This last portion of the 100 Day Project has gone rather slowly. With the holidays, there was plenty to do: commissions, family gatherings, parties with friends, the calendar and more. Still, I have plowed through to complete the project. It was a little stressful and disappointing to realize that the project may not be completed by the end of 2015. I even schemed on sketching one and hour on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day to rush and finish it. In the end, I decided to keep it going through the first week of 2016. This way, I can finish it right.
Day 81 The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten
I finally tried my hand at weaving. It was really fun and brought back sewing skills I learned when I was younger. I learned to do needlepoint, embroidery and knit from my aunt and mom when I was a kid, so I felt I was applying a similar skill set here. Even though I had to plan some things, like deciding to make triangle shapes, I also let some of it be more free. I will definitely be making more of these.
Day 82 Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify them
Ah, my old Mazda 626. This car was a real gem. Rust holes in the back by the window, Gap sucks sticker, Nike Sweatshops sticker, weird jimmy-rigged way to open the trunk, piles of cassettes and no air conditioning. This brown hatchback was my first car and although I loved it, it was a bit of a mess. The embarrassing detail here is that I now wear Nike's to work out, when I thought I wouldn't be caught dead in them then. We all get older and change I guess.
Day 83 Change nothing and continue with immaculate consistency
This card had me thinking of musicians that create repetitive music. Neu, Liars, Steve Reich, Spacemen 3, Philip Glass, Fela Kuti, Sleep, Can and Brian Eno all have a nice trancelike element to their music.
Day 84 Give way to your worst impulse
That impulse would be coffee. One of my favorite places to go draw is at B2 in San Jose. It's in a giant room they call "the garage" due to the garage doors along the walls. This means lots of light and space to work. Also lots of people to watch. I happened to run into my friend Gordon De Los Santos this day and sketched him.
Day 85 Be less critical more often
The sketch
The final
This was a really interesting one to me. Sometimes with the 100 Day Project I get an idea and put it right to paper. Other times, I mess around in my sketchbook and then go to paper. If you look at the first picture, you can see this one started out as just scribbles with my brush pen in my sketchbook. As I waved lines around I started to see a sky and then a brushstroke made me imagine words in the sky. Then I made mountains. Then I imagined it was San Jose. I love this kind of evolution in art. Just intuition going off.
Day 86 Honour thy error as a hidden intention
With this day, I had finally watched Grey Gardens, the documentary... I loved this shot of Little Edie's legs near a table. I played with the table perspective. I love when artists create odd perspectives in their work. It's something I don't really do but would like to experiment with more often.
Day 87 What mistakes did you make the last time?
Since Day 86 had off-perspective, I decided to draw normal perspective here. Something about the table, rug and flowers felt bland to me so I added a trap door below the table.
Day 88
Sade has such an interesting voice. It's beautiful, yet so subtle. Not a lot of good singers use such restraint.
Day 89 Question the heroic approach
I thought painting a road made sense here. I thought the road could be a metaphor for the hero's journey, thinking of the unknown that a hero faces. The first image came out nice, but it sort of bored me. I thought "Hey! I could run it under the faucet and blur it a bit! Hey! I could add lines going across making it more blurry and unclear!" I wanted it to feel like a memory or unsure so I feel that worked out. I'm going to try this technique in a future painting.
Day 90 Don't stress one thing more than the other
Here I thought I could make a still life and focus equally on all of the objects. I had Bryan select things from around the house and arrange them for me. I thought he did a great job. It has a little bit of an adventurous sailor feel to me. A sign that I need to get back to working on my children's book? Probably.