AI meets time and project management

I remember when the word app meant nothing to anyone except maybe a dental or doctor’s appointment,  but now its connotation brings up the potential for a tiny little program on your phone that will magically manage all of things that are confusing, confounding, and consuming.  Since the ipad and the iphone came into my life I’ve always held a healthy respect for reviewing  whatever are the newest apps for  better use of time and project management.  I love writing, painting, color palettes, self publishing, filming, sewing, knitting, home decoration projects and of course gardening.  My mind always says I will write the next chapter, I will write down the processes of the evolution of each painting and film it.  I will compare color palettes on paintings and in my wardrobe. I will write my next book and plan for the children’s book about the little dachshund named, Birdie.  I will learn to illustrate and color on procreate for this children’s book. I will take an online course on cartooning and coloring. I will progress through the different stages of planning, filming, and editing in order to complete a youtube video. Why not nightly cut out a pair of pants and several shirts? How about buying new yarn to make sweaters to go with the pants I created last fall? And of course I could stretch canvas over the wooden panels I use as a headboard and create a masterpiece for the bedroom and of course I will record what time of the year I planted lavender and when each and every flower blooms and with or without a certain amount of rain.   Well, I’m 75 and I have yet to organize my projects in a way that advances each pursuit more forward than the intuitive organic method of my slightly scattered brain.      

I tried Evernote…..the father of many apps. I still have an account.  Then there were so many to do apps. There was asana, todoist, Blinkist, clickup, bubblup. I tried they all and they have faded into oblivion and exist somewhere in the cloud still accessible on my phone. The last one I tried was NOTION and I must admit it is a stupendous program. I think I fell into that rabbit hole for three-six months and it is good.  You store everything of interest, every project, plan, appointment, date. It’s great.The problem is that I lose interest because it requires entering, checking in and participating pretty actively in the process of being organized constantly. I had to spend 30-40 minutes a day just keeping it up with changes. All this led me to conclude that I need a pencil, a piece of paper, and a planner which made for fun as I created book after book but the competition to make the planner a “work of art” in itself with colors, doodles, illustrations, collages and more, was so great, I folded and dropped out of the discipline. 

Along comes AI. I have watched over other’s shoulders who played with ai features was intrigued AI and it’s potential for art and I watched and listened while others wrote ai blurbs, created documents, photographs, and stories, but I really think that human creativity with art and writing is one of the god given joys to the human race so I won’t be using ai for art or writing,  but I stumbled on an APP that’s making use of it today in a way that I find magnificent and that is to act as my “advisor and assistant.”  It’s called MOTION and suggests the motion of moving projects through the timeline to completion. If I can get all the “steps” for each project entered into the pretty simple format it then does the managing of time for me. I hope it can understand that one thing ahas to be completed before the next step begins but I do like the idea of it being the secretary and doing all the checks and reschedules, (Which I do have to do a great deal) In art the muse doesn’t necessarily show up at the easel on time nor the keyboard.   I shall give it a try

I started this painting last Monday and it’s taken a week of tweaks to get it to a place that I like and I still may go for more.  If I had posted “complete painting on Tuesday” and here it is a week later, I’d be re scheduling the work anticipation load daily.  Now until it’s checked off, Motion does the magical reschedule being cognizant of other time restraints on my calendar.   

I like the deep colors

MAGIC happens when you stick to it and you’re not afraid.  AFRAID of painting, you say? Yes, sometimes it’s just good enough to let it go but you know there are “issues.”  I don't mean to imply that I created a masterpiece but I actually do have a feeling of completion that I can get when I challenge myself to stay with it until I can walk past her and not feel the urge to change something and I don’t cringe..  She was a little lopsided in the chair and the left side of the painting has the steep line of her arm unbroken so I had to make sure the other side had some balance and I had to get that not only with color but with value. There are color changes in the value range and I think that harmonizes as well as balances out her figure on the 12 x 16 canvas (3/4) Ratio. When I’m painting my mind is flashing between the two dimensional composition of the surface and then flips to the third dimension as I try to make the shoulder round into the background and make sure the pressure points of her body are touched with shades of a warm color so it suggests a real breathing person. 

This is a photograph of a young woman that I have done in the past but I always feel that I’m missing something either in the composition or in the color harmonies. In my more experienced years, I find it rewarding to revisit compositions I’ve done in the past.  My head KNOWS the dress is a deep blue and when I go down that road I just can’t seem to pull it together. It becomes too cool. Winslow Homer’s watercolors are masterful and dealing with what they call “local color” and the effect of the sun on it. It seems so simple, blue dress with the sun (yellow) on it makes it appear green….ah but the correct green and the sun isn’t the only thing enveloping the surface of the dress. On the other side of the sun there is the blue sky and perhaps a sullen cloud that are leaving a mark.  Anyway it’s a challenge so I combined the blue and a sunlit green and then found myself a little more comfortable taking the painting to a warmer direction everywhere. Of course I have factor in the wicker!  I do think figures sparkle in a warm palette and I am going to incorporate some version of yellow into most of my colors for awhile and try to make warmer vibrations coming off the surface of the canvas.  That area down in the lower left needed to be dark but a little lighter than the chair and when I mixed the yellow ochre into the magenta it not only darkened it but created a little bit of a vibration.  Often this is accomplished by mixing the complement or split completment into the color.

As I sit and stand at the easel while painting on this my mind visits a day several years ago, not too many, when I drove down from Napa to the Legion of Honor museum where they were having an exhibit of Anders Zorn paintings and pastels. If you don’t know him, do look him up. He painted mostly with 4 colors and two of them were black and white!  The other two were yellow ochre and some shade of red. Many people say it was cadmium red.  I personally can’t get cadmium red to do much. It seems dull. I should give it another try, though. My favorites are the light version of it and also I like the grumbacher red which is a cooler version.  There are definitely paintings of his that are in those limited four colors but when he does an outdoor scene he is able to get a green.  Yellow ochre and black will make a green but it’s a warm pea type green whereas he achieves a blue green when he’s painting vegetation near the water and my guess he’s going with a viridian. I must look and see if viridian was used in his day.  The history of color is so enlightening when you try to decipher the paintings in the historical context.   

Well I will close for now. I like this painting and I did put it in my online store if you’re interested www.sallyrosenbaumfineart.com and also www.sallyrosenbaumartgroup.com.  It’s also available as a cover on writing books sold exclusively on amazon. Www.amazon.com/author/sallyrosenbaumfineart. Until next time when I give some serious thought to painting a very very large painting.