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 #261 - Big Plans

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I had big plans for today; somehow there was energy to work a bit on the underwater scene, and the start a little something with watercolors. I found the time to do only the first; it somehow consumed me. I can't say I'm dissatisfied; Nice things came out of today's efforts. Not stressful at all. I spent a long time working on the jellyfish but eventually nothing came out of it and I reverted to the original ones. But I also focused on lighting the fish (so fun!), adding detail to the dark parts of the cave and create some glimmers on the plant-shell at the front right that I'm extremely happy about! I feel like I'm getting a good better on both how to work with local colors, and how to create different surfaces in terms of shininess and wetness. I'm also starting to experiment with shimmering and iridescence and I'm very excited about it! With the confidence that "it feels controllable", it was easier scrapping (relatively) big parts of the painting today. The spaceship design and rendering is falling behind, I hope to find a way to make it catch up with the rest of the composition.
I just rememebered that early in the process I had flipped it so that I would work the composition in a balanced a way, and forgot it that way. Now that I'm switching it back to the original orientation, it feels so wrong! Cramps!
The primary issue is the position of the whale that is now coming from the left, and this is feeling wrong, not composition-wise (I'm fairly happy with the balanced composition, it seems to be working both ways). But the orientation feels completely unacceptable energy/narrative-wise! Somehow, if it were coming from the right, it would be more static and less threatening, more like a sight to enjoy, whereas now the whale is marching across the scene; giving a wrong impression of urgency and impeding aggressiveness; it's causing me upset. More action than I've wanted it to have. And yet, the figurine and the spaceship feel finally properly placed at the right of the scene. I can't say whether I'll attempt to fix the whale eventually, since it's too much work and I don't feel very confident about recreating the same thing, though it would be nice to give it a shot; at least for educational purposes. What definitely needs reworking though, is the jellyfish. They look very ugly, flat and too vertically aligned.
Overal as I'm looking at the piece, particularly now that the featureless walls have received a bit of love, I'm fairly satisfied with how it's going. Feels it will not reach the magic atmosphere that the video games of my childhood could capture, but it's a step in the right direction.
Final remark: How I miss a real brush that can give a clean or textured, a hard or soft, a narrow or thick stroke. Using the left hand to vary the tip size is good, but not enough control. Time for rest.

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