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 0086


Finished off my Durer copy. Still feeling ill, losing a lot of time to sleep and fatigue.

Day 0085


Prepared a sketchbook with silverpoint ground ready for Rome on Monday. Made today's drawing on the first page, after a silverpoint by Durer. It has the quality of an etching, with distinct, curving contour lines modeling the tone. Very beautiful, very different from Raphael and Leonardo who shade in one direction regardless of form.

Day 0084


Very low on energy today. Self portrait, self-doubt.

Day 0083


The most beautiful spring day. Cloudless sky, soft light, white haze. Suffolk villages, churchyard, river. Late night sketch after a photo of the graveyard in Clare.

Day 0082


More work on the silverpoint self portrait. Finished Les Misérables.

Day 0081


Started another self portrait tonight as I'm enjoying the challenges of working from life. Still loving working with silverpoint.

Too much clamour from work today to do any thinking or wild living, which is often a good thing. Limiting the amount of free time in a day makes me less inclined to waste it.

Day 0080


Looked in on the Francis Towne watercolour exhibition at the British Museum. What an accretion of bland, formulaic, not-that-bad but forgettable work. Page after page of the same unvarying technique, the same trees and foliage and the same diagonal shadows. It's almost like the result of an industrial process, not art. There was no soul, no expression, no experimentation. Give me a Turner watercolour over this lot any day.

Some advice about the need to get quality work in front of audience, written to Towne from a friend:

The more excellent a man's works are the more they ought to be seen - if he wishes to obtain Honour or Emolument & they generally accompany each other - pray remember this & be no longer like the Rose in the Wilderness - that blooms to fade unseen & wastes its sweetness in the Desart AirRichard Cosway to Towne, 15 Mar 1779

If you have something good to say or show, share it for honour and money, don't fade like a rose in the wilderness.

Only had time for a quick drawing from life after returning from the metropolis, and it's a fairly hideous effort alas.

Day 0079


A silverpoint drawing of my sister reading in the spring sun. Working from life I realised how much simplification (which in itself is an extremely complex task) goes in to making the drawings I have been studying recently. There is an infinite level of detail in real life, and knowing what to put in and what to leave out is a challenge.

Day 0078


You can erase metalpoint, I hadn't actually tried before today. Couldn't get the profile of this study right and took several attempts to get close. It's after a drawing by Leonardo.

Booked flights to Rome for a brief sojourn at the end of the month.

Day 0077


Still not feeling well, exhausted after the evening out in the metropolis. A small silverpoint of a Raphael head was all I could manage today. Reminds me of the Raphael paintings in the Louvre with their lovely oval heads and tender gazes. Lots of eyelids.

My copy of Walter Pater's Renaissance arrived today. Whilst I had absolutely no idea what any of it meant when I was exposed to it years ago, the famous line about burning with a hard gemlike flame has stayed with me ever since, and I think about it often. I think I'm at the right stage in my life to understand what is being said now.

To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two persons, things, situations, seem alike.Walter Pater, The Renaissance
Subscribe to