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.
