Love And Fragility, Don't Talk To Me Glazing

My mouth seems to be healing correctly. I must hope that it does so. I can't wait to be able to eat and clean my mouth normally.

Painted today, the final bit of glazing Love and Fragility, then later the glazing layer to 'Don't Talk To Me About Love'.

I added more to Love and Fragility. The smoothness of some areas made them a little too flat and boring. I referred to the idea sketch and tried to move the painting towards its mood, I think I did.

I'm no longer a surrealist, although I was this only rarely. At first I'd design paintings carefully, then at some point developed instant unconscious ideas as sketches. These were and remain the root of my paintings. At some point I aimed to stick to those ideas explicitly, as in 'Malformed Phoenix Embryo' for example, which was the idea sketch blown up and nothing more. In a way, this is the pure expression of surrealism, that unconscious idea without consideration or filtering.

I don't do this now, but compose paintings carefully with thought, in the same way as I compose poetry and music. This is because creating 'any old thing' as instantly as you think it is too easy; it especially makes bad poems. In painting, there is the skill of execution, but it's still easy compared to a well planned artwork. Now, my paintings are crafted, with visual themes or other symbols or elements, each carefully considered. This takes longer, but hopefully produces better works. The new H Beam Piper painting, and 'The Howl Quakes The Empty House', are better for having been thought of and considered over several days, and I've done this with Love and Fragility too. After pre-planning paintings for years I'm now adding elements and making adjustments as I paint, and today I did this.

There is a balance of smoothness and detail, and I think the male face in that painting would technically benefit from another layer. The source image was/is so poor that it defies an ideal. It may suffice.

'Don't Talk To Me About Love' is definitely prettier after a second layer, a work on smooth panel really benefits from layers.

Apart from smoothing and enhancement to elements like the sea, I've changed the second cross a little to look more dagger-like, as this was ambiguous in the idea sketch.

Goodbye Tooth, Painting Works

A terrible night of stomach disturbances, awake for much of it. In the morning, made a dental appointment, then performed monthly backups. The appointment was at noon, and by 12:20 the tooth which had caused 5 months of troubles was gone, so I am now in recovery from this operation.

I managed to glaze a little on Love and Fragility, in better spirits despite the soreness. I mixed magenta with transparent mars red to create the most beautiful shades of transparent scarlets, and every red between. These hues became the 'tie' in the painting. I've sketched a few ideas. Two new frames bought on Wednesday were beautiful, although small. I plan on painting a series of two for them, also inspired by Pat Benatar, whose music I also purchased on the day; 80s power-rock, just my style. The two paintings, if I decide to paint them, will be feminist scherzi.

Love And Fragility Glazing

A strangely horrible and miserable day glazing 'Love And Fragility In The Age Of Perfection'. I awoke feeling tired, lacklustre and unmotivated, but pushed myself to paint. The painting process was slow, the results largely on track, but my mood remained persistently poor. Perhaps my swollen mouth is contributing to this, perhaps this is an abscess not a mere gum injury.

The painting is about half complete. Unsure if I should paint under these circumstances again, as I'm sure the quality if affected, but I must do something. Backups tomorrow, but may paint later.

Music Pages, Hope and Death, Painting Thoughts

Today, updated the music pages of my website to include a Spotify embed, and removed the smaller booklet page images, and track list except for albums not on Spotify. This simplifies the look and the logic of the page's code:

Also submitted a track to Tom of Aldora Britain Records for a 50p promotional album to be distributed with other artists. I sent an image of my 'Abandoning Someone' painting for use as the cover. Later, glazed the small 'Hope and Death' painting. It's much better looking now and only took about 60 to 90 mins to glaze, but it took about an hour to become enthused for this necessary job.

I'm still reading Kafka and wonder if I'm like Kafka or being bent towards him with his words. At times I feel squeezed out artistically, but and yet perhaps don't. I'm eternally creative and eternally busy; it is Kafka who writes about being squeezed and when I feel these slight periods of stoppage, I recall his words and being. I tend to pause only for a short time before darting on a new and more alluring tangent, like the router table. Today I thought of darting out for wood to make the inner bevel, the insert, for one of the frames I have - yet I have no painting for that frame, so it would be a waste of time and money in the short term.

Perhaps even the router table is or was a waste of time, yet my instincts seem to work well, and many follies or diversions tend to become invaluable over time. My painting abilities, my music abilities have grown because of a drip drip of hundreds or thousands of little innovations, many fractions-of-percent's of improvement over many years.

As I age I find I have less solid focus on one thing. Years ago I would work on one game for months or years (The Heart of Aorkhan, Arcangel, both multi-year projects on which I did nothing else - to my detriment, I should have given up or expanded on other bow-strings). Now I dart between more jobs, yet this darting leads to more refinement. The process is like adding the fringes on a fern, or the last stages of evolution, compared to the solidness of the leaf and core design. Ageing itself and evolution seems to echo this. Animals from millions of years past seem to look smoother, be less detailed, somehow. The universe too, older stars are more crude and chunky, the newer ones with a wider range of elements, more detail. I am struck by these links between the micro and macro, the body and universe.

So what must I focus upon? What should my goals be?

Music Animations, Exhibition Entries

Spent this morning making 24-second vertical format videos for every music track on The Myth Of Sisyphus and War And Nuclear Love. In the afternoon, entered the next RBSA open exhibition, and prepared labels and details for the other three local exhibitions I'm taking part in; Bunbury, Tarporley, Bickerton. My mouth remains swollen and in bad shape. I felt too tired and somewhat dopey after 3pm to do much.

I should ideally prepare a study for the Telepathic Daisy painting, and start to glaze existing works now. The Good Vibrations event on Wednesday means I can't paint, then so can't paint tomorrow on a big work either.

H Beam Underpainting Complete

Completed the H Beam Piper underpainting today. Challenging due to the glazing of the text areas but I'm hopeful that challenges can be overcome.

H Beam Piper Painting Day 1, Tooth Pain Returns

Started early today by cleaning the gilding on the H Beam Piper portrait, then began the underpainting. Painting oil portraits is challenging, made more difficult by painting on a smooth panel. This was made more difficult still by being larger than life, and by having a poor resolution black and white photograph as the primary source, and made yet more difficult by the need to change the expression from mild delight into to worry. I met this challenge.

A good day of painting but tainted by tooth/gum pain, seemingly a recurrence of my problem from February. The pain has grown after lunch into an unblockable ache at time of writing. Back then, my dentist could do nothing except offer a mouth shield, which I've worn diligently each night. It has had absolutely no effect. My only choice is to cope with the pain. I pray that it will subside soon.

Cat Bat Nightmare, H Beam Piper Transfer, Framing Descartes Again

A sleepless night. Awoke at 2am and remained awake until about 7am, then slept into a nightmare. I was pursued and tormented by two witches who were perhaps my mother and another relative (both young however). They were undead and chasing me around a house and laughing. Our cat, Cat, back from the dead was there, now malevolent, and could transform into a long thin bat which had a sharp claw at the lower end, which would flick out to attack a victim. I knew this this sting was deadly and had to dodge its whip many times. I spent much of the dream running a hiding, being discovered and running again.

Cat was perhaps in my mind as it was recently the 6th anniversary of her death; she once caught a bat in out garden. The bat in my dream was primarily inspired by an object in the Telepathic Daisy painting I drew out yesterday, a shape representing the spectre of death inspired by a rag of clothing in the wind in Wyeth's 'Christina's World'.

I worked today as I could. First, tracing over the H Beam Piper drawing to the new panel. This time I transferred the book text using a laser print on newsprint. This thin paper jammed the printer every time (I tried thrice) but perhaps because of this, the toner was not set and remained loose and dusty on the paper - perfect. I pasted GAC100 on the substrate and stuck the (mirror image) paper down. Once dry, it was easy to wet and rub away the paper for a very good transfer of the image, and archival, flat, and suitable for oil painting over. When drying I applied gold size and new gilding, so the panel is now ready to paint.

Then, work on a new frame. I've decided to enter the Descartes painting into the next RBSA exhibition (my first attempt at an entry there since 2019 - I say attempt, but I've been lucky in getting something in every time I had tried at that liked gallery - I can only hope for this again). Its frame is shared between three paintings of the same size, including the Cromwell portrait which will be in Nantwich Museum at the time, so I need to prepare a new frame. An ideal time to test my new router one my think - but no; I have no money for wood, yet do have some old framing wood in stock, so have decided to use the last couple of lengths to create a new frame. Two 2.4M lengths are needed for this big frame, so I started the first step of gluing the decorative flat front piece to one behind, leaving a 10mm recess.

After that, tracing over the Telepathic Daisy drawing. I'll paint some portraits for next years RBSA Portrait Prize. I wonder if this Descartes painting would have counted? Perhaps. Many of my portrait ideas will be surrealistic looking, of course, such as the Kafka.