Gynocratic Paedoparanoia Day 2, Art Thoughts

Day 2 of underpainting Gynocratic Paedoparanoia. A slower day because the figure on the left is more detailed and so requires a smaller brush. I started by carefully mixing yesterday's key colours - I store these overnight on a small white bath tile. Going was relatively easy.

You'll notice some MAMA text. I had painted this wet in wet but later decided to overpaint this and will wait for the background to dry to get a different, clearer, effect.

I finished at 3pm. I listened to music by Franz Berwald while painting, a new discovery, very good, better than Sibelius (though almost a century earlier) - I don't particularly like Sibelius, there is too little tune, his music reminds me of Mahler in that respect, though Sibelius' 5th Symphony is wonderful (apart from the silly ending). I also listened to Propaganda by Sparks which I now love, perhaps even more than Kimono My House, but the vital words are so hard to catch. It's an album of great energy. I rarely listen to music while painting, it tends to be distracting and the painting is generally worse for it, it's also more tiring to have noise present, but sometimes, if music is cycling around my mind, other music can help.

I'm pleased with the underpainting here but not with a lot of the paintings I've painted so far this year. I want to fix or repaint about half of them and feel generally dissatisfied with them, but the more recent works are better. I had forgotten key lessons and relaxed too much.

It's the last day of May, so a monthly backup day tomorrow. For the sake of efficiency I've done this tonight. A lot done this month including updating Fictive and releasing Trapped, the update to Prometheus, lots of paintings including many older ones scanned, work on the new edition of The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death, photos of the Macc press event. I'm as busy as I can be but must remember to focus on quality.

Sparks made me realise that artists are on a scale of releasing/making anything quickly, or fostering ideas to create something larger. Sometimes I spent a long time on one work (many of my games, the Dadd Cabinet, albums like Sisyphus) sometimes I create quick work and speed it out. Sparks, I noticed, are of the pile things out quickly type, I err towards that, but I can see the merits in taking time to produce something better, providing that a plan for these masterworks is in place first, and slow and constant progress is made. The Myth of Sisyphus and Nightfood did benefit from considered thought and planning, and many months learning new skills to force a radical shift in direction, as do some of my current paintings or series. Sometimes I can instantly create a good painting in a morning with barely a thought - my Toad painting, the Telly Savalas, but often the better works take a lot more planning, and even those experiments are better in concept than execution at times. The first sketch for the Fly Trapped In Amber was good, but the second version which took about 10 times longer, is far better.

Gynocratic Paedoparanoia Underpainting

A full day of painting, the first day for a painting called Gynocratic Paedoparanoia. A somewhat odd title, it came to me at the moment of conception and I've stuck to the image and title, so I'll honour my unconscious and keep with it, though I think an alternative title would perhaps be better. It's amazing how a title can affect opinions and moods. I could call it Untitled #1, or Monolith on the Edge of Emotion or The Great Spectre or anything.

Here it is so far:

I liked the process and it's going well, partly because this is a colour scheme and type I am used to; a fleshy or rocky monolith in a stormy sky. I've prepared for it with the plasticine lighting guides. This wasn't stuck to much, only a little. Most of my reference images were faces, eyes, teeth, body parts and other paintings.

Storm in the Mountains by Hermann Herzog was one compositional inspiration:

A wonderful work, psychological in a Constable-ian sense, my style exactly.

All of my colours are earth shades, almost all iron oxides, with titanium white, of course, and titanium chromium yellow and tiny bits of nickel yellow for things like the teeth, and a bit of cobalt blue for the sky on the right. I've used quite a lot of the new Blockx Mars Yellow Orange which is lovely, a fades down really nicely. How desert-like the hues are.

There is a lot of detail here, far more than evident on the photo. I'm unsure if this will need a glaze, though the sky would benefit from some darkening for more dramatic contrast.

Painting involves long, slow work, and lots of time to think while it's happening; this is perhaps what makes it such a good artform. The painting process itself is zen-like, but also very physical, so it feels physically rewarding too. It is important that the artist is the painter because the zen-like process fosters the imagination. My mind is filled with artistic ideas and inspiration while painting which don't appear when not. I also realised a few things that take place uniquely to oil paint, such as using a colour here or there because there is some mixed or too much left, choices which ultimately unify and aid an artwork, but would not occur in, say, a digital artwork where any quantity of any colour were available.

Asylum Dream, Prometheus v2.71, TMBWOD, Love is Dead

I dream of being kidnapped at a large building like an asylum or museum. I had a fancy meal there around a very large table but the administrators and staff were trying to drug me. I ran from them, chased by their mob, but was dragged down to a basement. I managed to escape, but discovered that I was part copper, part machine, a bit like the character Tik Tok from the film Return to Oz. transformed against my will. My home was a large mansion, and my android butler (and a second character, perhaps connected to Elton John) moved in fixed patterns around the place at high speed, I just caught glimpses of him in the distances, at the end of hallways. My 'brother' arrived to help me, but was look horrific, covered in mud-like growths and at first I tried to attack him with a knife, thinking him one of the enemies, before I realised who he was and that he wanted to help.

It was a highly visual dream, no doubt inspired by the wonderful Jan Svankmajer's 'Alice', which we watched recently, and The Muppet Show.

In the day, I noticed a tiny 'click' in one of the Nightfood tracks and wanted to fix it. I discovered that it wasn't a faulty recording but a bug in Prometheus, the click appeared when two tracks were active, but not if either one was, and even if one of the tracks was set to zero volume. It turned out to be a bug in the automatic shutting-off part of the program. Tracks which are silent for a fixed time (one second by default) will shut off to avoid processing silence. This speeds up the program hugely. Here, the silencing of tracks caused the blip because they were silenced in the very loop that generated the audio, and switching them off knocked everything out of sequence.

This was only a problem since v2.69, 2nd April, while I was working on Nightfood, so only applies to three of the Nightfood tracks - I've made no music since. I spent all morning finding this bug. With luck, it is now fixed.

In the afternoon I met Deb and her clients in the park on this first warm day of the year. We threw my boomerang, a gift that was last thrown on the weekend before lockdown in March 2020.

I then finalised the first draft of the second edition of The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death. I will release this fairly soon (almost certainly to zero applause or note by the world, but to me, this is one of my best artworks, some of the images here, as in my other story in Deep Dark Light, I will remember forever).

Tonight, I've been thinking about an old work called Love is Dead... a nice miniature first made in 2013, and revisited in 2019. Here is the 2013 version:

Here is the 2019 version:

I'm not happy with either portrait. I always planned to make a second work, Love is Alive, so I aim to do this. Painting the miniatures will be easy now; my concern is fixing up the frame...

The black wood backing helps a lot for hanging in exhibitions (that was my motivation for making it) but it does harm the spirit of the work. The resin frame is stuck onto a 6mm MDF backing. This itself causes problems as the wood is soft and can crack, as well as being rather shallow. The vines are made from Polymorph, a very strong plastic, but it has very poor adhesion both to paint and to anything it is laid upon. The natural thorns break off all of the time and have been reattached a lot.

Now, I would use epoxy clay for everything; it's great for modelling and strong, but I didn't then. I keep toying with the idea of throwing it out and starting afresh, but I can't, and that seems to be a little over the top. I have a second identical frame too, all ready for Love is Alive, and that has some Polymorph vines.

So, I've removed the paintings and will carefully sculpt, carve and repaint this frame, and make a duplicate for Love is Alive at the same time. It will be a difficult task. The resin of the main frame is very strong, almost as hard as ceramic. It must smoothly and beautifully blend with the other parts. I don't know what to do yet about the wood backing...

Cock of the Woke, Nightfood Launch

I had a dream where the white-suited, panama-hatted, Eurovision singer from the Portuguese entry was Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter. With a magic word and my wand I blasted off his arm in a bloody explosion, but he laughed as it grew back. I blasted at his body, again making a hole in it, but it magically healed. This monster was out to get me. I awoke in fear.

Then I slept again and dreamt more comfortably.

Spent most of the day painting, the flesh glazing to Cock of the Woke, a painting which I might never be able to exhibit! I was amused as I painted, wondering who might want to have such a painting on the wall, and the absurdity of this fact. Perhaps the aim of art is to stimulate uniquely, and thus, I have.

Here is the idea sketch, to give you an idea of it:

I glazed the flesh in transparent maroon (benzimidazalone) and viridian, fading up to white and a Blockx colour called Transparent Mars Yellow which is so pretty is feels edible, like butter. I made teh mix sandier than I usually do; my flesh can err towards pink, but I thought I'd try an alternative. It worked well enough, rather good actually.

It was also Nightfood launch day, so did some basic admin on that, making it visible to a basic degree. I've just listened to it again and I still like it. I spotted two imperfections which slightly annoy me, one a technical issue which hardly affects anything. I remain unsure about the mixing of Burnout; it is a very complex mix. The pianos seem to need more of a cut to the bass, this is the only issue, and something I toyed between a lot. The problem is, doing that makes them very quickly sound fake and tinny and not at all like pianos, and they start to infringe on other elements and sound weak for the main verse; they sound good there now, but less good where more notes are being played. This is all that can be done. I consoled myself my re-listening to an archetype: Children by Robert Miles, and how fake that also sounds now.

I'm really pleased with Nightfood, it's definitely a step up from Sisyphus, or a continuation, as I also liked that. I remain full of ideas for future music, and indeed painting... I must focus. I seem to spend a lot of time working hard on little things which are clearly not of masterpiece status when I should know better... but then it's not always easy to know. I'm reminded how Bergman disliked so many of his great works while working on them, or even afterwards, only to change his mind later. It's better to make something than nothing, not to waste time thinking rather than doing. Three 'maybes' are easily worth one 'probably' in art.

Harry Dean Stanton, Glazing, Framing

I dreamt that Harry Dean Stanton was sentenced to death, and on his night in jail he wrote his life story, and the jailer and everyone was sad. This led to a good day of energy. I started by completing Covidopolis, a painting I'm now satisfied with. The biggest problem is the surface, these Jacksons canvas boards make everything ugly. I have one unused one left but I will probably throw it away.

I then glazed the background to Cock of the Woke. it was pink, I glazed in in grey, an unusual switch, but it worked and the painting looks much better now, a little bit like the Phoenix Embryo painting. This took me up to 15:00. I didn't glaze the main figure as this would take most of a day, I may do this tomorrow.

Then, framing. I framed Land of Beauty and Sorrow in a gold frame. This looks great, actually I love this; it continues the 'bioforms' that includes the Phoenix Embryo, the Swift series etc. I like these more.

I'm artistically inspiured and want to pain more on determinism, and perhaps another King Charles portrait... everything is bioforms... The Harry Dean Stanton dream, I've just realised, relates to a bioformic portrait of him I had planned - and his stardom in Escape From New York.

My last job was framing the new Cromwell portrait. It remains arresting. I will keep this under wraps for a grand unveiling at Nantwich Museum this winter; perhaps I can paint the King Charles painting to partner it.

TMBWOD Part 1, Scanning, A.I. and Freewill

Slept for 10 hours last night and awoke feeling irrationally sleepy, a feeling which remained a constant of the day. I dreamt I was a Mad Hatter, with a green coat and some wire glasses. I had to perform Prodigy songs for some sort of show, which included the line "Naughty, naughty, very naughty" (yes, I know this is from Ebeneezer Goode, not the Prodigy).

I updated The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death, so now half if it is updated. I'll wait to finish the rest, I need to confer with Deb on the details. I responded to some questions to Alex from Macc Nub News about the Barnardo's donation and helped spread the word about it. He wrote a detailed and uplifting article.

I then decided to photograph the two large paintings: The Return Of Oliver Cromwell and Love And Wifi. Both are 70x50cm, so needed to be photographed in four sections. This took a lot of time to get right; I use a horizontal bar with the camera pointing down, but getting the positioning and lighting correct is time consuming. The exposure was about 5 seconds (with a low ISO of 100 and high f-stop of 22). The results were good, but I could probably do better. This process took over two hours.

In sections over the day I watched Escape From New York, a great film and typically 1980s. Few films have the American president grabbing a machine gun at the end, saying a few snappy lines, then machine-gunning the head villain. The film could easily be rebooted set in London, the very much 'London vs. rest of Britain' society we have would suit the film better.

Two paints arrived, including Blockx Mars Yellow Orange (why not just Mars Orange?) - it seems to be a lovely colour. A soft, sandy synthetic iron oxide, very like the hue of Harding's burnt sienna, but more opaque, like an orangey terra cotta. With white it almost looks like flesh in an instant.

There was a Panorama tonight about the dangers of Artificial Intelligence - 'Are You Scared Yet, Human?' - which seems designed to invoke fear. We wouldn't want our children to be less intelligent than us, but do machines? We want to control machines, which itself seems prejudiced and cruel to an intelligence. If an intelligence were better than us, would it not be more moral, and so more kind and understanding? An intelligent robot made for war would perhaps choose not to fight on moral grounds. All new technologies were feared at their inception, but have proven to be generally beneficial to the world, although the environment, animals and plants, is suffering and in decline, not at the hands of intelligence but at the hands of ignorant humans.

Environmental changes like ours are perhaps an inevitable trend in all advanced civilisations, and perhaps these trends extend to the invention of intelligences which supplant biological life. Machines can live in space, so if we find extraterrestrial life, these might all be robots. This may be natural, normal, and part of existence, so not to be feared. All things which occur are part of nature; this is a central part of the stoic philosophy. As an absolute determinist, I know that we are powerless to change anything anyway. The final question is one of prediction and will - why do we feel free to act? If we knew our future, we could not be free, so freedom of thought is a matter of ignorance. The more we know, the more powerless we become.

Barnardo's, Frame, The Many Beautiful Worlds

A trip to Macclesfield in the morning for some photos to announce the Liza Minnelli portrait donation to Barnardo's:

After that, some work on the Cromwell frame. I did a few tests first and liked the darkness of a thin black base with brown stain on top. I decided to powder the result with rottenstone which gives it an ancient appearance... it changed it so dramatically that I wasn't sure about it. I met a watercolour artist at Barnardo's who spoke the old axiom that watercolour painting is about choosing when to stop. I've never really had that problem with painting, I make a plan, paint it, and when finished, it is done, but with this frame this is an issue... I could remove some stone, I could distress it more...

...but it does look 'farmhouse 17th century' which is the effect I wanted. I realised that a key philosophy with a frame it to key things down; make the decoration more neutral and even.

After that I started work on the second edtion of The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death. I wrote this is 2012, my first major writing, but I've certainly improved as a writer since, and reading back some of this I can see clear changes, and of course Deborah's qualified eye has helped fanstastically. Some lines sound funny, even though I liked them, perhaps for that very effect; "he blinked a slow, pink blink"... that one will go, but many will stay... I don't want to spoil the novel's character. One oddness is that the font has big differences between ; and : - the colon is so tiny it's almost invisible and the semicolon is rather large and proud. I'm torn between usign a different font just for these, though that makes the formatting uneven and complex to edit.

Lidl, Book Jacket, Frame, Painting

These are interesting days, the world seems to be returning to normal and busyness. Today, Deb and I went for a shopping trip, during which I bought some 2mm sheet plastic for the glazing of the big triangular painting, The Starcrossed Escape'. Then I formatting the jacket for Deb's new book; the illustrations and cover design are now complete.

Then I hand cut the framing for the Cromwell painting. It looks good so far, this is perhaps the thickest biggest frame I can cut with my tools.

I use an ancient (1960s) iron mitre which is very good, providing everything is held flat. The joints are good, and I may distress the wood a little too, I will experiment with decoration and colours.

Tomorrow I'm off to Macclesfield for a little photo-shoot to promote the charity donation of the Lisa Minnelli painting to Barnado's. The Macc Art Lounge is also open now (on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays) so there is another outlet for my art. My painting is better than ever.

I'm feeling rather musical too, perhaps inspired by watching the (unfortunately poor) Eurovision Song Contest. Nightfood is released on Friday; I'm sure to no applause, but I'm happy with the music and the artistic and technical progress. I must make more new music this year. I re-listened to The Dusty Mirror. There are things I would do better now, but it will suffice and I probably won't re-visit this.

I've many paintings in waiting and have spent over £1200 in the past 6 weeks on new art equipment and supplies. This feels good. These whims, desires, investments mean enthusiasm, as well as better capabilities and future results. I must keep pushing for and towards the best I can do and can imagine.

When This Is All Over Underpainting

A busy two days underpainting When This Is All Over. I started with a burnt sienna ground, a tint with a tiny bit of acrylic colour applied with a sponge. I find this to be more even and more reliable than an oil imprimatura. Then, the underdrawing, then painting:

I used only four colours for this first stage; black, white, yellow ochre, raw umber. Perhaps a warmness from a more red-based colour (red umber?) might have helped but this can be added in later layers. The skull is taken from a vanitas by Pieter Claesz. I had to mirror it because my light comes from the right. The bones are improvised.

I was reminded that one art of painting is improvising or knowing textures and lighting rather than merely copying, because the level of detail possible to paint is always greater than that visible. Here I'm copying from an imperfect Pieter Claesz image, but his original is, of course, an abstraction of reality.

Today I painted the hand, adding light red to the palette:

There is even less detail here. My hand is full of tiny lines and marks that are joyous to paint; if only I could hold out my hand AND paint with at the same time. I was reminded of the painter Steve Caldwell, an organic photocopier; who paints photorealistic paintings, exact reproductions of photographs so detailed that a machine could do them. At that level, the skill is not the painting but in taking a photograph of sufficient clarity and resolution, which is hardly being an artist.

The bird came last, with some nickel yellow and cobalt turquoise. A real blue tit is more red-shaded blue, which can go into the glaze layer. Its colours here are brighter than the others. This fits its character as the essence of life, freedom, vitality, but things will tone down a little in glazing.

This underpainting is detailed and part of me becomes afraid at this point, afraid of a new layer which might spoil or destroy some of the detail or beauty of the underpainting, but I remind myself that this is the ideal feeling. A glaze almost always, very almost always improves a painting, and the more detailed an underpainting the better. Even the tiniest marks shine through to show yet more detail above. Over many layers, the effect is one of smoothing and softening, but this can cover detail, for my technique, the optimum is one glaze layer over one underpainting and an imprimatura; all three layers shine like a chord in music.

In other news I've been practising piano. Deb and I, as Fall in Green, are going to open Knutsford Music Festival this year on August 12th. I will at least play Clown Face and Jabberwocky.

Magicscape

Working all day on new illustrations for Deborah's new book. With two exceptions, these are processed photographs, but they took at least as long as hand drawn illustrations to work on.

I'm keen to paint more and have lots of paintings ready but these persistent dark, cold, and rainy days are stopping me. The temperature is set to be below 15 degrees for the another week, with persistent rain until at least Wednesday. I may paint anyway.

Trapped v1.01, When This Is All Over

An update to 'Trapped' yesterday to version 1.01, adding sound effects and making the default font larger.

Then worked on a drawing for a painting called When This Is All Over, inspired by the phrase often spoken about the Covid-19 pandemic. The original idea was a hand about to grasp a flying blue-tit, over a graveyard in a grey mist, but I wanted to add more, so changed the graveyard into a skull and setting from a Dutch still life vanitas. I also had the feeling to add elements there of the bird... this changed the work considerably. Now there is a sort of reflection between the present, future (of grabbing the bird), but the scene below, originally the past, might now be the future, or a present warning. Is the bird dead or dying? Is the future bleak at the death of the bird? Are we the bird, is freedom or opportunity dead? The painting has a lot more depth. I've transferred it to panel but it feels to dark and cold to paint. This small work will demand technical attention so that it can compete on visual terms with Willem Claeszoon Heda.

Meanwhile I'm working on the illustrations and cover for Deborah's next book.

Trapped, Architrave, NSP

A busy day. Fictive was finished and uploaded last night with the story Trapped. The story is very basic, it's a test of the program more than anything else. Chris Godber kindly donated $2 as he downloaded it, suggesting sound effects and a bigger font. I did add sound effects for the first draft, but thought that they might make the speech more difficult to hear, but for some scenes, like the press of the piano key, some would help. The font is relative to the Windows desktop, so its initial size varies in a way beyond my control, and it can be set to anything (font, size, colours) by the player so this is less important. I filed the program as complete with the aim of making a better, more in depth work in future.

Today, bought some wood, some architrave like this:

And some 21x46mm wood to fit behind it, leaving a neat 10mm or so rebate, so I can make some pine picture framing. I'm torn between a 17th century Dutch-style ebonised frame, which would look good in this shape, or dark brown like old oak. I will experiment. Tonight the wood parts and gluing together. The architrave is bent slightly, laterally towards the thin end, as one might expect because the wood is less dense there. To counter this I wet the thin half a little. When clamping I could also bend it to fit perfectly. I'll glue the second part tomorrow.

Then I made a model for my Gynocratic Paeodoparanoia painting using an American plasticine called NSP, which is so very stiff. It really needs a lot of heating with a hairdryer to be usable, but works fine then. I love this sort of modelling. If I had space I'd make more and keep them all. I've made a few from air-dry clay, but that shrinks a lot when drying so makes cracks, and distorts, and it's not very sticky. With plasticine, everything is temporary. I slightly prefer the cheaper Newplast plasticine, which I might buy more of (even plasticine is temporary, the oil rubs off on your hands making it less and less usable over time).

Fictive, Trapped

Spent yesterday revamping my interactive story software Fictive, and updating the flash fiction work 'Trapped', which is a sort of test story for the system, one can complete the whole story in 10 mins. The update involved reading out and recording all of the text, which is probably the biggest time drain.

I hope to create some more of these stories - so much to do! I'm overwhelmed with ideas and work. I'll make a few more tweaks to the story and program today, then file it as complete. I'd also like to finish some painting designs. My recent paintings have reminded me that I need to use more lighting models, so will be making a few plasticine models at some point. I have one LED light on an ultra-thin (near invisible) wire which is useful as a 'point' light. I might need two or three... in different colours...

Fictive, Art Photography, The Slow March of Painting

Working today on Fictive, a program I wrote years ago for writing and reading/playing interactive fiction. It hadn't been updated in years, and still had references to ogg format and other things, so today I've got it working on new computers and with a new audio system. One feature of it is that it is fully audio enabled, so supports interactive audio books, even speaking the letter keys when pressed.

I also photographed three paintings with my new camera. The results were good, at times very close in detail to a scan, but with better colour matching.

This is from the 300dpi flatbed scan:

This is the photograph on the Canon EOS250D with 50mm lens, 100 ISO, from a distance of about 1M (about 312dpi):

Really, this is brilliant. The biggest factor for detail is probably the lighting rather than anything else, as sometimes there can be a reflective sheen which is often unhelpful. These were photographed from my video tripod (not easy to adjust in height) and with the painting on an easel. For larger works, which need to be photographed in segments, this isn't practical... the camera really needs to be absolutely perpendicular to the canvas, and exactly the same distance away at every point. I've done this before by pointing everything down, which is the best option at the moment.

Generally it's been a stressful day. I'm full of energy and ideas and working constantly as hard as ever, never enough time to create everything I want. Today I had lots of painting ideas, and a new album cried for attention. My only reward is usually a feeling of satisfaction in my own achievements or disappointment with them, normally the latter because this is how we improve. A few sales or rewards would help calm my nerves. This is the artists' way. The long path is the knowledge of the long term impact. The important thing is quality. I must push for more, not emotionally, but with rational critical judgements; more work, more insight, more capability in solid steps. Most good things are good because of thousands of tiny increments over a long period. This process can't really be sped up, but we can help it by carefully noting them and adding these to our secure heritage firmly.

Since day one, I've kept a diary of my paintings which lists all 1200+ artworks, their materials, times taken, thoughts and processes. I note today that halfway through this huge text file (nearly 19,000 lines long) is painting 278 of 1200... so most of the notes and learning took place at the start. I've also noticed that I'm starting to write more again. The break from painting of a year or more has certainly helped me. I think I'm painting better now, after a year's break, that I would have if I had constantly painted.

On we march.

German Drafting Dream

Felt so tired last night and slept early.

In my dream I was wondering outside in a grey urban area with no people, like a deserted carpark, outside a beauty therapy shop. There was a stone trough full of cold water, and on the floor were some letters like 'Rudolph Steiner', or a similar German name, a famous healer with odd techniques. I climbed into the trough of cold water, fully clothed, and got wet, noting that even my phone and watch got wet, but they still worked. I then got out, satisfied at this daily cold bath as a health cure. A curious and bewildered young face, a sickly looking girl, watched me from the dark shop window as I got in and out of the bath. I walked, dripping with water but slowly drying out, to the subway and it was from there that I entered my workplace. I was on my lunch break.

My workplace was a German engineering firm and I was a draughtsman drawing plans on drawing boards. Some of my colleagues had music on, cartoon music from the 1980s, and they were singing and making a noise, like a veritable school disco. The big boss came in and the music was hastily shut off in shame. He told us all off about the noise, shadows of the teacher telling the class off. I didn't really like the noise or party myself, but the boss looked at me and I felt that he falsely judged me as responsible, a feeling of false-guilt which I have felt before at school. I hate the feeling of being blamed for things which were not my fault and not to my taste or desire. My old school friend Simon Ladley was in the dream. He ordered lunch at this point, something from Burger King.

I awoke then. It was 09:30. I had slept for 11 hours and felt somewhat headachy and not very refreshed. Have felt somewhat weak and exhausted all day, but have got some work done. First I updated my website code to fix a few issues with the shopping cart and Google crawlers.

Then I updated Irfanview so that I could load Canon CR3 files. There's been a long-standing bug where holding Ctrl when dragging causes unpredictable results. This used to constrain the aspect ratio to a fixed amount; I set this to 1:1 which is very useful, square images are so common, with Instagram and for profile picutres, but the feature only half works. Well, the bug remains in the latest version, and, annoyingly, several plugins are now automatically removed when updating the program, so the only way to install plugins (why are these even separate!) is to remove the old program and install the new one, which deleted all of my settings. Sigh. This is the first time ever that an upgrade of this marvellous program has been worse than keeping the old version.

I also spent some time on sound effect work, working on some new military sound effects for The Game Creators.

This evening I went for a walk, still feeling somewhat weary. I thought about some sort of DSLR camera mount for photographing my paintings. Ideally, a rig which can smoothly move horizontally and/or vertically smoothly and quickly, be lockable, and move up to, say, 1M sideways and 2M vertically, and the rig must be easily dismantled and stored when not in use (I haven't space to keep it set up). Something with cables and bearings and weights. I can easily design something, but it's a lot of work and expense, which must be kept to a minimum.

Finally, I've noticed a few zines and other books on itch. I toyed with reviving my old software Fictive, which hasn't been updated in over 10 years. It's a system for writing (and playing) interactive fiction in the mould of those old 'Choose your own adventure' books, and it's sophisticated enough programmatically to support something like the Fighting Fantasy books verbatim. Itch might be a good platform for a book like this. Fictive would need a day of updating at least.

I remain feeling weak and weary but must battle on.

Lachesis: The Shape Of Water

A long and tiring day working on the Lachesis painting, I started at 08:15 and finished 18:30, but the underpainting is complete. It felt like walking a tightrope at times, I felt rushed and that there wasn't enough preparation, but I managed to work on the fly. The critical part was perhaps the water texture. Here is a segment from the finished underpainting:

The compositon isn't what you might call 'realistic' in setting, but all settings have varying elements of realism... only reality is really real; art is always about abstraction and encancement, even photography or film. Now, this night-ocean is actually liquid space being pulled up by the goddess Lachesis. I had drawn folds and some lines but thought I would paint some colours on the fly, generally copying the sky colours of darkness. I should have thought more clearly. What I was painting was water, it really needed to look watery.

I remember when I first painted clouds, wet in wet, on an old painting called Reaching For An Untouchable Strawberry, still one of my treasured favourites. I moved the brush almost at random and clouds appeared, almost like I'd set the brush to 'clouds' and it did the job. This has been a template ever since for how to paint textures. I know clouds intimately now, they are spheres on spheres, and so I can draw them with ease, and the same with rocks. Now I'm starting to do this with many things, even faces, hands, arms, and lots of natural textures as I work out the formula, the pattern and essence of an object.

To an extent, this is simply drawing in paint, so a fast form of copying, but there is an element of moving the texture to fit, and feeling. To paint clouds, I become a cloud, feel its essence, and then paint a self-portrait. This is the ultimate and key process. Today I did this for the water, and to help I looked at lots of watery shapes, splashes and drips, explosions of water, and even photographed droplets in the skin. The next step is to feel that, become the sea. The results are are from perfect, a study would have helped, but there is enough there to start with. There is an element of pareidolia, where you can see the shape you want in the 'random' strokes as you paint - so you need good visual knowledge of the form, which takes years to accumulate. All of this is essentially how to paint from imagination.

This painting is very strong in colours, and perhaps I needed a full colour study first. I've painted many but, as it turns out, 95% of them are exactly how I would want to paint it, so sometimes there is an element of spoiler to even doing one. I think, generally, the colours here are acceptable, and I can tweak them in glazing. I can't turn blue into red (unless I glaze opaquely, I would not do that!) but intensity and gentle shifts are not only easy but part of the process, you don't really want the same hue in glaze and underpainting; it is the very difference between the two that creates the beauty because glazes both act like filters (and so mix subtractively) and reflectors (so the top layer has a dominant glow).

It's now past 10pm and all I've done is paint and record my activities for the day. I'm exhausted. I am reminded that art is about giving everything.

Lachesis Being Sucked Into The Dawn And Dusk Of The Universe

Did just four things yesterday:
1. I posted a poem 'Times Are Staying The Same' to Twitter as part of a new innovation by Black Bough Poetry, this week curated by Patrick Jones.
2. I created a new music video in Argus for The Swift Triptych: II. The High Flying Swift.
3. I finalised and uploaded my complete art catalogue and price list. I've been working on this for a few days; it's not easy to format things into an easy form to read or print.
4. I updated my website to (hopefully) fix the videos on the Connect page. These are chosen at random but each one deleted or moved from YouTube creates an error, so the list of 80 here needs constant updating. It would be useful if YouTube had a feature to download the title and URL of every video in your channel as a text file (or CSV).

Today has been the first day of underpainting 'Lachesis Being Sucked Into The Dawn And Dusk Of The Universe', a painting about absolute determinism and how even The Fates are trapped within the predetermined design of the cosmos. It is also an homage to John William Waterhouse. It's painted on a Jackson's Art Supplies Art Panel, which is a rubbish surface, not nearly as good as the Belle Arti panels. The Jackson's ones are both too slippery and too absorbent, a strangely chalky feeling with little tooth, and the weave is rather large too.

Now I am exhausted and must rest. What a strange life the life of an artist is. Now matter how much I paint, it is too little. Oh for more life, more time and the resources to live. How much more I would paint, and with how much greatness, if I could dedicate more time to it. I must aim for some monumental works.

Love and Wifi

A full day of painting yesterday, a painting planned in August 2016, drawn out in May 2017, painted a year later and yesterday glazed, so taking 5 years in total. This is partly because I was unsure about the painting at every stage. Here is the idea sketch:

I made models for the objects and drew it out, close to the original idea.

I took that photo at the end of the underpainting day and I thought it looked a little simple and empty, so decided to echo the hole in the figure on the left to the sky on the right, making this something like the eye of a skull. The duplication of forms is the essence of my symphonic style, which I first started with The Migraine Tree those years ago.

The aim of the repetition is, as in music, to add structure and a factor of anticipation and information expected or thwarted. It is also a reminder that visual art is a temporal medium, we look at different parts of an image in a different order, so telling a story, yet, unlike most stories we can hold it all in our view and minds in one instant. Perhaps it is this mix of the instant and temporal that makes visual art such a great artform. We can observe it multi-dimensionally, with time or without time. We can engage or not engage to any degree.

There it lay for nearly two years. Then, yesterday decided to complete it, adding more colour that perhaps I would have two years ago. The stormy sky on the right is red and green (the photo barely shows this). Unlike many of my painting ideas, this didn't have a title. The working title was 21st Century Socialite, a critique of moble phone use, but it felt negative, and I was amazed how different titles change the perception of an artwork. 'Love and Wifi' tells a whole story of romance here. Now, in these Covid-19 times, I could call it Social Distancing! But really, it's a sad painting, not critical, not about Covid lockdowns, but yes it is, of course, romantic.

It was a full day of painting, but in other news, a new camera has arrived, a Canon EOS 250D, and I spent the hours from 10pm to midnight reading the manual. My old camera is 8 years old and I thought that I needed an upgrade. So far the quality doesn't seem that much higher (I have barely tested it). Of course the picture resolution is higher, but sometimes this can be a numbers race. More megapixels doesn't mean better if the result is just as grainy (shrinking the image reduces the grain, of course). There are lots of new features, like auto-cleaning, noise removal AI etc. but the biggest instant change is much better video support, it can record in 4K and many sizes at different speeds, and with an external mic - before I only had 720p and the internal mic. My old one has served me well, recording all of the two years of ArtSwarm episodes and about 200 videos for YouTube, as well as detailed art photography of my paintings and subjects. A good camera is, today, an essential part of being a visual artist.

Old Paths, New Paths

More scanning of older paintings today. Here are a couple of studies or first versions. I'll Be Here For You and Except For The Hatred:

Both of these ideas, coincidentally, came directly from dreams. For I'll Be Here For You, I saw a figure writhing in a sandstorm behind glass, in a sort of zoo enclosure. For Except For The Hatred I saw a ballerina on my parents' bed. I was painting her and wrote "Except For The Hatred" in red paint on the canvas, just as in the final versions.

I've been thinking about scenic integration recently, and can see how my art has moved between a few philosophies regarding the 'realism', actualisation of a scene. Sometimes I've painted a room or outdoor scene with objects of symbolism or ideas, and I gradually converted my initial ideas into more realistic looking scenes or locations by creating models and lighting these. This is one philosophy.

But I've also had a second thread of painting things, symbols, ideas that are not spatially consistent, more abstract or 'cubist' looking. Cubism is/was a visual rather than mental concept, showing an object from several sides at once to get its whole at a glance. My art philosophy has always been more like this, like Picassos idea of surrealism; he, remember, coined the very word to mean a hyper-reality, a totality.

I develop ideas in different ways, all intended of course to capture an emotion and intellectual idea, as art does. I occasionally experimented, not so much planned beforehand but improvised. The Toad painting was one example of freely painting without a previous plan or outline guide, a sort of improvisation to capture a mood in the same way as I play music.

Recently, I've started to add echoes and repetitions of shapes, perhaps also in a similar way to music, perhaps the result of these years of my concept of 'symphonic painting' which began back with the Migraine Tree those years ago. The ekphrastic paintings, and the paintings like Who Loves You Baby? extoll this:

These ideas are in a contrast to the 'spatial realism' of a scene, there is little sense of place or room or location, but they are not abstracted or artificial. The worst crime of abstract art is making itself pretty to be decorative. Adding every colour just because it balances! Kandinsky almost became a decorative painter.

No, not abstraction, but realisation, a cubist/hyperreal, genuinely surreal representation.

Catalogue

A long and exhasting day updating my price list and catalogue; listing everything (or correcting). First weeding out the digital works, so only paintings, sculptures (which were never in there), watercolours (lots, from live events like Splash of a Smile, and the illustrations for 365 Universes), ink drawings (also lots, largely book illustrations) and prints (only two - experimental collographs!) are there.

Even in my ordered world I've got work that I'm unsure where it is in the house, or if it is sold, lost, or who has it. Some things I know who has or should have it when I should - like my Family Tree Giraffe made for a Cubby Hole project, Return Ticket To Crewe. One drawing, The Schoolboy from my William Blake book is missing, possibly sold, possibly not. This one item really annoys me. Most artists wouldn't mind at all but I've generally, I think, kept track of every work and where it is.

I took out my stock of unframed work, how happily I can store lots of these! I found a few old paintings that I'd forgotten about (I had catalogued them), incluidng this little study which I thought was pretty enough to keep:

I aslo mourned the many paintings I've destroyed and thrown away over the years.

I've also scanned several paintings which had no images, and added a lot more, about 10 to 15 paintings to my website. I used to shy away from putting everything up, aiming to show only the 'best' work - but now, with the eye of restrospect, even the colour studies and simple paintings are worth seeing, so I will aspire to put more on there.

This is the sort of work that an assistant (or team) would do for a professional artist. I'm lucky to be ordered enough to have planned all of this from the start, but it really does help with creativity too. I can see the patterns of creativity, and the different paths. Today I've been on a trip through my past art life, the past 10 years of so many different events and experiences, from being a wedding watercolour-painter, market stall holder, live demonstrator, prize winner, radio guest and presenter, portrait/wildlife/landscape artist, designer for hire and so much else. I can see how each thing has affected my creativity; what has and hasn't changed.

I also have a free 'room' to add work in a neat and ordered way. This too is an incentive to create, like being given 10 blank canvases and a place to hang them.

Finally, having a clear catalogue allows a long-term professional attitude of retrospect which is a necessary part of being an important artist. Important or not, without a catalogue, any study of an artist is impossible. To some extent, an artist's work is only as good as their entire record. The quality of the Mona Lisa itself would be diminished if we knew anything less of Leonardo da Vinci's life. So it is with all art and all artists.

Mona Lisa aside. I'm keen to paint more and do my best at it. This is the real aim. I'm amazed to think that Picasso produced over 20,000 works of art. I've produced 1,223 since 2004, and it feels like a lot.

The Starcrossed Escape, Covidopolis, Painting Prices

A busy and joyous two days!

First, work on restoring a work from 2010 with a little 2021 magic. Yesterday I started work on the main figure to the triangular work The Starcrossed Escape Of The Psychological Cosmonaut:

This is the first flesh layer, at least 3 will be needed for this one. I hope to have the work ready in a refurbished frame for the Cheshire Art Fair in September.

Today I've worked all day on a small painting called Covidopolis, a rather abstract design of monoliths over a sad green landscape. Figures, which are something like sick roses, stand in a strange and alien wind of dust and red flakes.

The red and green are colours of sadness and illness. I have a strange relationship with these colours which are rarely combined, except in flowers. My happiest childhood memories come from my Dragon 32 computer and it had an unusual colour scheme. By default it was dark green text on a light green background, and it had only 8 other colours, and only then visible in two sets of 4, and the strong primary red, a sort of maroon on the television, on the light-yellow-green background particularly stuck in my mind's eye, colouring my attitude to this colour combination.

I've found time this evening to work on my art prices. I have over 1000 works of art, and almost 800 are on my website. Pricing each one individually would be nightmarishly difficult, or impossible in practice. I price all of my artworks by time taken, and materials used for expensive frames or special items like gold, but generally, only on time taken. This has pros and cons. Generally I've got faster at painting. The older works might have taken me 8 or 10 8-hour days for what would now take just 2 days. In these cases, the result is essentially not being paid for the older work.

However, my point is that I store all of the hours I've worked on each painting, and always have, since 2004 and my first painting, so I can use this to calculate the prices automatically. So, I've created a spreadsheet with these numbers and added some SQL to auto-calculate the code to update my website instantly. So, as of tonight, all of the works should be priced correctly and online now. The huge spreadsheet (1000 lines, with times, sizes, media etc.) itself takes a lot of management, but this allows me to be transparent and consistent about my prices. Things are never perfect; sometimes galleries or venues might charge extraordinary commission fees, so the prices in shops or exhibitions might sometimes be different, but these accurately represent the online price and, as time and success march on, can be instantly adjusted across my entire ouvre.

Cold

I've woken up shivering and/or sweating a few times in the past week, and last night took my temperature with my trusty Braun Thermoscan and it was a low 35.5 degrees, a full degree colder than the normal minimum. I've probably got used to being cold naturally, my anxiety and general constant activity must keep me warmer than I would normally be, but I've probably never been on the warm side of average. My cells live slowly, like meat in the fridge, carefully and optimally preserved. In other ways I feel super-healthy, but this worried me all night. Normal life is, at times, so fragile. I will aspire to keep warmer.

The dull and cold weather this week (it was 6 degrees today, with bonus sleet) has stopped my painting too. I can plan and draw, but I have many paintings drawn out now. I can do other things but I must readjust. I am working on one project, a major restoration of an older work, which will take several days. I will unveil this when it is complete.

Spree Killer Tracing

Traced over the underdrawing for a painting called Spree Killer. How often it is that I think an idea is worthy only of a small panel then discover that it would have been better bigger. Oh for a bigger studio and more storage space and more placed to exhibit! I toyed with the idea of staging regular monthly exhibitions. Attractive as the idea sounds, and I'm certain profitable, the logistics alone of this would take me a month each time to organise.

I also thought today about the Ruth Borchard Self Portrait prize, one I like to enter or paint for. It's expensive and awkward to enter for me because, like almost all art competitions, the delivery is in London, 200 miles (and £100 in train tickets) away. I toyed with the idea of a Northern Self Portrait Prize, sponsored by and held at the Crewe Arms Hotel, or Crewe Hall, which is also a hotel, and a place I have exhibited at a few times.

Several hours of the day, though, were spent fitting a stair carpet, and trying to level a squeaky and bent floor using a dry flat-iron.

Painting Plans

A dark wet day. I looked up some abandoned paintings; I rarely stop and never have half finished work lying around, but not every project or painting is desinted to be completed. After a certian time I might just abandon it and move on and to date I have 80 to 90 works in the abandoned projects folder, in varuious stages from merely an idea to paintings which were planned to a great degree and even painted several times before being filed.

Browsing through these wasted so much time as I dreamed of completing some and reviving some! In the end I drew out some works; new papers for Moon Over Shakespeare (which is now bigger than planned). Finishing the drawing for Spree Killer, and starting the drawing for When This Is All Over, and marking a panel for the same. Also transferring the drawing for Mama Mia Here I Go Again, which is a sequel of sorts to Half A-Broken Heart from years ago.

Today I have a few finished paintings from 2021: A Light Can Shine Only in Darkness, The Ever-Loving Heart of the Snowman, The Return of Oliver Cromwell, Self Portrait As Tripod, Land of Beauty and Sorrow. Four underpainted awaiting a glaze layer Covidopolis, The Fictitious Secret History of Aspartame, Cock of the Woke, The Safe Box. And a few drawn out and planned awaiting a first layer: Volcanism and Social Media, Tears of Lachesis, Gynocratic Paedoparanoia, Mama Mia Here I Go Again; so a mere 12 paintings for 2021 so far, but many great ideas and about another 8 in the drawing stage already.

Gas Fire Dream, Painting The Safe Box

I dream of buying 5 gas fires, having one installed in my large warehouse home, which was in New York. The fire was something like a large Bunsen Burner focused on a copper pipe, and was very noisy, almost like a hot air balloon heater. The gas fitter said that this was normal and that most fires are Bunsen Burner based nowadays. A party was happening in this hollow room of red brick walls and concrete floor, and I noticed that I was standing next to Carla from Cheers, the actress Rhea Perlman, who I remembered the name of in the dream. She asked who I was. I awoke with stomach pain, and has shivers and sweats in the night too; perhaps too cold on this unusually cold May night. The temperature indoors is little difference than in December.

When awake in the night I was filled with ideas for paintings and unusual feelings and insights. I thought about Dali's paintings of violins and pianos from the 1930s and noted for the first time the interesting feelings of these instruments; it is in particular the weight and bulk of the piano that is important, and the egg-shell delicacy of the violins. I had a clear image of a piano on the wall, no keys, no legs, but embedded in the wall and made from soft clay, so it was grey, like the wall, and I strongly felt the unique feeling of pressing my hands into the soft clay of this wall-piano.

I was aware that it is set to rain tomorrow, but was sunny today, so decided to paint something. I thought about painting the sky to my Lachesis painting, but instead grabbed the small panel The Safe Box, which I drew out in June 2019. I painted with little planning, though the turquoise sky was influenced by my plans for Lachesis, and Dali's Crucifixion (from which the landscape is lifted). The flesh colours were Light Red based with some yellow ochre, which is rare for me, as 'Naples Yellow' (well, Chromium Titanium Oxide) is generally always prettier.

In terms of meaning, this one was unconsciously drawn and I can't recall the concept, though I've started not to worry or wonder about the concept or 'meaning' too much providing that the result is genuine, authentic, true... there is and must be a meaning, but it is there to discover. At first I thought that it was about the box world of the internet, or virtual safety, but perhaps it has more to do with childhood. The very landscape connects it to my childhood for the Christ of Saint John of the Cross is one of the few images of paintings I can strongly remember from my childhood. I wasn't interested in art until my mid-30s.

The lovely cobalt turquoise sky is a little transparent and the whole thing will benefit from a glaze layer, as always this will add more detail and brilliance, but the painting is also sufficiently complete as it is. The canvas is a relatively small 20x25cm.

Backups, Violets

First day of the month, so regular backups today.

I'm full of enthusiasm and ideas for paintings, which I feel I can paint better than ever before. Slowly reawakening the slumbering visual mind. On the back of an order for paint last week, I spent £125 on paint and surfaces today. At some point I'll need to scan or photograph the paintings already complete of this year, but there is no rush.

Paints ordered include Manganese Violet, a very stable colour, the exact hue of potassium permanganate smoke, so it's a mauve-like pinky-purple. I also have Ultramarine Violet, which is the most delicate and gentle and most transparent colour, and perhaps the most beautiful colour of all for it, a delicate maiden. It seems to need an infinity of layers. It improves with each one, but the next day looks almost unpainted, wanting yet more and more. I love it but hardly use it.

I also have some Old Holland Dioxazine, which is, bizarrely, according to its label, a mix of three pigments. I do not believe this and think it's a printing error because the three pigments on the label could hardly make this intense and staining purple. I will order an alternative though, from Blockx, because this Old Holland tube, expensive though it is, has a problem in that it never seems to dry. I've had the paint remain sticky for over 4 weeks, and as this colour is at its most useful when used neat as a glaze, this is a serious problem. It's also so powerful that anything even slightly wet could easily leak into varnish and ruin a painting. It's about £30 for one tube but that will last me 10 years at least. It's powerful stuff, and violets like this are rarely used. I generally dislike these powerful organic pigments because I don't trust their permanence (this can easily be illusory due to power) and they stain brushes and everything else they touch. Ultramarine Violet is more beautiful in every way, but too weak to be practical most of the time.

The manganese I use all the time, in flesh glazes.

This evening I made another animation, a looping Spotify Canvas for 'I, Sisyphus', using Argus. I found a little memory infringement error in the program so fixed that too. I also signed the agreement for the Chinese translation of the William Blake book.

I want to paint a lot, I feel the dawn of a new renaissance. How awful my old paintings seem. It's frustrating at times to have ancient work, painted when I was merely starting to learn, seen widely, when I know I can paint far better now. The only answer is to paint more; but will, must, only really do so in good light and I've a lot to do things I want to do this month including updating The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death and updating some software (perhaps Outliner).

On we push our happy rock.