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

day #286 - We only come out at night (Doodles)

So I finally finished going through my artwork. It's funny; when merely skim-looking at it, it feels as if those past few years I haven't done much and feel disappointed. But now that I had to go through them, it's just ...too many. I wished I had less. I isolated 300-400 pieces that are more than mere doodles or practice sheets. That's pretty neat. I'm especially glad that I've decided to be archiving and editing the pieces when I finish them since I wouldn't had been able to go through all that stuff without it having been in already good state.
Going through my early blog sessions I realized how good it had been taking beautyshots of the sketchbook pieces back then. Such a pity that I didn't keep the habit alive. I wonder whether beautyshots would be more interesting for this blog, instead of head-on shots.
I also spent a few hours (how casually I hurl out such a phrase - "a few hours - probably 5,8 or 10 hours") trying to photograph and create a good reproduction of one of the acrylic pieces from the summer. I had my first encounter with impasto woes and blownout highlights, but also the light coming from the wrong direction (tip: the light shouldn't come from below). Today's efforts were a bust, I'll have to redo the whole photoshooting. At least it's good experience that I'm getting here.
Anyway, with all that I got exhausted and (again) didn't get to paint as much as I would had wanted; actually, I didn't paint at all. But I did something. I decided to go on discord hoping that I might find somebody to share the camaraderie of two (or more) artists doodling, but I was alone for the whole duration. It's okay, I had a good productive session. Did some interesting cartooning; from characters, to creatures, to landscapes. Today felt as if I had the confidence to assume a style and my inner eyes was detail oriented. I also remembered a few times (only momentarily) to slow down a bit and once to try and see the big picture.
I have the tendency to focus on my current stroke and forget the overall composition. I'm not sure why this happens, it's not that it feels hard, or that I need to focus on the details. The moment I "zoom out" and concentrate on the big picture, everything changes, every priority in my drawing hand shifts naturally and effortlessly. But I lose it so fast!
Anyway to sum up, today I did a lot of cleanup work, and made a few decisions about how I should be moving forward. I also allowed myself to assume a cartooning (is that the word for it?) style and did an interesting landscape with architecture. Also internally found two directions I'd like to focus my efforts onward from here: more detail in my mind's eye, and resting my attention on the big picture. Time for rest!

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