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 #287 -We only come out at night (pt2)

-
Today I kept listening to smashing pumpkins covers, and kept trying to capture a good image of the acrylics painting I've been trying to photograph. Despite the drag, I managed to break a negative-streak of iPading and finally did some watercolors! I find it a very balanced piece, and something that is clearly my style (who would had thought that I have one). Still it doesn't feel like it's breaking any new grounds or telling some profound truth; I'm starting to build the negative narrative that these pieces are a form of cheap sellouts and whenever I do them I've been taking the easy road. I need to work on that judgement since it's not helping me. Or if I can't, then I'd better stop doing such pieces altogether, maybe they are a sellout!
So let's take a step back and see what was good about today: It's a personal style alright; It's something of my own, not something that I've seen, something that I have artificially created but it's something that has emerged out my own psyche and my personal tendencies; I need to want to ought to celebrate and embrace it! Deep down I like paintodrawing like that, I love it. But I feel it's not good "value of money" - it's nearing "a waste of paper if you can't fill it, if you use squiggles and call it a painting" - says the voice in my head. If the shame goes away I don't see what is wrong with that, I'm sure it will take a life of itsown! What else is good for that piece? Well, the signature! It's not too often that I feel the signature hasn't ruined the piece; today has been one of those days - pretty and balanced in its placement! Finally (the most important one too) is that I managed to put the ipad and the doodles aside, and do an actual painting. These days I don't have the energy to paint outdoors, so this little piece comes as a big relief. Time for rest!

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