day #365 - the end of an era

-
Image
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
Post a Comment

day #266 - Self-massaging

-
Tonight, I feel different, I feel soft. I didn't manage to paint much (20mins or so in the afternoon) and while I was planning to resume in the evening I decided to change my plan and do something else. For a change, I don't feel guilty for it, but self-compassionate. It's okay. I accept the day as it is; 20mins of painting, yes, it does hurt, I do feel the fear of doing so little, I do feel the nagging "you're not doing the best effort" - I empathize with these voices; they want me to feel secure and happy, they want me to be creative, to progress, to make it, to be proud of myself. All well meaning, but today I should also celebrate the other, the liberating voice that is asking of me to move beyond "dutifulness" towards my craft, and towards a more joyous, free and kind approach to it. So here we are.
20 minutes, is a step in the right direction, my 266th step without losing a beat. It's small, reminding me that not all steps have to be strides, and it's nurturing; it gave me space to do something else today. Now regarding the piece, in the little I did, I found joy in painting rocks in the background (that's all I did). Just like with the Complex's painting, I'm coming to realize that I might have reached the limit of my skills; I might be able to push it further and make it more exciting (since digital pigment doesn't get overloaded), but to what end and at what cost? So that I have one piece that is 5% above the rest, but cost me 95% more time?
I feel more inclined (and excited at the idea) of doing a series of atmospheric thumbnail studies of moody stuff; Haze, machines, creatures, volcanic rocks, light. Lots of light, I want to paint light! I'm excited.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

day #2 - Skulls, Perspective and Vehicles

-
Image
Days like today, I feel as if there is a race I need to excel at. I was watching a video on the very impressive Kim Jung Gi and suddenly here I am again, trying to improve my skills at drawing things into perspective. Some days (most days in the recent past one year or so) I work for hours inside small digital gray boxes (so I don't feel the pressure of wasting paper), filling them up with skulls, faces, body postures, vehicles, architecture and all things into perspective. This has been an improvement since two years ago. Back then, I'd fill sheets of paper with hand-drawn lines, triangles and ellipses. A whole lot of pages. I wish I could call this warming up and maybe it is too, but the truth is that it's a self-worth deficiency response mechanism (in my own words). When I don't feel enough (worthy of, capable of) doing anything remotely creative, I tend to do repetitive and measurable things that I call practice. On one hand I get the feeling that eventually I will
Read more

day #223 - Colorizing

-
Image
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
Read more

day #283 - Ancient City of Zor

-
Image
Today's highlight has been this explorative piece that I did with the new iPad. The new apple pencil, has a button (unlike the first which had none). This allowed me to remap some other functions, and I suddeny have an ever more streamlined way of switching between drawing, erasing, and smudging (that I hadn't used until now) in an instant! I enjoyed a lot creating this piece (though I don't like it much), feeling a lot in command of everything down to the texture. What's most important though is that the details were coming easily. As if I was discovering the details of the architecture. This is my favourite way of painting/drawing! How I wish this was more frequent! I even got somewhat transported to that realm. The rest of the sheets are my attempts at comparing the two ipads/pencils; the old and the new one. I'm a tools-guy. I still like the old so much more but I hope I get used to the new one since spec-wise it's so much much better. Both sheets, carry ve
Read more