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

Today I won't be posting anything since my whole work took place in VR - It was study day. I spent hours (not proud for that) looking for famous sculptures and reading their history and then went in VR and studied the Discobolus by the sculptor Myron. It's funny, I never really cared while I was studying about ancient Greece at school, but it suddenly falls into place. In any case, I did a few posture studies in VR and even a couple rough sculptures of my own. I'm not proud of anything but it's a first contact with the topic of ...serious anatomy. In any case today, I did study, I did invent some new studying methods, and also built a lot of inspiration and admiration for all the famous sculptors of history something I hadn't related to. Time for rest.

Today I painted only for a little but had to interrupt early to drive to the supermarket. I was planning on continuing in the evening but never did. I'll call it a day though and let it at that.So what did I achieve today? Well, I made the decision to be less precious with my pieces and try and wrap them up earlier. Unless the piece is in a half-finished state, I'll just give it an extra session of finetunings over glaring issues and be done with it! In that spirit, the castle piece is probably done. I'll have another look at it tomorrow and if nothing needs to be done, I'll wrap it up. I enjoyed a lot the coexistence of graphic (flat) realism, impressionism and motifs on the same piece! Time for rest

Today I took out the conceited buddha piece and resumed working on it. I'm still thinking yesterday's(?) realization that I'm spending too much time "micromanaging" pieces because I'm too afraid to work freely on them after the first day. Perhaps this will change as I grow in experience. At some point I had decided that this refining touch was a desirable stage in making paintings, but now it's 20% painting, 80% refining and I wonder whether I should proceed like that, or cut back to earlier times where I was finishing a piece in a single day. Or a mix: Finish the piece on the first day, and revisit it for a short refining session. Then again most of my painting benefit from the extra work. I need to study the process pictures that I make more systematically and see if this applies to the majority. In any case, today I was more calm compared to yesterday that I was completely disillusioned by instagram. Today I was feeling sad and stopped painting because

And here we are today, feeling down. Today I resumed painting on the latest piece but did only minimal changes. I neither had the mood, not the confidence to work freely on it. I work less than an hour which is rare but it felt like an eternity. I'm starting to realize that the "first session" is always a breeze. The subsequent ones, due to the lack of confidence are always slow and tiresome. It's not because I'm not in the mood to work on the piece, but because I lost the confidence to "challenge" it and instead I'm focusing on minor fine-tunings: How would it be if I wasn't afraid to mess the piece up, just like the first days that I would rework large portions of the painting without worrying? Interesting thought. I'm glad at least that I've disovered it. I also fixated the other piece, did some sculpting and now I'm going to sign the fixated piece. Or maybe not. I'll do it tomorrow. Better rest. After all today I skipped insta

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 t

Today I was outdoors and my legs brought me to the moat. It's a beautiful place but I don't go that often since I am under the impression that the moat is not so sunny. Big mistake! Anyway, today I found myself there, have the opportunity to paint a new landscape. I did a watercolor piece that has some good qualities; clarity is not one of them to be honest. What do I like about it? the brights are bright, and the tree-trunks are ok. I also like that I did try to build the 3D space (but don't feel I succeeded). It was admittedly a very difficult scene and I was fighting with time; the sky was moving rapidly and the light-shadow play was shifting completely. Here I am making excuses. Apparently I don't feel like a failure. Well... The piece is not a very succesful one, but again, it has lots of positive traits. And for an unsuccessful one, it's amazing! A big step forward. I also enjoyed that I got to do some intense practice. The second piece was a quick sketch of

Today I pretty much didn't paint: Instead I devoted my time in VR sculpting. It was very enjoyable, and a real break from the escalating pressure from the days before. Though I've told myself that sculpting now counts as painting, I still felt the compulsion to draw a doodle on paper just for making sure I'm still performing the ritual.. This is turning into a psychosis. Anyway. The sketch is nothing, it was doodle based on the sculpt and I won't even upload it here. It wasn't good. But I liked the left hand, and I found funny that I was copying my own art! With the sculpt I'm truly pleased. I haven't had fun in a long time which show how overwhealmed I've been with instagram. I also got to play with pseudo-shading in 3D and creating relatively fast cartoony sculpts. I also enjoyed a lot the design that I came up with! Finally, I liked the palette that I created a lot, and I even revisited it lated to improve the composition so it's even more appeal