Painting Season 2026

Music is done, time to charge into painting. It normally takes me a day or two to change modes. I started today by updating Argus, as the logical thought of programming can help calm me before a change of direction. Annoyingly, Windows Defender flagged the Steam-wrapped exe as a virus, this is the first false-positive I've encountered on this PC. It meant submitting the file to Microsoft (in hope) and telling my computer at least to accept it.

After this, I decided to look at the frames I've got and those bought over the last year or two. It can be hard to find an incentive to create art without a deadline, competition or opportunity. This year, unlike any, I now have the support of a loving gallery with the Oil Art Advisory, with Zoe and Max, who despite their differing personalities I seem to feel an affinity with both. So, I have the opportunity to show my works - this is a massive, transformative help for my art. Still, I work best with ambitious goals and tight limits, so I've decided, this year, to aim to paint something for each of the new frames I have in stock. This amounts to 10 paintings from tiny to huge.

Today I spray painted several frames, and the results were brilliant, much better than I'd hoped. The all-gold or light frames look so much better darker. I think now, my most favourite frame stkle is black (or very dark brown, warm black) with an inner border, inner bevel, of gold.

The frame top left there was gaudy flat gold, but when the inner part was masked and the outer sprayed lightly, the result is amazing. The elaborate resin cast frame in the foreground was actually a sort of cream with brown highlights. Again, it looks fantastic in black/dark brown.

Other frames were worked on. The dusty 'velvet' frame had a flaky insert in faded gold. I've sprayed this with thin black to great effect. I'll add gold leaf at some point soon (as I will to that resin frame above).

I also attended to the oak Victorian frame. This had a gold leafed beading insert which was so loose that it had fallen apart. I've since glued it. I was in two minds about the frame, whether to leave it in its dusty and aged state, or try to make it look new again, and whether to make this central beading removable, or replace it, or refurbish it. In the end I re-stained the frame in dark brown, so the frame looks like new again, and I firmly glued in the insert without updating its gilding. It was, when I took it apart, held in place with some wooden wedges which were newer than the frame (and the watercolour in it was c. 1950s, so that shows the age of this). I thought of using Polymorph plastic to create firmer wedges, knowing that Polymorph is not adhesive, and is reversable, so I did this, but the results were messy, and still rickety due to that lack of adhesion. I decided, in the end, to use hot melt glue, to permanently fix the beading into the frame. This is better than epoxy clay (which I used for the Tiger Moving Nowhere frame), but it looks a little messy and sad compared to the majesty of the old wood. The frame is a little bent, the insert was very bent, so perhaps this extreme plastic work will, at least, add a lot of needed stability.

A glance at my ideas books has already liberated several ideas, plus those left in progress from last year. I have quickly assigned ideas to frames. One called 'All The Broken Hearted' for that elaborate frame. 'The Empty House' for a plan wood frame which will now be black and gold. I've assigned one called 'Don't Talk To Me About Love' to the Tudor-looking Spanish oak frame

Whether the frame is Tudor or Spanish is anyone's guess, but it looks that way to me (oak and old it certainly is). The idea, as you can see, is rather simple however. Again, there's a Catholic-ness in there.

WANL Videos Complete

Another full day, which began by dropping off paintings to Nantwich Museum for the open. Delivery is from 10:00 to 16:00 over 4 days and we (quite typically) arrived at 09:58 on the first day.

After that, charged into more video work. I had a few changes to make, but much of the long day was spent rendering and processing the video data. Each video takes about twice as long to render as to play, then about the same to convert from raw to mp4. I needed to convert some videos three times: once with subtitles, once without, and one in lower quality for archiving, and that assumes that a first version has no problems or things to change. Ultimately it took until 16:30 to complete the final drafts of the 6 videos, at which point I could start work on the Spotify Canvases.

It's now 20:00 and all videos are complete and uploaded. The full album project is now complete.

At times during the day, while waiting for FFMpeg to chug through the video data, I worked on some framing. I changed the glass on the 'Home Life' painting, and tidied up two other frames, including one I bought today in Nantwich.

War And Nuclear Love Videos

Spent much of yesterday on art admin regarding the six paintings I took to the Oil Art Advisory. Today I reflected on the fact that my painting prices have about doubled in the past 5 years, that they had doubled in the 5 years before that, and that they're probably 10 times higher than when I first started to exhibit 15 years ago. Part of this is due to greater professionalism; more spent on more costs for higher quality work, more people in a bigger chain who take more of a cut. Another of yesterday's jobs was tidying up a very old and flaky frame bought with a glass painting intact and (oddly) a velvet lining, taking it apart for future use.

Today, charged into making videos for War And Nuclear Love. The results are all very colourful and glowing, like an electric pinball machine. The fundamental idea uses horizontal red lines and yellow stars which move and dance to different instruments. What was a red 'slice' on the cover art became blue. The result evokes an American flag, which it perfect for 'Radioactive' and the title track.

I took a video of myself for 'War and Nuclear Love', using a mask to add it to the animation, and did something similar for the 'Post-Apocalyptic Playground'. This track is perhaps little too bright, for the tune which is, in my mind, rather grey and dreary in mood, like The Night of the Living Dead. 'After The Battle' uses out-takes and clips from Jabberwocky. It's now 20:30 and I've just finished the first drafts. I expect that I'll spend all day making little changes and finalising the Spotify Canvases. These must be as good as I can make them given my time budget.

I've also posted my first animation to TikTok and will start doing this regularly, as I do with paintings on BlueSky.

War And Nuclear Love Finalised, Poetry Night, Knutsford

Two full days. Finalised all album admin yesterday; War And Nuclear Love is now scheduled for release on 3 July 2026. Then started work on some full frame videos, incorporating the subtitles. This stage is complete.

In the evening attended the Creative Crewe Poetry Night. Carol is always a joy to meet and full of enthusiasm. If the aim of a performance evening is excitement, showmanship, and pzazz, this had none - it was as dreary as a Catholic funeral, and about half of the poems were poor simple rhymes by simple folk. No amplification meant that the poets were too quiet, many completely inaudible. Despite this, several of the poems and performances were very good. One highlight was a prose poem by Iain Chalmers who with great brilliance described a vehicle crash of books, with each genre of book; limericks, 'chic lit', medical encyclopediae; affecting the description of the event. The inability to hear the poems, and the incredible slowness and poor organisation of the night, which overran by 30 minutes, were downsides, but the warm company and meeting friends there a highlight, and perhaps this is the main reason for such events anyway.

Today, a visit to the Oil Art Advisory, which is always a joy. Delivered 6 paintings to them and collected 4 frames to fill with something.

I also realised that my 'Monsters of Spring' painting on BlueSky was flagged as a sexually explicit image, and hid it, which I found annoying. Some slight 'nudity' of a computer model true. Such labels may harm my reputation on there, I'd have happily deleted the image instantly if I'd have noticed this label. I'll avoid any hints of nudity from now on.

One small job today, updated Prometheus to allow floating point beats-per-minute. Of course the program uses floating point speed internally anyway. There are occasions when this setting may be useful, for example if you need to half the tempo of a song which is 135 BPM. This change was pretty simple to implement but isn't fully tested.

WANL Album Admin

A satisfying and full day of work on War And Nuclear Love. First assembled the sheet music for publication and finalised the lyrics booklets, then made a slight lyric change. Some words in the title track were:

I take my fuse
And masturbate as I muse on

I changed this to:

I take my fuse
And I think of God as I muse on

The word 'masturbate' would label the song, and therefore album, as 'explicit' and would limit the scope of its release, which was something of a factor in my deciding to change it, but the primary reason is that the word was a distraction in the song, overly strong. The more subtle (yet still implied) second version is a better lyric.

This change meant re-singing that line, which I did today, and invisibly blended it with the older take. With this, the music was complete. The album was listed in draft on Bandcamp, sent for release, and updated on my website. Also added more artwork pages, so now the iTunes booklet will include the lyrics. Filed and deleted the temporary files, the vocal recordings etc., created the MP3 stub files (if I ever need MP3 versions), proofed the music, burned an archive CD, and lots of other important admin work.

Most of the album is now complete, but I still need to create Spotify Canvas animations, full screen animations for YouTube, and register the music with more music authorities. I can do that when the release is approved.

This evening, made some preparations and announcements for the sale on Steam.

War And Nuclear Love Work

Final day of sheet music for War And Nuclear Love. At times I think that nobody will ever play any of this, and that my days, week, years of working on this tedious and difficult sheet music is pointless - but this is not certainly true; there are two main reasons. First, that nobody else bothers, and second, that data integrity has been shown to be an important driver of success and civilisation. I file and record my work in great details because such work is part of the purpose of life itself. Either way, if I'm ever to play these live I really find this useful, so a couple of days work to transcribe an album isn't so bad. I managed to transcribe the complex guitar parts in 'After The Battle' today, and the music for 'Post-Apocalyptic Playground'.

By 3pm the draft scores were complete, but I had lots more art to create, at least for the booklet and iTunes booklet, so I really needed to make a few more full CD booklet pages, and a CD surface while I'm at it, although there are no plans for a CD at the moment.

One other job today was launch the Goodreads Giveaway for The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death. This week-long promotion give away a free copy of the Kindle book, with kind requests for a review from the winners of this lottery.

War ANL Sheet Music Day 1

A full day working on the sheet music for War And Nuclear Love. Started with the more difficult tracks, first 'Radioactive', then 'Remembering Hans Blix', which required hand transcription, then the long songs 'Written on Rice', and the title track. More tomorrow.

More War ANL

A full day and evening of work on War And Nuclear Love. The tracks needed some essential final changes to the start and end parts of each track. This morning I extended the start to the title track to blend it with the prior 'Radioactive'. This won't be the case on the stream version though, only a future (and perhaps unlikely) CD version.

I then went into the garden and recorded the old rusty luggage trolley, which can fold out. Flexing this resulted in a suitably creepy metal swing sound, perfect for the zombie park on Post-Apocalyptic Playground. Then, finally recorded the vocals for the title track. I've changed some of the words. Verse 2 now reads:

Look at the switches
The flashing lights
There's something of a Christmas morning here

Handsome generals
Encourage me to play
And I've nothing better to do today

I pray and hide
God tells me he's on the side of

War and nuclear love etc.

Added the new vocals to the song this afternoon, and added some harmonies for the 3rd lines of these verses (though not the Christmas line, this sounds better without the harmony, it's more conversational than musical). The final step was the 'solo' for this song, which I'd forgotten about. I grabbed the guitar and spent an hour experimenting. Playing chords to the part seemed to sound better somehow, but nothing was quite right. I took a break at 3pm, then decided to record power chords for the final chorus (easy to play now the key is up, simply E-min, C-Maj, A-Maj, E-Maj/Emin). Then played a simple lead solo in an instant for the proper solo part. Thus, the song is complete.

I've noticed that many tracks have a slight tendency to be stronger on the left, perhaps due to my preference for that ear. I've adjusted Post-Apocalypse to match.

Overall, I'm happy with this EP, particularly the new tracks. My singing and production skills have never been better, nor has my keyboard and guitar playing, not that I've ever been much of a guitar player. So, this is a good time to at least create some music, and I am keen to get that old song of 'Written on Rice' out there; and the war theme seems to be culturally appropriate...

Some slight cover changes:

Tomorrow I'll charge into the sheet music, this may take two days.