1000 days project

"We are what we repeatedly do"

Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers (1926)

The 1000 day project is my attempt to steer myself consciously towards the things that are most important to me.

Every day for 1000 days I will work towards my goals in a structured way. I will be posting daily updates on this website.

The 1000 day project runs from 26th December 2015 to the 21st September 2018, which is my 30th birthday.

In the past I have successfully completed two 100 day projects (100 portraits in 2010 and 100 blogs in 2011). In 2012 I spent 1000 hours drawing and painting.

Day 0136


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Did some anatomy studies tonight. I got set these copies as homework at art school but never bothered. Who knew I'd feel compelled to revisit them one night in Portugal?!

Enjoyed wandering around without a plan. Cafés and a ruined church and a view over the river.

Must read up on the medieval concept of individuality. As far as I remember the general idea is that the 'self' identified more with institutions (like the church) rather than with the individual. The more I travel and the more people I see, the more I'm getting the impression that the notion of the individual as unique, special, different needs refinement. We're all doing approximately the same things and thinking more or less the same thoughts. There are outliers but wait enough time, get a big enough population, and they will repeat. Inevitability of a collision of thoughts and feelings and hopes and aspirations given enough people in the same environment. Convergent evolution of cultural memes.

Day 0135


Here I am in Lisbon, knackered after the night train and a day wandering all over the city. Overloaded, got to sleep now.

Day 0134


And now for something completely different. Did this sketch on the night train to Lisbon. I hope none of the other passengers in cattle class caught a glimpse; it's somewhat deranged. It is inspired by Goya and Rubens' Saturn devouring his children. Love the madness in his eyes in the Goya.

Day 0133


Sat in a cafe for hours and changed my plans. I'm not flying to England tomorrow, I'm taking the overnight train from Madrid to Lisbon, where I'm going to stay for a week. Throwing money away on missed flight (and the ticket I bought for the last day of the Bosch exhibition in Holland), but the feeling of being on the road is too good and I don't want it to end.

Went across town to a late night opening of the Museo Lazaro Galdiano. Nothing wildly inspiring, in fact it felt like the collector bought anything and everything, but it was quiet and pleasant enough. Nice little Witches painting by Goya; again, I'm interested in the creativity needed to draw and paint without reference to a model.

Did another drawing from imagination. It shows how dreadfully undertrained I am. Can't draw the individual elements of the face correctly, nor can I make them slot together in a satisfactory way. Should spend some time doing studies of lips, eyes, noses, planes of face. But it's boring...

Day 0132


Went around the Prado again this evening, queued in the rain to get a free ticket. Enjoyed but didn't linger over Goya's paintings where he works from imagination. Been wanting to do something straight from imagination again for some time, but haven't been brave enough. It's all I used to do before I became serious about drawing, but now I feel like I know enough to see how bad I am but not enough to improve. Nevertheless I gave it a go tonight and really enjoyed the freedom of working without reference. She's created from nothing, and I like that.

Day 0131


Enjoyed picking up a pulpy book and reading it in the park. Vagabonding by Rolf Potts. Liberal use of quotations from Walden and a general desire to be positive and to help you "actualize" your potential; just the stuff for an afternoon session of sun damage sur l’herbe.

Went to the Reina Sofia in the evening. The museum itself is like a piece of performance art and it has unsettled me. Huge collection, endless big white rooms with no one in them but the catatonic attendants.

It looked like cruel and unusual torture for them. They sit there in silence, ignored by the few lost souls who wander by, confronted by sarcastic, self-satisfied and sneering art that no one is paying any attention to, sometimes trapped in ear-shot of a video installation playing an endless loop of discordant, jarring, mechanical, alienating, grating clangs and crashes and screeches and whistles. Room after room. One lady checks her watch and stares at the wall. A man is slumped in a doorway talking to himself. A lady has her back to the empty room of huge canvases and gazes out of the only window. An old lady stands on duty in a dark room with slowly revolving platters of plastic figurines and a flickering projector.

Oppressive weight of lost time, a prisonlike pointless confinement of humanity. Too clear a representation of all of the grinding tedium endured by so many day in and day out. For what? Just to get a few euros an hour.

Day 0130


Completely unable to surface before midday. A shame because the weather is glorious. Had lunch on a sunny pavement cafe whilst film crew went about their business, which seemed largely to involve waiting patiently.

Took an unplanned trip to the Caxia Forum and enjoyed looking at the exhibition of Charles le Brun cartoons for Versailles. Huge bits of paper stitched together, showing the stylus marks and pinholes from where the charcoal drawings were transferred to canvas. Great to see the process so clearly explained. Also an interesting video about how the team at the Louvre restored the drawings.

Miro exhibition on the second floor was interesting, now my mind is no longer closed to modern art. If you think back to the time these things were produced, when they were new and not worn out parodies, the 'assassination of painting' would have been a very interesting concept and probably quite radical. The trouble is once you've seen a bit of sandpaper stuck on some canvas or a knotted rope glued over a daubed background or a frame without a canvas or a canvas burned away or an old tin with some bits and pieces stuck on and the whole cast in bronze, well then you get the message and expand your definition of art to include everything and there is nothing left to see except variations on the theme. I can only get excited by it in its original context of novelty and subversion. Without that it's just another collection of easily reproducible objects that have precious more to offer than any other randomly chosen items put in nice cases or framed on white walls and well-lit.

Finished off with sundown in the park; beautiful girls, heat, spring. Reading Tolstoy's Childhood, Boyhood, Youth during breaks of play.

Swifts screaming above the streets, overpowering scent of wisteria on the way home.

Day 0129


Lovely day. Beautiful blue sky and spring green trees. Felt great. I suspect a large part of yesterday's malaise was actually because I hadn't slept properly. Refreshed today and was able to really enjoy trip to the Thyssen. Incredible collection. Doubts about the point of art are still there, but frankly it's a nice way to spend an hour or two.

Lovely afternoon in the park. Smell of the blossom, sounds of the fountains, happiness of all the people on their national holiday in the sun.

Booked a flight to Santorini in a couple of weeks, I'm beside myself with excitement.

Day 0128


Woke up at midday, disoriented. Want to know that I'll be in one place for a while, but I won't.

Cafe for lunch, but what minimal vegetarian options were on the menu weren't actually available. Tortilla it was, again.

Stroll and sit and drink at the park. Blue sky, bright green leaves, fountains, and yet mild sense of panic. All the ingredients for a pleasant ttime, but most of all I felt anxious and unsure. No doubt with time I will just reformulate it in my memory to be the perfect holiday my photos depict, as is tradition.

The worries surface when I lack pressing exigencies to distract myself from the ever-present existential turmoil that is constantly rumbling somewhere inside. Dreadful sleeping habit doesn't help.

As someone said to me tonight, there needs to be a challenge. Spain is too easy, the culture is familiar, the people look familiar, the things to do are the things I always do.

Focus on the small things. Don't try to get the big picture. No one actually particularly cares about you or thinks about you, so do what you want. It doesn't matter what other people think. Being positive is a choice and it's the only one that makes sense.

That said I'm sick of my meaningless empty art and wish I had something to say or feeling to express (other than ennui). It's all been said by Tolstoy in What is Art.

Day 0127


Train from Barcelona to Madrid. Beautiful countryside, unpeopled pastoral idylls flashing by. Crumbled stone huts, irrigation, olives, a sprawling green field with beautiful old trees dotted ponderously throughout.

Can see the altitude rise by the lower cloud level, can feel it too.

Bigger apartment here, very pleased to have space. Food mishap when I forgot that mussaka isn't vegetarian... Came very close to intentionally eating meat for the first time in years and years. Only thing stopping me is habit really.

Flitted around the city, but was too tired to form any distinct impressions. Likewise with the Prado which I ducked into for an hour, but rushed through with all the other tourists in something of a haze.

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