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 #291 - Atlanteans

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After going through my sketches I got the strong urge to do again some iPad doodling. Instead I ended up refining the Underwater Kingdom piece. The weakest part to my eyes had been the overall lack of a dramatic camera - I employed a very wideshot that seemed great at the time, but declimaxed the whole atmosphere. The sole figure was at the very center and too small, a scale that had been established by the submarine and could wiggle out of it. Eventually I decided to build a crowd: Since I couldn't make the figure bigger, I decided to introduce more characters. I like the change. I liked the solitude of the initial piece and this is now gone, but I find the new "story" is better both in terms of composition and while different, it's no worse: It's an optimistic take on that story - a family reunion. On the post I've decided to attach only the area that I worked on, so as to make it more visually appealing, compared to posting the same image with slight difference.
Regarding today's list of "things done well", I'm very very satisfied with the postures. These are probably among the best I've done! Using a blockout color is also something I'm coming to enjoy truly - It sets the base color which is great for the composition and then I can zoom on that and add highlights and shadows. I'm still working with global colors though, so my characters and enviroments lack ... details of color and texture but this thime, this will work; they are too small and don't need the details. The lighting on the characters is out of this world; I love the shine, and the transluscent dress on the female form - I'm so excited about all the possibilities I'm getting here!!! I feel there will be many opportunities in this piece for hinting at effects such as refraction, self-illuminated objects, rim lights with all these light sources! I'm truly excited!! Overall, I feel this piece is allowing me to practice advanced stuff in a very creative and organic way, stuff that I'm only now starting to grasp (ie rendering and posture). What is more, it so happens that the changes have improved the piece, which is not always a given. What more is there to ask?

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