Painting Book

More steady work on the painting book for the past two days. Reading and researching a lot, but I must remember that the most important parts of the book are the parts that can't be found elsewhere, those unique insights gained by my experience.

Good Vibrations, Guitar Hooks

A regular visit to Congleton Library's Good Vibrations event. Valuable as performance, but I found it all difficult, difficult to even match chords to time, never mind singing at the same time. The best results were those of single notes or leads along with the tune, though this depends on enough other musicians to handle the chord and main melody. I need to practice this much more.

After that, I some nice DIY work putting up some guitar hooks for Deborah. The heads of the screws supplied with the hooks didn't fit into them. I needed to re-drill the holes bigger because I had no screws with smaller heads. Drilling into the wall was as hit and miss as ever; one hole hollow, one as rock solid a metal, unable to drill more than 15mm. In the end, however everything worked out well. I cut down a rawl plug and used a shorter screw for the 15mm hole (for an acoustic guitar, the weight was inconsequential, one good screw would hold it).

Writing: Underpainting, Shading, Glazing

More days of writing, underpainting, shading, glazing. 31,402 words so far. ArtsLab number 5 is also now online thanks to Ray Hayes. Tomorrow we'll be going to Good Vibrations.

Writing

More writing, on impasto, metal substrates. Lots of time was taken up with research. Writing, deleting, writing. 25,012 words.

Oil Painting Book

A day of writing, about underpaintings and plastic surfaces. Everything is taking a long time due to research. Word count 22,760.

ArtsLab, Painting Book

Spend the morning updating the ArtsLab text, in preparation for any possible re-uploads of it to MixCloud. Added four more episodes to my account there, chosen by importance. I chose the first appearance of Deborah Edgeley, and the interviews with the since deceased Ian Parr and Dorli Nauta, and the first episode of Series 2, where the new format first appeared, complete with an interview by Jonathan Tarplee.

Worked from 13:00 writing and researching my book on painting, today mostly writing about imprimaturae. This book is taking, will take, a long time. I'd prefer it to be done in a few weeks like my novella, but I feel it will take several months.

SFXEngine v2.03, LFASS, ArtsLab

A full day. Began by updating SFXEngine, after discovering a small bug in my waking night. This led to discovering a larger bug (well, more like an error). I realised that I'd limited the Sine, Triangle, and Pulse waves to -24/+24 when this should be -48/+48. This was all fixed, tested and made live by 12:30.

Then, the new Fall in Green CDs arrived. I scanned and filed these, and did some more music admin regarding UPC codes. The admin of music is endless.

After that, I finally continued writing Oil Painting From Beginning To Master And Beyond, then launched the new SFXEngine pack. This evening, I'm typing up episode descriptions and track lists for the 118 ArtsLab episodes, to make it easier to upload the information to MixCloud (or any other platform) in future. This is a few hours work, but hopefully worth it.

20x20 Paintings, David Lynch, Zelenskyy, Bierstadt

I awoke early after many vivid dreams. I knew I had to paint today and started slowly. I looked at some paintings in the book '1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die' while listening to 'The Life Scientific' on Radio 4. At 10am I started painting.

The four works to paint were: 'The Magic Of Drama', 'So Many Profound Ways', 'Repercussions Of The Decline', and 'The Days Of Kronos'. All were 20x20cm, and I needed to paint all today, as they'll be sold for £20 each, far too little to be worth putting time into. This is the sort of challenge I like. I chose the titles at random using Wiki Quote, and had no plans or preconceptions, except that the first title, when chosen, suggested to me David Lynch, who's death a few weeks ago touched me deeply.

Thus, the first painting became a portrait, with a strangely angelic Elephant Man. The sky became smoke, as per a old plan for a Lynch portrait with smoking eyes and hair. The second painting became a portrait of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It needed a second theme, so I combined his image with a painting by the American romantic painter, Albert Bierstadt. His heroic portrayal of the American landscape would, I thought, be an ideal emotion to add. These themes: David Lynch, The Elephant Man, Albert Bierstadt, and Crows became themes, with Ukraine a tangible theme not present visually except for Zelenskyy here, and for the yellow and blue of their flag; colours the world has come to know.

The third painting became a portrait of a screaming girl from The Elephant Man, but in blue to a flaming sky and forest, from the Bierstadt sunset. The fourth painting became a simpler portrait of Lynch, but here blending into Bierstadt and smoke. I was struck by the fact that Lynch often used smoke and steam as antagonists, symbols of fear and evil; particularly in The Elephant Man, yet, he professed a love of smoking cigarettes. He died of emphysema, also indirectly killed by the California wildfires, so smoke, his nemesis in film became his ultimate killer. Were his smoke fears a manifest warning?

Painting felt good, welcome. I completed all four paintings by 17:30 as planned. How sad I remain that I can't paint more, that no commercial gallery to date has given me a break. I can survive, like van Gogh, without sales or support, but things would be so much easier (not to mention profitable for all concerned!) if I had a sales outlet. I would certainly paint far more, have painted more; paint larger and more ambitiously, have painted larger and more ambitiously. There's no point in painting a large masterpiece here, as I know it would sit here as unseen as most of my medium-large work, and I have no more space. My lack of painting, when I can now paint better than ever before, saddens me, but I will do the best I can with the circumstances and tools that fate decrees. With these small competitions and exhibitions I have at least a little outlet, and one I've always taken used.

The Letters From a Square Spoon CDs are due to arrive tomorrow.

Today's painting has made me feel like an artist again, revived my soul. Onwards we must charge.