Painting Update

It looks like January will be busy and with the amount of paintings I've now planned I'll probably have to start work before the light improves anyway. One picture about man's acquisition of flight has been abandoned. The picture lacked the fundamental emotion that a painting should have according to my own rules. Instead I've started some preparation work on two new pictures, one complex figure painting about doomed love, and a second picture about making progress in an endeavour and how sometimes going back is not an option even if the future is uncertain. Those should be my last planned for 2007 unless I discover that I have more time than I can currently estimate. As always, there are more ideas than I could feasibly paint. Music and (importantly) sound effects must also feature heavily in 2007, taking up at least half of January.

Byting

More work on paintings this week, but I managed to complete copying 70 reviews to Bytten 2.0. I expect I'll be byting this Christmas (that sounds like an Elvis song), as work on the site hots up before launch. Gunstorm II was released today after a few months of testing too. I've only been working on two paintings but both are rather large and complicated and so need a lot of consideration. For the first time in years I'm unsure what to do over the next six months. There are some certainties, more work on Bytten and more sound for IndieSFX, but whether to focus my main creative time on artwork or computer games is the ultimate question. I've had some good feedback and local press coverage from my art, but selling paintings is difficult and the way I paint will take me a year to complete enough for even a modest exhibition.

New Bytten and More

Most of this week and last have been spent on drawings and preparation for next year's paintings, interspersed with the odd group of review conversions for the new Bytten. Today though, not much at all has been done. I was hoping to sketch out all of a large picture of Saint Andrew, but perhaps Andrew was offended by the anger in the picture and so made sure that my progress was interrupted by several porlocks. In the end I had to escape the house and after a day of frustration and depression the huge piece of paper has little more than four solitary faint lines upon it. To make up for this I painted a cornfield, the image on the front of a birthday card, and later converted another five reviews. Not a completely useless day then, but close.

Summer Yesterday

My latest song, a ballad in the Carpenter's style. This is about a painter who forgets how to paint.

Summer Yesterday

The leaves have all turned brown.
The skies have all turned grey.
A blackbird makes the sound
now you have gone away.
I don't know when you left,
I can't pinpoint the day.
I know when you were here though,
a summer yesterday.

The garden full of mist
with silver drops of dew.
An empty spider web
makes memories of you.
The leaves have all turned brown.
My hair has all turned grey.
And you are in a picture
of summer yesterday.

I saw you in a dream,
the god inside the sun.
I saw you in the marks
in everything I'd done.
I saw you in myself,
the parts that fade away.
The leaves are always green in
our summer yesterday.

Wanda at 4am

There's something about 4am that makes it perfect for writing songs and poetry. I don't know what it is but being fully awake doesn't work. Anyway, here is an example from last night.

Wanda

My girl is called Wanda.
We ride on her Honda.
We go over yonder
to wander and ponder.

There's not much beyond her,
and no one to bond her,
that's why I grow fonder
of fondling Wanda.

Bytten

I've been updating Bytten over the last couple of days. Next I'm back to artwork and hope to plan a few more paintings to paint next year. I'm unlikely to start any in this dark season. I've spotted a new football competition though, although they don't return the entries. What sort of artist would paint something that will ultimately be lost/destroyed? That would be torture and I probably wouldn't enter an original even if winning was guaranteed. A commission might be on the cards too, although I don't really know the details and have heard the information third hand. An old workmate of my fathers wanted him to paint a biblical fresco at a local church and it's possible that I could do it instead. I suspect that if I did it would take me as long as Leonardo took to paint the last supper. Part of me would love to try a spectacular scene in the Italian Renaissance style though, and I feel confident of doing it better than anyone else.

One Love Report

Well, the One Love award ceremony is over and I didn't win but was not disappointed. There was a lot of high quality work there, with some that was less than high quality but the judges made a fair assessment in my opinion, awarding what I'd consider to be among the good ones. A few caught my eye: John Afflick's angels swooping on a stadium, a picture by Mick Davies that was like (I think) James Ensor's great picture about Christ entering Belgium (the Ensor picture was better though), a nice impressionist painting of South African footballers by Renata Jansen, a huge colourful night scene by Xavier Pick, some colourful historical-esque fine paintings by Alan Salisbury, and I liked the second prize winner a lot too, a crumpled felt Subbuteo mat. I've also had a photo session today and interview for the Crewe Chronicle so I should get a mention in the local press. The joy of making the final 80 out of over 800 entries was tarnished not by not winning (plenty of good pictures, like the ones I mentioned, didn't win) but by my computer being infected with a horrible virus which led to much nervousness and work today. I'm still not sure that the machine is clean but my three anti-virus tools all say clean (it should be said that two said 'clean' when it wasn't).