The Hideous Portrait: An Artistic Journey,
warts and all.

Another day spent testing ways to photograph the artworks. I moved from tripod photoshoots to stitching multiple smaller photos. My computer is too old for that. Opening and saving such files needs around 2-3h in total. Too much effort to archive these pieces, and I still haven't touched the big ones. Anyway, the weather was great today but I decided to go for a walk, and the do the photoshoots so once again I painted indoors with my gouache paints. It also helps that I don't have any white pastel and papers. Today's piece isn't one that I'm happy with, but the discomfort while doing it was enough to allow me to stop it half-finished. I had a headache (due to the lack of sleep probably) and there was too much comotion in the room. It's interesting to see that I've reached a point that I can casually paint while others are doing other stuff in the room. At least paint such abstract pieces. But even like that, my attention needs to be in my painting, not in

Very little artistic work today; it was the easy way out. Unfortunately it got 3am before I could start painting and I decided to take the easy route: the iPad. My apple pencil is acting up horribly. Not sure if it's procreates fault or the pencil. At the beginning I thought it was procreate but it's getting worse and now I'm seeing slight issues with other painting apps. This makes me worried. I had never dropped it, as far as I am concerned I had been very cautious with it, not even using it at max pressure. Anyway. Today I spent the day trying to optimize my artwork photoshooting (as if I have "worty" artwork screams the judgemental voice in my head). I spent the day trying to use super resolution techniques where you take multiple shots, align them and combine them into one noise-free and supposedly hi def version. This manual aligning really triggers my obsessive tendencies. Got to align them all... Again, trying to see the positive side of it all, the doodl

Today I spent the day trying to do some photoshooting of older pieces since I've run out of white pastel and can't continue my last piece (actually I can, but didn't want to) . Later I did some posture practice and finished the day with my first gouache painting. A part of me is really excited with how controllable these materials are and on the other had I feel fear on how much control and predetermination I wish to apply in my paintings. In any case, I enjoyed the color richness, and the palette in my today's piece!

Today I've started a new piece (I've run out of white pastel and paper which is not fun). I don't know how this will turn out; it might end up a good rocky terrain, or a bad rocky terrain. For now I've enjoyed the more limited palette and exploring the local contrast. Later, as I was about to go to bed, and in line with the late agitation that is particularly strong right before bed time (with me usually ending up tarring for a couple of hours before finally going to bed) I decided to fire up my iPad, enter discord and stream a bit. Unfortunately I was along in the room but then again this allowed me to be more concentrated. I did some doodling I'm quite satisfied with - bodily poses with well defined muscles, nice shading, perspective and even a couple of half-bakes narrative scenes! Overall nice to see that this part of me is still there waiting to be tapped into since lately I've started again to compare (and despair) my self to all the great masters "ah

December, the year has almost ended! Today I wrapped up the Sardines piece (which as you might have notice has involved marginally in aesthetics, but considerably in onomatopoeia). I did the photoshooting, fixative and signing. I have optimized the process and I am particularly enjoying the mild sheen of the surface afterwards. Also removing the masking tape is a pleasure (though I haven't found yet an artistic tape that won't damage the paper). Later on I spent my day ruminating over storing the pieces which has turned into a real headache. While these late pastel pieces are easy to "document" (ie photograph) and put away (safely) the first ones that were big are ...a logistics nightmare. Nice phrase. I'd throw them away if I had a good photo, but I don't have one either and can't think of a way to photograph these huge warped pieces of paper with natural light and my camera lens. Anyway what was good about today? Artistically it was a very "uneven

Today has been a full day. It sounds almost blasphemous, calling a day full given that I did no more than 4-5h of painting. Yet, I finished the last piece (did only minor alterations, fixated it, did the photoshooting and signed it), and started a new one. I like the new one. It's a yarn ball of randomness; a viking ship that turns into a galleon, with a christmas tree, some autumn trees and in the foreground? Piles of hay, and somethings that look like standing sardines. I love this randomness. And what is more, I've adopted a more impressionistic approach which I like a lot, how it renders the dynamic wheat fields! Later I did a sketch with the brushpen, and spent 1-1,5h doing some posture studies. It's been a long time!

  So, I finally covered the whole canvas (paper). I'm overally happy( primarily happy that I've finished) thought I haven't managed to fix a few issues, namely the foreground not having enough "meaningful detail" and the hind part of the body, the tail and the folliage there having misleading contrast. I'm also slighly annoyed that the pouch under the chin looks a lot like teeth. Finally, it feels that if I was to invest some time from here onwards, it would start coming together into something more polished, and by stopping now, I'm berefting my work from this sense of completion. Having said that, I'm fairly satisfied by it all. I like the texture, the light, the overall colors. It isn't some masterful work, but it's been fun making it.