Now that September is over, I'm three quarters of the way through working on the Dates in a Life Project is a year-long painting project documenting the number of steps I walk each day.
Walking in September was a little bit of a challenge because I couldn't walk at dusk because there was a EEE threat due to mosquitos in many towns in eastern MA. The county did spray a few weeks ago, but that was only about 40% effective and I didn't think I could put enough bug spray on to protect myself. I haven't added paint to document that for most of the days it was a problem in September, but I will before my next update.
I use a system of symbols to represent each thousand steps. Instead of showing exactly how many I walk. The black icons represent up to 9999 steps walked each day, red represents 10,000-19,999 steps and yellow represents 20,000-29,999 steps.
To keep track of steps, I use the Health app in my iPhone.
I use the daily background color to document my daily steps in fractions of 250 steps. As an example, after 2000 steps (which would be the icon with no paint), I'm painting colors to show as close as I can to 2250, 2500, 2750, and then up to 2999, instead of then rounding up to 3000 steps.
One note about the yellow icons for walking over 20,000 steps and the yellow background color for summer. It's a problem differentiating the steps icons next to the background color. I will most likely repaint the background color to a lighter yellow before I finish the year. I also think the bright yellow is not working well with the Teal Blue for Winter and the Green for Spring. I think the lighter yellow will be much better, but I'll make my decision about it after I start using the Indian Yellow Hue in Autumn.
This painting measures 47.5" x 34" and is created with monoprinted textures of a construction fence as the background, handstamped rubber erasers on fabric which are collaged on the background grid, as well as handpainting and stitching on stiffened fabric.
