This time last January, I decided to draw a page every day for a year. I called them “pages” because I started off by filling pages with drawings, the way I used to back in art school, but it didn’t take long before I started using each “page” to do full paintings each day. In the end, if you exclude all the full-page studies like my Frazetta or Hobbit studies, I got over 200 paintings out of this project last year. Compare that with 2012, when I wrapped up the year with a modest 13 paintings.

Originally I think my goal was to just get better at painting — and I have, don’t get me wrong. In particular, I feel way more comfortable painting in Photoshop than I did before. I still have a lot to learn, of course, but at least my problems are now painting problems and not software problems.

But what I didn’t expect — and what I ended up enjoying the most — were all the weird tangents and experiments that this project allowed me to do. My drawing time used to be so rare and precious that I always felt like I couldn’t waste it doing anatomy studies, or old master copies, or weird little novelties like pixel paintings or paperback covers. But this project gave me such an abundance of time, not only could I indulge in all these weird experiments, but I could spend weeks on them, just to fill those pages.

Looking back, those pages are the ones stand out to me now as something really special.

Week 1: New Year’s Resolution
Week 2: Color Figure Studies
Week 3: Portrait Studies
Week 4: Portrait Studies
Week 5: Landscapes
Week 6: Landscapes
Week 7: Color Experiments
Week 8: Color Experiments
Week 9: Drow Week
Week 10: Frazetta Studies
Week 11: Personal Paintings
Week 12: Personal Paintings
Week 13: Personal Paintings
Week 14: Anatomy Studies
Week 15: Anatomy Studies
Week 16: Anatomy Studies
Week 17: Costume Studies
Week 18: Costume and Armor Studies
Week 19: Armor Studies
Week 20: Armor Studies
Week 21: Armor Studies
Week 22: Speedpaintings
Week 23: Speedpaintings
Week 24: The Hobbit
Week 25: Speedpaintings
Week 26: Speedpaintings
Week 27: Speedpaintings
Week 28: Cat Paintings
Week 29: Pixel Art
Week 30: Pixel Art
Week 31: Pixel Art
Week 32: Vexel Art
Week 33: Livestreaming
Week 34: Impressions
Week 35: Impressions
Week 36: Speedpaintings
Week 37: Painterly
Week 38: Self-Portraits
Week 39: Self-Portraits
Week 40: Self-Portraits
Week 41: Paintings
Week 42: Figure Paintings
Week 43: Pulp Covers
Week 44: Pulp Covers
Week 45: Video Game Pulp Covers
Week 46: Video Game Pulp Covers
Week 47: Sketch Noir
Week 48: Sketch Noir
Week 49: Sketch Noir
Week 50: Sketch Noir
Week 51: Jane
Week 52: The End

This being my final week of the year, it seemed proper to revisit the drawings I did in week 1 and week 2, and do them again — but this time with an entire year of drawing mileage behind me.

357 of 365:

Photo Credit: Marcus J Ranum

358 of 365:

Photo Credit: Nichelle Nolan

359 of 365:

Photo Credit: Marcus J Ranum

360 of 365:

Photo Credit: Hong Ly / Tofu Girls

361 of 365:

Photo Credit: Nichelle Nolan

362 of 365:

Photo Credit: Marcus J Ranum

363 of 365:

Photo Credit: Hong Ly / Tofu Girls

364 of 365:

Photo Credit: Marcus J Ranum

And for my final painting of the year, an encore of my most viewed set of paintings, thanks to a Kotaku feature from back in November. Seeing as I did the first two, I couldn’t just let the third go unfinished:

365 of 365:

And that was my 2013, one day at a time. Thank you for watching!

This won’t be the end of new artwork from me, not by a long shot. I’ll still be painting and making artwork, just not as frequently. What I really want to do is apply some of these new art styles to larger projects — ones that require more than just one day’s worth of time! But I don’t want to give up painting for painting’s sake. I think I’ll always want to keep making art, even if it isn’t “for” anything.

If there’s anything this project has taught me, it’s that it’s not actually that hard to just sit down and paint, and finishing a painting doesn’t take nearly as much time as you think it does. Or at least, it doesn’t have to. So just sit down and paint already.

I’ve already got next year’s projects planned out, but they won’t be quite as public as this year’s. (I’ll enjoy having some creative privacy, without the pressure of having to deliver something every week.) But when I have things to show, I’ll post about them here, and on Twitter and Facebook and wherever else.

Anyway, we made it through 2013! See you next year!

As I approach the end of the year and the final weeks of this project, I’m starting to think about what my next projects will be after this one is done. This week’s pages are style tests for one of those projects. This is still just a very early preview — the final project may not resemble this at all — but I thought it might be nice to spend the second-to-last week of this project looking ahead to what’s next.

350 of 365:

351 of 365:

352 of 365:

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One more week of black and white detective drawings! This is probably the last set of these I’ll be doing, but we’ll see if that changes — if my planned topic for next week falls through, I may just do another week of these. Only two weeks to go, I can hardly believe it.

343 of 365:

344 of 365:

345 of 365:

346 of 365:

347 of 365:

348 of 365:

349 of 365:

Hi everybody!

I’m having a Holiday Sale right now on my Etsy shop! All original paintings are 50% off until January 31! (That probably makes it a Holiday + Post-Holiday Sale, but just think of it as something to spend that gift money on.) My originals are normally priced at $100 for watercolor paintings and $50 for brush paintings, so if you’ve ever had your eye on one of these, now’s the time to get it!

www.etsy.com/shop/zacharyknoles