SFXEngine, Chinese Lamp

A full day yesterday working on the SFXEngine upgrades. Here's a look at the program so far:

Have put many days work into these upgrades now, largely improving the reliability of things, and starting to add and upgrade the plugins. I've done far more work on Prometheus than this over the years, so many of those cumulative updates and bug-fixes need incorporating into SFXEngine. I'll keep working on plugins today, and will add the new Zeitraum and Proteus plugins.

In my spare hours I've dismantled a Chinese lamp which was designed badly, not to be dismantled. The base was held on with aluminium rivets which I needed to drill off, and even the cable grip was a solid lump of plastic which prevented the cable from being removed or replaced. I managed to saw that off and tug the cable loose. The touch switch had broken (which was the reason for my intervention), but I've dismantled everything and will change it into a normal lamp. Mum was going to throw it away, yet it's a pretty thing with coloured glass, a cheap Tiffany imitation, so I thought it would be a fun restoration project.

Part of the work is making it repairable and serviceable. I cut two 150mm arcs of wood and fixed these into the base. This will allow the base to be screwed in, and will form a base for a new cable grip which I've made from Polymorph (Polycaprolactone).

SFXEngine, Sappho Photography

A second day of SFXEngine updates. I think one more day is needed to finalise the programming changes, irrespective of the manual, artwork, recompiling the plugins and other things like that. I now have four jobs: SFXEngine, two exhibition/competition applications, and to think about some sort of workshop or art talk.

From 4pm onwards I meticulously photographed Song of Sappho but the resulting image totally lacks yellows. Until now I've been using daylight white balancing, and daylight with daylight bulbs, but this appears to be inadequate and the results have a very strong blue cast. Unfortunately the process takes hours and is difficult to check at the time. This blue cast also strongly affected Hand of Destiny from last year. I may spend a day rephotographing these. So much work to make tiny improvements.

SFXEngine Updates

Sigh, the slow plod of art. I feel more able than ever in every area of creativity and creation, yet seem just as frustrated with my work, and everything seems to be moving far too slowly. What can we do but our best each day?

I've spent today updating SFXEngine for a future Steam release. This has been on my to-do list all month. SFXEngine, Prometheus, and Argus share many common elements (SFXEngine was, in 2004, a branch of Prometheus itself; Argus was a code-from-scratch that used the same GUI code, and shared other things like modulator processing). SFXEngine hasn't been updated much in recent years, so many of today's changes are to bring the program up to speed to my modern standards; better checking for start-up/shutdown, adding new features (like 32-bit float support for wav files), a large and growing list...

The hard work for a Steam release will be a tutorial, manuals, new artwork/branding, videos, that sort of thing). I spent far too long working on Taskforce only to sell less than 5 copies so I'll try to avoid too much work on this, but SFXEngine is a different and far more powerful beast than any game. It was on sale briefly with The Game Creators but it was too good - it can make great sounds so easily that the resulting sounds were worth more than the software itself. Now it's time to sell the software again. I've put more time, work, skill, and genius into Prometheus, Argus, and SFXEngine than anything else I've ever programmed.

I'll see how much more I can do tomorrow, but even my scheduled updates will take a few days. Today is also an IndieSFX sale, and the start of a Radioactive sale too, so those things needed some promotion.

Polishing

A tedious day, adding tiny amounts of paint to Love is Dead and Sappho to smooth the paint, an interminable task. The result certainly looks better, but still not as good as I would like... but nothing is perfect. I'm only glazing today because of this competition deadline. Ideally I'd wait at laast 2 weeks between layers, to give the former full time to dry. As it happened, the surface was fine and no damage was done, but solvents at this stage, or any rough rubbing would have harmed the underlayer.

I've been notified that Meals of Warm Spring hasn't been selected for the next stage of the Borchard. The only plus side is that it could have been worse, being selected for the next stage then being rejected would be costly. Costs are a constant problem for me now.

Non-Homogenous Universe Expansion

Mathematics can represent perfection, but nothing in the physical universe is perfectly even and homogenous. The radii of protons not perfect spheres. The 'circular' (I use this word very loosely in this context!) orbits of electrons are far from circular. The orbits of planets far from perfect ellipses.

The gravitational curves of space itself are necessarily imperfect, even if perfect in the idealised mathematics of the special relativity calculations. The gravitation resolution, either in spatial or in informational terms, must have a limit, and this would necessarily lead to a deviation from the ideal curve of mathematical space to that tracked by real planets and light-rays.

By the same token, I expect it would be impossible if the expansion of the universe was homogenous. It seems likely that the universe would expand at different rates at different locations. The key question is how great this variation is, not whether there is a variation. One could think of this conclusion as non-homogenous dark energy. Such non-homogeneity is necessary in reality because informational resolution always has limits; there can be no infinities in reality, again the primary questions are how great, and where and why the variation is.

It would be interesting if these non-homogeneities, the ultimate resolutions of gravitational and dark energy information, are related.

What is perhaps most extraordinary about the universe is that the infinite perfection of mathematics, the Platonic ideal so to speak, appears to be there, known, striven for, while never being attained. These rules must be present in some form. A 'knowledge' of infinity must exist if not its actual value.

Our brains, and our computers, are finite but can consider and process infinity and zero, and the universe must operate on similar principles. We can consider infinity, or compute infinity, but, this is key, not forever. A similar principle must operate for zero. Perhaps zero can only be certain for either no time, or infinite time. This accords with our experience; the logic of mathematics operates out of time.

Tones

I would say a quieter day, but the day has flown by. Deb and I dropped off some items to a charity shop then bought some supplies, including wood for framing.

I'm unhappy with my recent paintings, though there are some good points. The battle was so difficult, yet the results to me see resolutely on a similar level to before, when I can see and feel that I can leap upwards. One thing about the two recent paintings; Love is Dead and Song of Sappho is that the underpainting was unusually grey, and the glazes looked unusually strong, perhaps as a result of the greyness. Here (incidentally) is the glazing study for the Sappho colours:

The glazes needed to be more muted for a muted background, but these are fine for a stronger background. A problem here was a lack of time, but there will always be deadlines. An artist free of time and bounds is still constrained by future ideas. Nobody can afford to stand still.

My next painting plans are some portraits for Bickerton. I could use these as testbeds for new tonal studies.

Song of Sappho

A long day glazing Song of Sappho. I now eat at 17:30, so have four, 90-minute painting sessions in the day, and fitted a 45-minute one in the evening. The glazing was unconventional in that I didn't match the tones, to darken everything to more closely match the initial 2014 study. This worked, but was difficult and time consuming; a case of glazing everything with a dark transparent layer, then adding details into the wet. I used a similar process (by accident, then) for Penalties. That painting took seven 8-hour days to glaze, this just two for a painting of comparable size and complexity.

I'm now exhausted. Each session felt like a great battle, each moment requiring focus and constant pushing to do my best. I will complete filing details etc. tomorrow or on Tuesday, due to a busy day planned for tomorrow.

Glazing

A full day painting. First, the first glazing layer for Love is Dead, then the sky/sea for Sappho (now titled Song of Sappho).

I have a new routine of eating at 17:30 rather than 18:00. This means a shorter afternoon break, but time for a more convenient evening painting session.

Steam Keys, Frames, Piano Lessons End

A day largely of recovery few a few busy days. I started by disabling some game keys for review copies of games where a review did not appear. This is a scourge of Steam. At least 95% of all review requests result in no review. Some simply due to a lack of bothering to play, an understandable lack of time and incentive by journalists, but most key requests are fraudulently obtained with an intent to play for free and/or sell the keys. After a certain time I now disable those, so a lot of today was spent looking for reviews and disabling keys if none are found. I've sent about 500 keys out for my games (Flatspace and Radioactive the majority) and I've noticed only one review of Flatspace, one of Future Snooker, and one of Future Pool by the same writer.

Then, some unpacking and preparation of some new frames for Bickerton paintings, and preparation of the panels. I hope to paint these quickly next month.

Some sad news yesterday in that my piano student Peter has concluded his lessons. I taught what I could. With piano (or any instrument), most students have little incentive to play and will often not practice and only really play and exercise during their lesson. Without a deadline and an incentive, learning falters. I've learned a lot about teaching, and a little about playing the piano too, and each lesson but the first was fully sound recorded, giving some sort of historical record of the time.

I felt inspired though, that it was time I recorded some of my simple piano sonatas, the ones I wrote for the ArtsFest and the special projection event at the Sandbach Red Door Gallery. Perhaps it's time I wrote a piano concerto. But, sigh, I need time, money, peace, security for such things, as with all art. For now, I must paint for the open competitions and exhibitions I intend to enter.

I listened to some of my old music today too and created a first Spotify playlist. How much better the later music is than the earlier, and the 'early' music is only about 6 years old! I can do much better now. Oh to remake and polish some older works, and oh for more time and resources to do so!

DIY

Despite my curmudgeonlyness, today was a good day, tiring for the right reasons, with lots of physical work of drilling four immense 60mm D10 holes in a brick wall to fit a steel wall bracket. As ever, some were so hard it took all of my strength to drill one, some medium, and some crumbled to a fine brick powder and later required an injection of filler-plaster. All would resolutely not fit the gigantic screws (even if the rawl plugs did fit), and required an emergency search of the pile of old and various screws that many households accumulate (I probably wouldn't - if I had, or when I hope and dream of having, a household. I'd sort the screws in neatly labelled caches).

A similar day beckons tomorrow, with probable wall painting. No art for the time being, just exercise.

We're Very Worried About John

Two days of painting, rather slow and arduous. I completed the Argus update yesterday and spent most of the day working out future art plans, pondering structures of groups of paintings.

Years ago I came up with an idea 'We're Very Worried About John; the title a phrase my father has spoken a few times about an old television or radio programme. Here's the idea sketch:

I started it working on it in 2019, but it stalled at the basic stage of deciding on a size. Last year I finally decided to make it and found a tiny panel, 305x255mm, then made up a drawing for it, then traced it over. All was set apart from a colour study. This year I should have started to paint but again, I felt unhappy with it, the size, the look... something. So yesterday I dug it out and resized it again, this time for a 400x300mm panel and drew it out, adding a few more elements to the composition. I changed the 'fire' in the figure to a burning woman, and added a male face to the right. There was a sloping cross-like arrangement that seemed to point to a gap in the top right, so I added an upside down cross, representing a gravestone (most of the crucifixes in my work represent graves, not Christianity).

Today, in a few hours of sunlight I painted some of it.

It's a holiday week for Deb, which means less chance of work for me as I partake in social activities, these interferences with my art which only cause me anxiety and unhappiness! But we must sometimes acquiesce to society. So, little chance of continuing this for a few days.

Argus v1.21

A tiring day yesterday, frantically aiming to be busy, productive, useful, so darting between ideas. Programming can be good for focus, so I started to update Argus with a few changes. These have taken all day today.

In the end, the changes were substantial, and require a new file format. The two biggest changes were made as a result of my experiences making the Frans Hals video.

The first change was the introduction of ranged lights. I've had this option for a while, but rejected it because lights could either be ranged or infinite, and the way the calculation works is that one can't simulate infinite range with any setting for the ranged lights. I rarely use lights either. Over 90% of the videos have no lighting and just use bright objects, so there wasn't much incentive to add this complex feature. Yet, for Frans Hals, ranged lights would have been useful because it would allow the horizon to fade to darkness rather than remaining visible. For some of these 'chessboard' videos I've cheated and used a black mask to artificially fade the horizon, but that deception will fall apart the moment the camera moves. I've solved the problem by creating a new vertex-shader, a new class of object that is affected by ranged lights, while keeping old objects that behave exactly as before. So it's not the lights that have finite or infinite range, but the objects can either accept lights as infinite or as finite, a best of both worlds. This took much more effort than expected and I expected that my second change would be easier - it wasn't!

The next change was to restore the Set Modulator event, to allow attachment (or de-attachment) of a modulator to an objects parameter at any point/frame. I've not found a need for it before, but it can be useful. Say an object is wobbling left and right, and you'd like it to move up at a certain point. You can type exact values at that point to move it, though that may be awkward over a large number of frames. Those values can, actually, be generated and filled in automatically anyway, but suppose you'd prefer the power of using a modulator, a visual graph of the motion. Creating one that activates at a specific point can be tricky. In Frans Hals, some mask-boxes rotate in complex ways, but also suddenly shift in size at specific points. Knowing the exact rotation at that point is tricky (I can, actually, see it; the option to view the exact position and angle of an object at any frame is there... but I can't then continue its normal 'flow' because it is moving via a complex modulation). This feature allows you to attach a modulator (a movement up, for example) at a specific place without affecting any other modulators (like left/right movement). This makes it super easy to move things in very controlled ways, effectively giving me 3 or 4 different ways of doing the same thing. I can move an object exactly, frame by frame and type exact numbers, start an object and specify total lifetime paths, or switch on/off any path at any time, or record the motion live with the mouse, or import values from a text file... all different ways to move an object and each useful in their own way.

Adding this was quite tricky, at first because of the GUI requirements of a new value that has 12 parameters. Mainly though it was because the currently moving actor is pointed to rather than copied to a track, so when adding a modulator, the global actor has its modulator values changed, making every appearance of it in the film also change at that point. So I had to copy it instead of point, AND create a new file format to match.

Now it is done. At times I thought that these changes are overkill and that I'll never use them - but new ideas and features have a habit of crying out to be used. If I'd not made these changes I'd probably keep thinking of ways I could use them.

In other news, I sold a copy of the album on Bandcamp yesterday, my first sale in a while and one to a long time customer and friend. This small sale meant the world to me in. I'm now thinking of future music, but it will hopefully be very different.

Sappho II Underpainting, Golden Age Released

A full day yesterday. Woke feeling rather tired, started to paint the next part of Sappho. It was the release day for The Golden Age but I had no time for admin, the painting called. Painting was disrupted somewhat by surprise builders working on some new gutters for the front of the house, which needed doing but was still an annoyance, having people passing my curtainless window as I painted.

The painting has much more definite form than the first version and is perhaps better in every way, but not as dark or as moody as the initial study; yet I noted that the other version seemed rather too dark (while still not as dark as the other version). Anyway, colours can be altered during glazing, although that is not ideal. I rarely, and have rarely, made things darker during glazing. It's optimal to match the tones.

I finished at 6, then spent an hour on basic album-launch admin; updating links on my website to point to the live album, launching on Bandcamp, and at 7 watching the YouTube premiere of the Frans Hals video. This time last week, we'd not even filmed it and now it's complete and live to the world.

Sappho II Underpainting

Spent the morning tediously adding 32 album artwork images to Society6. One plus with Society6 vs. RedBubble (apart from the fast that the latter may delete you without warning or explanation and have no way of contacting them for support or comment, unlike Society6 who are easy to contact and respond promptly) is the wall art made from huge wooden squares which work particularly well with large format square album art.

In the afternoon I started painting the new Sappho painting. It's unusual for me to start painting in an afternoon, but in this case it's much better to split the work between two days rather than rush it in one as before, and better to start with a half day for the sky.

Many aspects of this are already much better, although the placement of the gulls was better in the first I think.

I listened to three Beethoven piano sonatas as I painted, and practised piano a little too, and wrote a little phrase myself. In many of his latter half sonatas, it's clear that he aims to impress in the last movement, and the other movements play on the themes in the last, building towards it, with some probably back and forth during composing. He was a master of structure, form, and variations perhaps because he was (usually) weak on melody. Like adding narrative to a painting, adding a melody may not add or enhance emotion; melody adds something else.

Sappho, Sonatas, Inside

Spent the morning transferring over the new Sappho painting, then sanding down and painting the new Love is Alive frame, then adding 16 album cover designs to Society6 (I have 38 more to add). Busy, but not very satisfying. I listened to more Beethoven analysis and felt inspired and frustrated. I wish I could play the piano better. I can instantly envisage and imagine writing Beethoven style piano sonatas - though I know that these are somewhat old fashioned...

I can, of course, learn to play any of them, in time, but I can't compose without the ability to play, so that I know that a work IS playable. I have something to paint for the New Light competition, but am still unsure what to enter (and there are only two weeks until the deadline). I have too many ideas, lots of sonatas in paint, but why paint those? They may be too late for any contests. Most of my ideas represent emotions, like music, but of course painting can represent far more complex narratives too, which I'm perhaps neglecting. By making everything a series, with 'movements', I'm increasing my workload without any immediate benefit. Paths! Doubts! Options! I also need plans for albums which are better artistically that, whilst remaining as good on production terms as, The Golden Age. I must create. I must succeed. I must excel. Reach! Push! Battle!

In the evening Deb and I went to the launch of Joy Winkler & John Lindley's new poetry collection Inside, which was a lovely evening, as we always experience from the friendly Congleton group. They remain our primary, all too rarely seen, too rarely met, group of artistic friends. Still, a social life would be bad for productivity.

On I must push, roll, stride.

Frans Hals Finalised, Sappho, Gums

Spent the morning finalising the edit for the Frans Hals video. I was unhappy with the flow of things in one small section and it took a long time to get right. I then uploaded it and set the premiere. Here are some stills:

Then back to Sappho, version 2 (or 3, if you count the 10-year-old study). I amended the drawing to conform to the new plasticine model, redrew the figure, and prepared a canvas. While doing this I listened to episode 3 of Beethoven's life story via the Radio 3 website.

My gums have started to bleed alarmingly and I keep getting stabs of ache in my right ear, so I've spent time caring for my mouth today. I think that the recent increase in sugar in my diet has caused this. I must take extra care here as I have no dentist and no prospect of finding one. There are almost no NHS dentist spaces nearby (the nearest is, was, 2 years ago, 3 miles away, a long walk even if they still had spaces), and private dentists require a monthly payment plan before they'll even see you, so it's 18th century style self-care for me.

Frans Hals Video, Society6 Store

A day of work on the Frans Hals video, mainly the final tweaks. It's amazing that I could make a video of such complexity in two days, most of the work was done in a few hours yesterday, but the final changes take 80% of the time for any creative project. Here's a still of the state so far:

The video tends to look like the titles to a James Bond film, with sweeping, sliding sections of film flying over an animated background. I did it by creating a complete animated film in Argus, using flat white boards to represent areas where the video will appear. When complete, I noted the frames where the video inserts are needed, then made a second film of edits from the filmed footage. Both that edit and the animated one were synchronised with the music.

Then adjusted the colouration of the film, and rendered out the main animation without the white boards, plus a second animation of only the white boards; the mask for the film. Both were combined using Avisynth. I turned down the opacity a little so that some of the background shows through the film, to make it look more integrated.

As a last step, I added a picture frame object to those white squares, to give them some sort of border. This is the most digital looking aspect, but it looks better, just about, than no frame at all. Certainly very different. Tweaking the settings for the frame texture and the reflection map is rather time consuming and hard to get right.

I found time to add the remaining 16 digital images to Society6 and my website, so all of my 2002-2003 digital prints are now on sale again, but I still have the album artwork. There are many more album covers now. Society6 seems suprisingly dead and tired, little changed since when I first left the site in 2018. A lot of art is from that date, and their own blog has hardly any interaction. The site could use new ideas; better pricing controls, sale options, limited edition items, digital items, 3D virtual rooms to view items, Patreon integration, contests... lots could be added. Itch and Bandcamp do things much better.

Frans Hals Video

A jump to video from painting, as Deb operated the camera to film some footage for a music video for Frans Hals, and Art For Me.

Some filmed elements are better than ever, but I was annoyed by a few, like the ragged look of my shirt (which fell open, this does make it look more rock-n-roll; Deb preferred it this way, though I'd have liked it neater). I mimed guitar too, which, ironically, sounded good in the studio but wasn't at all in time to the actual recording. It's a bit like singing a brilliant karaoke mime to the wrong verse. I will have to do some work on the footage. Ultimately, it will not be accurate.

The Art For Me video involved the Rilke Pierrot mask and singing to a lightbulb; with memories of the memorable scene in Blue Velvet. This looked beautiful at times.

But still, I felt rather tired and sad by it all. My perfectionism saw nothing but flaws, and I find it so hard to add a sense of artistry to video, an artless and time consuming medium I dislike. We can see some personality in a film by Hitchcock, Orson Welles, David Lynch, but very few (if any) music videos have any sense of character or art. Can anyone identify the art or artisan in a music video? They are more like moving advertisements than art; but, sigh, I must try, so I decided to add as much genius as I could to, and with, what I have.

This morning I read that Society6 has reactivated my account, after RedBubble suspended it last week without any warning, reason, or explanation. So most of today was spent uploading images there and adding these to my website, but in my mind I was thinking about the music video. I thought it would be nice to have an animated video with some film sections flying about in custom masks, something like A-ha's 'Take on Me' video.

Starting at 4pm today, by 5:30 I'd got most of a draft complete.

Vista Dream, Love is Dead Miniature, Vienna vs. Crewe

I often feel sad to a suicidal degree, but unlike van Gogh I'll never harm meyself. The universe will do that to me, and all of us, soon enough, and such agonies should be extended, so our cells must be taken care of with the best foods, exercise, care.

I dream of walking with Deb, outside at night. It's so dark that we can't see a thing, total blackness, feeling our way along a roadside path. Then, things slowly brighten and we follow a moonlit outline of a pathway. We walked, with a few others, along some grassy paths, then onto a wider plain. The sky was revealed and was amazingly beautiful; dark, deep blue a the top fading down to a bright turquoise at the mountain horizon. I gazed in awe at this as Deb continued to walk. Then, dawn, and the mountains before me were so beautiful. I asked Deb for her phone to take a panoramic photo of it. She handed me her phone and walked on with the others rather than stop with me, she seemed to care less than I about the view. I stood and took a panoramic photo, imperfect, but I felt I hadn't the time to take a better one. I was now in a vast airport or shopping centre, the mountain view beyond glass walls. Deb and my companions were gone.

I've spent today painting the new (third) Love is Dead miniature.

The underpainting was relatively easy. With miniatures it's exactly like working on a larger painting but on smaller scale, so smaller and softer brushes with thinner bristles but of the same shape as the bigger cousins. One hard part is adding enough paint. It's tempting to add too little. This was painted more successfully than the other two, I was chromatically prepared. See, at the end, how purple the dark background looks, but it's grey, an illusion due to the yellow flesh. After painting I realised that I'd stupidly painted it upside down! The panel was custom sized and cut exactly for the frame but will now need trimming to fit.

Perhaps only one glazing layer is needed for this. The quality of the underpaint is sufficient that transparent glazes from now on will suffice.

What is this 'for'? I wondered about entering a miniature society exhibition, but what hope have I there. Whatever I do, I am inspired and motivated with my art this year. My recent focus has been on music, but even before then, I'd stopped pushing to be the best I can, stopped active analysis to improve in painting, push. 2023 feels like a renaissance year for me like 2012 was, and perhaps for similar reasons, emergence from darkness. I still have energy, but few resources, no princely patrons or supporters.

I'm still listening to the Beethoven 'Composer of the Week' specials from 2020. I still feel a great affinity with Herr B., but am reminded that Crewe is no Vienna, far even from an 18th c. Bonn. We have almost no culture here, no society. After 50 years I know nobody here but Deb, and have no social connections or affinity with anyone or what might be called local culture.

Love is Alive

A busy day after a full day's painting on Sappho. Yesterday was long and tiring, and I saw only mistakes and flaws in Sappho. There has been certain progress in my painting, year on year, but I feel a leap is needed, and leap I both must and will. It's amazing to some extent that I managed that 50x75cm work in a day; this is one sign of my recent improvements. I'm unsure what do to. I'd like to paint it again, but I painted the Roman Legionaries painting three times and difference between two and three were very small, and it's likely that some good elements in one version are lost on another.

I've spent today revisiting Love is Dead and Love is Alive. The former has been revisited a few times. The real rose thorns broke off often, so the frame has been patched up many times over the years, and in 2019 I repainted the centre panel, though it was as unsatisfied with it as with the first version, for different reasons. I've vowed to paint a third version. Here are the first two versions:

Of course, in real life the paintings look better, softer. The 'frame' isn't changed much, apart from fixing up some of the thorns, most recently in 2019 with some Paraloid resin, to secure everything in a good way. The Polymorph vines are very strong, but the material is sensitive to heat, amazingly flexible and resistant to glue (and paint). I also attached the whole thing to a block of wood because the mirror plates to fix it all to a wall in an exhibition were too delicate, too close to the delicate frame itself. I'd do many things differently, were I to make it again, but, it remains a pretty object and one of the best things I've done (or did), and will be a certain masterpiece with a masterly centre panel, and if so, a masterpiece that will have taken me more than a month of full-time hours.

I'd always planned it to be one of a pair, with 'Love is Alive', and I bought a second frame at the time, and added vines too. That version was destined to be white and light, a living version of the above. Today, as well as restoring Love is Dead, I made preparations for Love is Alive, cutting and preparing painting panels, cutting mounts and a 6mm MDF backing piece of wood.

Painstakingly traced and cut with a fret saw. I'd perhaps not use 6mm MDF now. it flakes rather when screws are added, and is very moisture sensitive; but this is one of a pair and it should match the original in size and look. So I'm in a mood of work, to finish and complete, to produce, improve.

Sappho Underpainting

A full day painting Sappho (which may not be the final title). It was difficult to complete this in time so the paint was a little thicker and the strokes looser; this is also a factor when improvising rather than painting from a plan. Clouds I can comfortably improvise, but rocks are a little more difficult, they require form, a form I must model to some degree. Sea waves are more like clouds, but details are painted dark on light whereas clouds are white on dark (wet on wet), so require different preparation.

Almost everything in the painting was improvised apart from the figure. The face was, however, but I really needed a model for this. I had a model for the body but its face was inadequate.

Red Bubbles, Cracked Plates

A horrible day. I started by rearranging my accounts in preparation for the end-of-tax-year, with separate entries for personal and business income/outcome. Most of my 'business' income is personal anyway, but this separation will help in future, should I form a media company one day. Then I traced over the Sappho underdrawing to its dark green background.

After lunch I was informed that my RedBubble account, which had listed all of my digital artwork from 2002-2003, and all of my album art and merchandise, was 'suspended' (deleted, that is) without warning and for no discernible reason. Perhaps this art content was not seen as compatible with the tee-shirt designs I founded the shop with, it would indeed be better if my shop was branded Mark Sheeky Artworks, but it's not possible to change a username or rebrand anything on RedBubble, and nigh on impossible (as it is with any of these slave-driven digital elites) to contact anyone. Our lives are increasingly digital, and dominated by giant anonymous companies who own our creations, own our data, our life's industry, and at whim can destroy it. A few years of dormancy and - boom! We're dead. If you're not making enough money or gaining enough popularity to satisfy these digital aristocrats, it's the guillotine for you! So our souls hang by a Damoclesian thread, but worse than mere death awaits! No less than the eradication of all of our information, our selves, memories of ourselves, and everything we've done in our lives: gone, for the crime of not being rich or popular.

Perhaps the real reason for my suspension is my lack of sales (I hereby apologise for my poverty and obscurity). I've not sold a digital art print or album print, just a handful of tee-shirts or other items not connected to the digital art. I fell into depression then anger at the stupid site and became filled with hatred for the world generally. Then, at tea, my beloved china plate, from which I eat every meal, was cracked down the middle by my idiotic mother who put it empty in the microwave 'to warm it' - I despise warm plates and have mentioned this time and again, but was even more broken by the breakage of my 30-year old friend. It is, annoyingly, not cleaved in two but cracked down the centre and ready to fall in two. I'll keep using it, making every mealtime a study in terror, reminiscent of my childhood studies in terror of being in the proximity of my insane father.

My focus must be painting, and, on a positive note, I think I am doing new things. It feels like a rebirth of sorts, after a few years of little progress in visual art - my focus has been on music. For every painting I have, I now want to add more. I'm now thinking of art in the way I think of my music; creating with the end in mind rather than for its own sake. The initial joyous stab of inspiration used to be my incentive. Now I will craft and plan first, sketch options, consider. Hopefully I can paint tomorrow. Peter's lesson on Wednesday will interrupt the day, but I am aware that his lessons won't last forever.

Beethoven, Portents, Sappho

My night was spent awake, but filled with a new writhing excitement rather than angst. I felt lost in the day however, lacklustre, feeling isolated and disconnected from humanity. Art is my life but I must muster my encouragement from within, from my philosophy that life is about sharing information, about art. I know that my work is generally ignored, and that those that don't ignore me dislike or envy me. Such is the artists' life. I live in poverty, isolation, and stomach pain, and ceaseless work for no reward (except self-satisfaction and the knowledge of ultimate success - of course!) yet, I work and focus on doing the best I can each day and with each solemn and certain breath, and this gives me a unique ecstasy.

I also feel artistically renewed, that my ideas are entering a new phase. May the gods give me time to make more, last many more years. I worked on three paintings; transferring over the Portents of Desire drawing and preparing the surface, then creating a shadow guide for Sappho:

Than preparing that canvas. The mood here is the solitary cry of the isolated poet. My idea for the 'second movement' is pink and fecund. I also came up with an idea for the third in the 'sacred' series which includes Deb's portrait; but the mood must be considered carefully.

As I worked on Sappho I listened to the brilliant and final Rachmaninov programme from in Radio 3's Composer of the Week, then, as I worked on the tedious drawing, the start of the year-long Beethoven programmes from 2020. It's odd to me that his 'late quartets' are thought of as 'difficult' or strange, when to me they are as tuneful and brilliant as the 9th Symphony, or any of his late work; not 'experimental'. I found it oddly synchronous that I felt Beethovian, then tuned to his moods and biography. On we charge heroically!

Sappho

A slow day. My days seem to be one good, full of energy and productivity, and one slow of sleeplessness and stomach pain, zombie-like tiredness, and lacking in motivation. Yet even on slow days I work, and perhaps years or months later I would struggle to recognise which days were which. Such is perception. Today, I completed my quarterly backups, went for a walk though the ragged streets of Crewe; a town of closed shops and poor people. I bought two books for £1 each on the last day of the town's WHSmith, and the last day of the town Post Office.

On these days I'm reminded that art gives life meaning to artists. Art gives life meaning to art critics and art lovers. Art gives life meaning to humanity.

I returned and started work on Sappho, a painting inspired by the Mengin painting in Manchester Art Gallery, and one I painted a study for almost 10 years ago, but knew that it really needed an epic size of canvas. I've decided to forget that requirement (for now) and paint one at 50x70cm, which is big enough. Here's the study:

I've used Poser for the first time in years to pose a model. Perhaps now I can use it as intended, as a reference, rather than copying the dummy-beings it creates as I used to. The rocks I will invent.

I wrote a song about it. Here are the words so far:

Sappho

Poetess
by the paper lamp
of the yellow moon
and the blue-lit sighs
in the drowning glass

Poetess
press the secret words
from your soul-clay
to your future love
whisper painful truth
as you fall
into liquid dreams
of forgetfulness
of the mountain-sky
of the longing storms
of bleak winter's rain

The heavy salted ocean
breathes around your chest
Loves you, octopus
sucks your breath
vowel by vowel
towards death's orgasm