Day 100:
I spent the majority of my day painting the designs from yesterday's daily art on the faces of kids and a couple of adults. I never stopped to request any pictures of my paintings, so, unfortunately, I can't show any of my work on this blog, but I was quite happy with what I painted today.
Oddly, given my perfectionist nature, the face painting that I did today that I am most proud of was a half-mask of Spiderman on a kid who was probably about 2 years old and was constantly turning his head this way and that the whole time that I was painting. It was the fastest Spiderman mask that I've ever done, and it had numerous overwhelming flaws, but it got the gist of Spiderman across despite the challenges, and for that I'm proud. I was so afraid of accidentally poking that kid in the eye with my brush since every time I aimed my paintbrush toward one point of contact it was probably about a 50/50 shot of whether I'd get my brush on that spot before his head turned, and a half mask is all around the eye area. And then there was the chance that he'd turn his head and eye into the brush... But that risk was why I worked quickly and took shortcuts and managed to actually finish the mask, despite its obvious flaws. Before when I've encountered similar difficulties the parents have always given up and taken the kid away before I could finish, leaving a half painted area on their kid's face. They thank me politely and pay anyway, sometimes apologizing for their child's behavior, but I'm disappointed to see their kid go off half-done. I feel like I've failed at my job, because it's natural for a kid that small to move around a lot, especially when someone's tickling their face with a soft, wet brush tip. Today I assessed the situation and worked through it, and the thought of those chicken-scratch spider webs makes me smile...
Now, since it's day 100 and I have no imagery to show for my face painting, I made sure to do something else that I could show today. I did a bit more work on the ancient phoenix page of my cut-up sketchbook. I was trying to give the colored background a bit of a stained-glass feel. I think that it's working, but now I need to go through and darken up the outlines again since the watercolor pencil pigment dulled them a bit wherever it overlapped...
I can't believe that I've been doing this for 100 days already...