Record May Heat, Frame Gilding

Too hot to work, though I try. Went out this morning to join Deborah, and for most of the day read more painting research. Rehearsed one tune for Wednesday and packed and wrapped artwork for delivery, plus measuring and weighing it all.

Also applied artificial gold leaf to a frame which I've now sprayed twice. The spraying looks fine, but the frame is badly crackled with varnish and the paint is not adhering, just a slight knock can cause it to flake off. The gilding is poor, it looks ugly and would not adhere, and it's impossible to mask off for accuracy as masking tape will peel off the spray paint. This frame was intended for 'The Empty House', but it's too meagre and too poor for such a good quality painting, so I'll throw the frame away and make another. Of the frames I've restored or improved, two were failures and this is one, no bad loss as these were cheap charity shop frames. This one has served its purpose as inspiration for the painting. I'm now more able to make my own frames which loom substantially better than found ones, though of course there is a cost of materials for a custom frame.

Glazing The Blood Of Winter, The Works

Glazing 'The Blood Of Winter' this afternoon. I rarely enjoy glazing and never look forward to its chore. It always improves a painting but it feels like I've already done the bulk of the creativity. Here you can see the underpainting and glazed result, though you'll never appreciate the subtlety of the layering in a digital photo. The shadows are grey in the underpainting but have blues and greens in the glaze. The glazes are very thinly rubbed on, delicately affecting the colour. If glazing with the same colours, the result is simply smoothing the underpainting, not special. A principle is to glaze warm colours over cold and vice versa, but in general we're adding colour itself, new colours, more variation and more intensity than on the underpainting.

Half of the day was taken up with preparation of some watercolours for Knutsford and helping my father with his stamp collection. I listened to Queen's The Works for the first time today too, a good album. I must aim to write my songs more with Freddie's voice in mind as it's a range that works for me. In the past I've been too limited, I was growing in voice and still very much am. The songs which use these higher notes sound better now, or will sound better if and when I re-record them.

One of my early songs, inspired by Queen's 'We Are The Champions' and from 2003, is called 'I Won In The End'. It feels too self-triumphal to sing, too reminiscent of 'Tomorrow Belongs To Me' from Cabaret. Last night I thought that it could be simply changed to 'You Won In The End', making it instead a tribute song.

Writing Oil Painting From Beginning To Master And Beyond

Decided and managed to paint an underpainting yesterday, the speed and joy of working on a small painting. The idea, The Loneliness Of The Sun, was from a few years ago. Perhaps I should have painted today, I have 'The Blood Of Winter' and the 'H Beam Piper' paintings to glaze, but I didn't remotely feel like it.

Instead, I read more of Max Doerner's book and started the big job of reordering and writing my own book on oil painting, provisionally entitled Oil Painting From Beginning To Master And Beyond. Already at 45,000 words, although this draft is very haphazard. The 2025 draft covered everything in a tree-like structure, but I want to rewrite and re-organise it all. I must make it more personal and more entertaining, warmer, but still contain as much as I can about the crafts and skills I've learned.

Frames Spraying, Singing

Sprayed some frames first thing as I was unhappy with the violet look of the 'Hope and Death' frame. Looks much better now.

Then singing practice for the first time in a few weeks. How good it feels, and how much better at singing I am now than before, than ever before. Listening back to tracks from Secret Electric Sorcery, from a mere 4 years ago, fills me with shame and horror at how bad my vocals sound compared to my abilities today. This is a good thing of course, we should be improving over time. I know and always knew that this vocal phase of my music, from around 2019 or so, was one of growth and study, but this means that, over the many albums of this era, I'm rarely happy enough with the results to promote or share them.

This fills me with energy and optimism. I know I can do so much better now, so am as eager as ever to improve the many older works, the long process of re-recording. Some albums which have already been re-recorded once, like Burn Of God, could also sound much better today - though I must hope and assume that I'll feel the same in 5 years about today's albums (assuming my life circumstances are broadly the same, which is in doubt).

Painting holds less appeal for me because my improvements in painting, though there is certainly some, is not as powerful as the improvements I've been making in music, singing and mixing. It can be harder to find challenges, to see the taller mountain when we reach the peak of each smaller one. The tallest of mountains in all things should be our goal, and once attained, taller mountains must be located. This challenge is my principle fire.

Art Photography, RBSA Summer Show

Today, photographed 'The Empty House' and 'Can There Be A Refuge From The Terror?'. The process takes a few hours, setting up my lighting rig, the photography flat-bed, tripods, 15mm tubes for the camera rig etc. Glad to get it over with. Heard that I've not got a painting into the RBSA Summer Show. 900 works submitted, 200 selected, so it's not easy to be selected on a purely statistical basis. I used to enter the RBSA regularly. Of my last attempts, 2 in 2019 and 2 in 2018, nothing was selected. Prior to that, my last entry was in 2014 at which I was selected and 'commended', and before that I tended to always have something selected. I suspect that there are more artists now, and that the choice of entries each time is more random than any other factor - those who are selected now are just as likely to not be selected next time.

I'm disappointed by this, but not hugely so as the work to reframe Descartes and the cost of the trip is considerable. Perhaps the most frustrating aspect is that 'Self Inspection At Theresienstadt' is, I think, a brilliant work that is as relevant now as ever, relevant and important on many levels, and yet it's been rejected from three different competitions. It's also an excellent painting on a technical level.

Daisy Underpainting Complete

Second day of underpainting the daisy painting. I've started to like to add elements whole painting, beyond the plan. In this case The pièce de résistance was adding a glimpse of van Gogh's 'Wheat Field With Crows' (with a hint of a face) at the base. This is actually in mars violet, red not purple.

It made me think of a maxim: Paint every painting as though it were your last!

I didn't enjoy painting today, it was a chore. I listened to Queen's The Game and A Kind Of Magic as I painted, a slight contrast to yesterday's 1st and 3rd Brahms' Symphonies. The grass greens match Wyeth's well, all with Harding Naples (Titanium Antinomy Chromium Oxide - the top has cracked, a mark of this generally shoddy quality brand; this colour is excellent however, certainly better than Winsor and Newton's version - if only Blockx made it!), black, white, and a hint of chromium oxide via the lovely Blockx Lamoriniere Green, which is certainly more beautiful than any other chromium oxide I've found.

After painting, dashed to Tesco and back at a speed of about 5 miles per hour, which Google commends as a good run for a beginner (I walked). Then photographing some pages of my father's stamp collection.

Daisy Underpainting Day 1

First day of underpainting 'The Earthly Concerns Of A Telepathic Daisy'. The day started with two small disasters; the vertical for the day/night division was accidentally missing from the underpainting, and the Polymorph head for my resting (maul-like) stick snapped as if brittle - this the first time that Polymorph has ever broken, it's really a super-plastic. These small mistakes were bypassed.

This is my first big canvas work in years, since 'Revelation' in 2017, and before that 'The Cusp of Love and Hatred' in 2015. I'm out of practice with larger works, but there's little difference in technique when working larger. The brushes are scaled up; I don't have too many large brushes. Today's size 12 hog from 'Art Discount' worked well. I find that bigger brushes can be too long, and thus too floppy. Ideally the hairs would be a thicker and stiffer too, just like a small brush scaled up, but this is not the case.

Another difference is the amount of paint, judging this can be difficult, and the larger amount of mess. A good degree of the skill of oil painting is learning to stay clean and keep things neat; this is harder when working with more paint. Finally, the surface is different. I love working with all surfaces. This 'Top Gun' canvas has great tooth, but is not at all absorbent; both good attributes. I tend to have to put more paint on than most surfaces, the canvas pits seem to require filling, so much more paint is used, but the result looks better and is easier to blend and modify; an overall more resilient result.

In progress, 82x82cm.

Humdrum Jobs, Spotify Streams

Packed works for exhibitions over the weekend. Today, an eye test and taking stock of works in progress. Scanned two more finished works, with two more to photograph this week in preparation for future competitions. I feel exhausted often, but perhaps this is due to lack of charging into a big project; I relish challenges and tight deadlines. There is much to do this year in programming and music, but the paintings in progress need to dry a little between layers. There is always more to do if I seek it, but choosing which is the best use of my limited time is never easy.

I noted today that The Myth Of Sisyphus has had a few Spotify streams, my first of 40 or more albums to have any. This is probably because I've promoted this album a bit on social media. I've never tried this before, even now it's very time consuming. I'll continue with future releases. In actuality the boost to my listenership is a very gradual climb over years rather than a rapid and recent one. At this rate it would still take centuries for me to have a hit, yet there is a quantum-leap factor here; energy builds up in silence then leaps up rapidly. As Fall in Green we've also had a few listens too, particularly the recent album.