My final summary

Written 03/02/2026, Edited 05/02/2026, 06/02/2026, 07/02/2026

So, I wave this project goodbye.

An idea I first had in September 2024 has come to full fruition. So all in all, this has encompassed about 18 months of my life (at least in my mind, even if not 'physically'). That's a long time! Yet it feels like my life has not changed all that much in that time. Things HAVE changed, I have a car now! And I have met new people, and gotten involved in my local community a bit more than back in September 2024 when I had just moved into my new house.

I took a photo of all of my works together (and my cat)

Seeing them all together does really make me see the relative substantiveness of the project. These are 12 paintings that I now have in my house (don't know where to store them all really), I wonder if anyone was surprised by their sizes in relation to eachother? (And my cat).

What I find interesting, is that despite my intentionally studying a diverse range of female artists, I did notice that most of them primarily painted women. This wasn't universal of course, but I still found it noteworthy. But maybe that speaks to how women and femininity are seen as aberrations, would I have noticed if 10 male artists had only painted men? Or is there something to it in the sense of women wanting to represent themselves (in both a self-reflective way or in wanting to empower others). Thinking back to Artemisia Gentileschi's Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, I think there may be something to that.

I will say, at least for me, it's hard to see much 'improvement' since the subjects had quite different styles which I was trying to emulate. I think in the future I want to hone in and study specific painting techniques (especially with acrylic painting).

I suppose I had hoped that I would be MORE different. Like this project would lead to some great ephiphany on my end. But... it didn't. Not that I didn't learn anything from it, I very much did! The biggest thing being how much I actually do enjoy painting! But, I don't really think I understand some deeper part of myself than I did 18 months ago.

I think, ultimately this is because my life was not purely defined by the project. This is, obviously, a good thing. However, this does mean there were times where I was juggling doing drawings/sketches/painting/blogging with other things (like tidying, cooking, working etc.). I don't live in a house with a dedicated art room, indeed my sketches and paintings are generally strewn around my house without a dedicated 'place' for them. This likely contributed to the somewhat disjointed feeling this project had. This project was 'in-between' my 'real' life, a factor to consider but often ignored for chunks of time.

I am struggling with this blog post, I am trying to be reflective but I don't really know how to feel. I thought there would be this grand ending, but I just finished my last painting and that was... that. I had such big ideas in my head, the reality of it all feels a bit underwhelming in that sense. I wonder if that is because I was too restrained? Paint isn't cheap, and there were some paintings where I think more experimentation would have been warranted but I was too... worried about it being a 'waste'. But would it have been? The only truly wasted paint is unused paint after all.

EDIT 10/02/2026: Ruminating on this a bit more (messaging a friend about it), I think a big factor in this is that previous 'big projects' I did were for school/university and would conclude at the end of term/year. So there would be a life change that would come with the end of the project (being off school for a few weeks up to moving out of student accommodation). So that led to a stronger feeling of the end equaling 'change'. Whereas here, my life is still as it was. I still live in the same house, with the same job and the same day to day tasks. Perhaps I need to change?

I think I need to let myself be looser with my art. I do not regret this project at all, and the structure did help with preventing too much procrastination or delay, it did give me some anxiety of getting it done 'on time'. So, now that I am not 'beholden' to any particular 'project' I shall let myself paint whatever nonsense I want :)

Maybe that was the true epiphany after all?

P.S. I used the websitePic Resizeto re-size my photos to 500KB and under and I usedRatio Calculatorto work out the ratios to re-size the images in the HTML for this blog.