A steady day. Woke at 5am. I had the energy to paint, just, but the light and weather wasn't with me. How blessed we are to have reliable forecasts. I started by more proofreading of The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death, a few small changes.
Then I got the synths ready and decided to work out the music for Jabberwocky. Watching a Queen concert on Sky Arts was inspirational, all research for performance. My fundamental problem is that I alone must play all of the parts. The piano will be the mainstay, but a gentle and reedy lead will be part of it on the DX, with the Korg being both a bass backing and deep synth growl. Those sounds decay very slowly, over many seconds, so I can hit a key, then let it run while I use other hands on the piano or DX. It's like plate spinning.
Another job was painting a colour study for Moon Over Shakespeare. I first took a photo of the canvas. It's rather dark blue with faint brown lines but the camera did a great job, and with some image enhancement I got a very good image of the drawing:
I printed it on card, pasted it on wood, then prepared it for painting and painted a simple study. The colour study is very useful here because the image is rather fantastical and could be pulled in many ways. Key elements are clashes; to make dark touch light and light dark. I also painted a simple colour test for Hand of Destiny. How I love the Blockx Mars Yellow-Orange! Like Light Red, it can paint flesh with only black and white, and I'll make use of it there. All of the Blockx colours are wonderful.
Generally I've felt very tired and lacking in energy, perhaps lacking in food, but the food of life and art sustains me. The Covid-19 news causes me anxiety, the cases are doubling for a new wave. I used to know a few people or friends of friends who had caught Covid, tested positive, the lingo of our time, but now its moving to phase of knowing fewer and fewer people who haven't. What is the government's plan? How many people will get this in this wave, according to the models, which the government must see? Why do they hide so much and say so little?
