I've felt tired all day today. Dali said that the most important thing for a painter is a good night's sleep. I would also add that diet is at least as important because a bad diet or eating at the wrong time disrupts both sleep at night and concentration in the day.
Today I've finished most of the underdrawing to Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, my largest (but not most spectacular) picture planned for the year so far. I've also done a bit more composition work on another called Neurosigil Of Global Fame which is proving problematical because I need an angel figure and they are difficult to invent. Also my virtual male model lacks genitals. I want some swirly silk that blows in the wind like Caravaggio's. I have the cloth but that's difficult to photograph without a studio and a gigantic fan.
It is widely known that Caravaggio, Gentileschi and their ilk staged scenes as realistically as possible using ropes and pulleys and crutches to support the models and props. The high budgets of such master works indicate why they came out so well. For the first time shadows could be cast from multiple objects realistically, instead of each picture element composed separately. That staging perhaps indicates why chiaroscuro became popular, an indication of technology driving creativity.
