I neglected to do a step-by-step photo record for this one, partly because of laziness but also because it sometimes feels like someone constantly looking over my shoulder when I do that. Having someone watching usually leads me to focus on one innocuous area until the observer gets bored and goes away. Probably a bit irrational since I don't really know when someone looks at the progress pictures online, or if anyone even does. Despite not having many progress pictures to post, I still made up little bits of witty banter to describe the activities of each day of work. Sadly, with no impetus to record these thoughts they have mostly been lost into the haze of time and memory. One obvious aspect of this painting is that it consists of several different layers. During the first few days this made working on it rather fun, because there were so many possibilities for each of these layers. It also made dividing the days up easier in that I could choose to work on the buildings, or people, or flooring or whatever suited my mood for any particular session. While working on the buildings an interesting phenomenon occurred. A sort of carrying over of the mindset I adopt while painting to the waking world. When I went outside, instead of seeing buildings and just letting my mind categorize them as such and move on, instead it broke them down into the component parts, a visual analysis that happens when I try to draw something. It can get a bit disorienting when the object classification part of your brain stops working and instead you start seeing splotches of color, form and lines. Another interesting thing that happened was a sort of rudimentary analysis of the possible symbolism and metaphor that seemed to start appearing on the canvas. It was strange because this seemed to happen in parallel to actually drawing it, and seemed to be more a series of disconnected observations and not actually impacting the subject matter coalescing on the canvas. One interpretation that came to mind was that the buildings are metaphorical people, and the people inside the building are kinda like the different shards that make up people's personalities. A bit disconcerting was that fact that the building that we are seeing the inside of is the only one that is crumbling and destroyed. It is hard to see any of my paintings as anything other than somewhat abstracted selfportraits of my mindspace at any particular time, so this foreground building naturally seems like some sort of representation of myself. The question of why my building is the only one that is crumbling made me wince a bit. I think that pretty much covers it.