
After going to bed I realized I was in too bad a mood to fall asleep. Instead I decided to try and explore this negativity, visually and started producing doodles. This is what came out of it. There is not much to comment about these, regarding "what did I like about today's piece", but I can say that it was somewhat liberating adopting such a naive style.

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