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 #342 - Castles from Memory

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I did something really "radical" and fascinating today: I used the mental notes I was making yesterday while painting the fortification at the moat to build the scene out of memory filling in the gaps with imagination. This was I wasn't bound by what I was seeing, and at the same time, I didn't have to improvise - it was like having worked out a few chords, and improvising on that! This removed a lot of the stress - painting what you see, thinking of something new, and allowed me to create something new on the scaffolding. I'm starting to suspec that this is the way most people paint plein air and the reason why people do studies (of things other than generic anatomy). For me it was something new. I don't know how I feel about this new approach, it's relaxing though and on a level allows you to do something "original" while at the same time build on (and reinforce) previous knowledge. So it's good! In any case, I'm pretty excited about the piece; it looks very very intriguing from afar and not that bad from up close. Plus it's very painterly and I'm included a lot of richness in color! I like the patters, how I made the trees, and the dashes of realism too! Time for finishing up with photostitching one of my lastest works so I can finally fixate it and put it away. I may have enough hardboards now but I don't have enough space to keep them.

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