The 100 Day Project, Day 10 — Finishing the Largest Project in Six Months!
And so, we have reached Day 10 of the 100-day Project... 1/10th of the challenge done!
A very large stone I finished painting today. This one has well over one thousand individual marks/design elements to it. It looks pretty good, but will be even more vibrant after getting a finish coat.
So far, the biggest challenge has clearly been time management; balancing that many things in my life I "have to" get done every day with this new project that — on average — demands that I find an extra 90-120 minutes... by the time I do the creative bits, and the social media bits, and make a Hive post about the day's progress.
Day 10 Stone Painting
So, today was my day to finish work on the quite large stone I started painting, a couple of days ago.
I don't often get "blanks" in large sizes that are also smooth enough to hold a very detailed design. This was a decent quality stone, although it did have a lot of tiny "pits" I had to work around. There were also a couple of almost invisible cracks to worry about... the naked eye might not see them, but liquid paint sees them as the Grand Canyon!
Adding some spoke-like elements to provide separation between the green and the blue.
At this point I am still not sure how the design will be finished.
The blue is definitely going g to be the dominant color.
By the time I have arrived at the stage below, the painted mandala is already larger than 95% of my work.
Focus on blue shades
There comes a point where progress starts to become really slow. This is due to a couple of things.
For one, each additional layer that is each additional ring of design has more and more elements and thus takes longer to paint. For two, as I have more and more time invested in the stone I go slower and slower because I become more and more careful if not making a mistake.
No I am also getting to the point where I have a clear idea of what the end result is going to look like.
The intention here is for the blue to gradually get darker and fade into purple and violet.
Haven't quite decided how I'm going to finish things off. But that's okay, because I still have a fair bit of time because it's very slow going now!
Painting in dark colors on a dark background like this, is also really hard on the eye because it is so low contrast. Consequently, I have to take breaks quite often.
From deep blue into purple
The Finish stone is actually up in the top photo of this post.
I got close to the end there, and thought I was going to round out the stone with another ring of purple and maybe a little white, but some voice inside me said no red and gold!
And so, that's what the final touches ended up being!
Close-up view of the final layers. The design will be more vibrant, once a finish coat is applied.
Those large stones are a lot of work, and I often feel tired after finishing one, mostly because of the extreme concentration and focus required to get everything to be "just so."
How Long?: Best guess is that I have about 10-12 actual work hours in it. It's always hard to tell, because I work, walk away, work, do something else, work, etc.
How much? If it looks really good and crisp once it's completely finished, it'll probably end up in the Etsy shop for $175-$195 or so. Counting time and resources to find the stone, art supplies, time, photography, fees to Etsy, packing and shipping materials and shipping costs to a buyer, it may not even be minimum wage... but hey, I'm doing something I like!
Day 10 Summary:
Large stone finished; working towards something I have been meaning to get done for a while.
Daily Twitter/X post: Check. Got a couple of images and tweets posted, as well as adding some interesting people to subscribe to. It will be a long slow process to "hand build" this twitter account!
Daily Facebook Page post: Check. Sharing part of the painting process for the large stone.
Daily Instagram post: Check. Picture of the large stone from today.
Other Stuff: This Hive post; otherwise nothing... out of energy for today. Daily shoutout to @gillianpearce hope you're having a good trip to see your relatives!
Day 10, so now I am 1/10th into the challenge. I'm glad I got something "significant" done today. Now we start into March, which will give me the first full month-to-month comparison vs. 2023.
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2024.02.29 AS-TXT-208/176