Portents, Art Competitions

A slower day yesterday. Listed more paintings on the Saatchi website, and completed the underpainting to Portents Of Desire.

I looked back on some of the many (100 or so) unfinished, half completed, or destroyed paintings.

I remember this 3D portrait, perhaps I thought I could do better, or was unhappy with some aspect. Artistically, it's something of a showcase, with a nod to M. C. Escher.

There was also this, 'Saint Andrew Punishing The Sinner', which was a large work on MDF. The result looks too computer generated and artificial. I put months of work into this, back then, and worked on two versions.

I'm better able to complete both works today, though they'd probably be very different.

Today, a day of art photography of new paintings to enter into a couple of competitions. I wanted to enter The Love Reliquary II into the Royal West of England Academy Open, but after paying to submit was informed than works prior to 2020 were ineligible; annoying, especially when The Love Reliquary was hardly shown to anyone when it was completed. I've lot of great art which is unseen and not exhibited, and not eligible for exhibition unless I organise it all myself. It's hardly the case that The Love Reliquary is of its time; it is an anachronism in art terms.

I entered the equally good painting 'When This Is All Over'. This might be my last entry into the R.A., R.W.A., R.B.S.A., for some time. Passing the gatekeepers is difficult and expensive, and I can't afford (and have no incentive, beyond artistic duty and the hope of a sale) to keep trying.

I'm full of painting ideas and there are many opportunities around. I'll probably enter more art events this year than any since 2020. Onwards we stride.

Journey Dream, Portents Of Desire Underpainting

I dream of a long and difficult trip. I was in a small group; with an old woman, and one other person at least. We had a long way to go, over the course of two days or two sections. The first part was a long walk in the rain, or difficult conditions, and at the end of the day we grew tired at the thought of the journey. Things became easier however, and we managed to take a train and found that the second half of the journey was much easier and faster than expected.

At the end, there was a bird, a 'dootoo', or something similar. It had a long tail; I have memories of a cartoon bird, Wattoo Wattoo, which perhaps was a partial inspiration for this, but the colours and appearance were generally of the bird Grayson is fascinated by in my Grayson Perry Scarecrow painting. The bird, I was told, was a Jewish myth, that is was made from, charmed by, or somehow connected with, a stringed instrument bow, or possibly a harp. The long tail evokes a connection between a harp and the spray of tail feathers in a peacock.

Overall, the dream seemed like a positive portent. Before sleep, I was evaluating the year at this halfway point, so perhaps it indicates optimism for the second half.

So far in 2024, I've remastered Gunstorm, Gunstorm II, and Argus, and released those on Steam, and remastered Breakout Velocity, Fallout Velocity, and Firefly for the future. I've written and recorded A Drive Through The Town, and completed a the few paintings in progress from 2022, at least five complete so far. Plus, the Fall in Green book has been released, and we've attended almost every open mic every two weeks; including modifying and learning to play my Microkorg as a sort of keytar. I've certainly grown as a music performer and live singer. I've completed the public mural and revamped the art section of my website.

Where to go next? I have many paintings in progress, and ideas for more. One problem here is that many old ideas remain - this is a long term problem. This matters only in that the themes or philosophical contents can be out of date. Of course, I have ideas constantly; perhaps the best art ideas are eternal, or don't go out of date. I'm reminded that Beethoven's later works often took many years. By their completion, did he consider them out of date? This is the question I face, particularly because I'm full of new ideas and outlooks which jar with some of the paintings I have lined up.

Today, Argus was released. I spent most of the day underpainting about 80% of 'Portents Of Desire', a painting notable for having different colours from the colour study I painted yesterday. One clear difference between my art now and before is that now I'm less concerned about the meaning of paintings, more about the feeling they convey independent of any meaning or interpretation. Inspired by a documentary about Thomas Hardy, about bleak death, the idea drawing took longer than usual. It seems to be more about division/separation, and longing, though there was no conscious concept or message behind the composition.

Studies, Catalogues

A busy day yesterday, yet more preparations for selling my art online. I completed photographs of the new 'Time For Love' frame, and photographed 'Alien Nativity' in its frame. I've made a list of the paintings for which I have the right size of box for shipping.

Then, I worked on two oil colour studies; for 'Oliver Cromwell Not Dying Twice', and 'Portents Of Desire'. In the evening, a Fall in Green performance for the Statue for Ada project:

Today, I finally listed my first two works on my long dormant Saatchi Art account. I needed weights for them - bah! I've recorded every statistic about every painting apart from weight. Today I've spent a lot of time running and jumping to collect paintings from the walls and shelves, weighing them and noting the results, then darting them back to their place of origin. I've weighed 64 so far.

My records show that, over the past 20 years, I've sold (or gifted or otherwise disposed of) 246 paintings, drawings, and/or sculptures. I have about 1000 left, enough to sell one per day for the next 3 years or so - though this isn't entirely correct as that number also include digitals works (inc. album covers), inventions (my music stand, my easel head) and other non-physical items which aren't technically sellable artworks.

It is 25 degrees in here and becoming too hot to work.

The 20th Century Golden Age

Politically and socially the 20th century was anachronistic. The era of peace and huge social welfare benefits humanity enjoyed were due to the release of environmental energy made available by technology, a finite resource which, by the early 21st century, was in overt decline. I predict that history will judge the 20th century as a golden age, one of peace and comfort, widespread food, shelter and universal rights and care for humanity; but that these benefits came at the unsustainable expense of taking too much energy from the environment.

Current politicians are either ignorant of this reality, or concealing its truth by promising that things can be as prosperous as they were in the 20th century, but this is not possible. An environmentally sustainable life is one that is poorer for humanity than one that takes more from the environment than it returns; this should be obvious. It is understandable why politicians would avoid making this clear. Those that do are perhaps known to be correct, but ignored out of fear and hope; we all like to think positively, that things will get better. To be told that they will not, or even might not, is unpleasant enough to ignore, to cower from. It is this psychology which opposes environmental issues which highlight any poor consequences of current actions.

For non-humans, plants and animals, the 20th century was not a golden age but a crisis of epic proportions.

There is a link between race and intelligence: racists are not intelligent. Racists don’t realise that we all need each other, and the same applies to humanity’s relationship to other animals, and the electronic life and being developed. We know what we need and who we need when the time comes, but often only realise this when what we once had is gone.

We Are Dreams Questing For Dreams, Painting Studies, Beethoven Dies Again

I slept for many hours and dreamt vividly and positively. At one point my dream was of the four seasons, experienced like a film or artwork. I seemed to be changing them, as though editing the film, while discussing them with someone, a female observer in the strange space we inhabited, like a sports hall.

I painted three things in the day. First, I trimmed the canvas for 'Old Lazy Candle Shouting At Innocent Baby Candles'. This was originally framed in my old-style pine box frame, with visible screws, but I have become unhappy with the look of these, and have been gradually replacing all of them; so, I de-framed it. I found that the painting nearly fitted the outer frame of G114A 'The Time For Love Has Nearly Flown'. That frame was a little too small, so I decided to trim the Candle painting to fit, partly because the balancing of the composition was, if anything, better by being trimmed.

The recess of the new frame was a lot smaller, so I needed to paint over upper and lower areas which were unpainted, so I did this today.

Then, I glazed a new painting 'We Are Dreams Questing For Dreams'. I (probably) painted this in 2022; I at least painted it on a spare canvas board cut to size, using some remaining paint at the end of a painting day. I kept this sketch, and looking at it again, decided to continue the painting today, and so added a glaze layer.

I used just safflower oil, rather than my usual amber medium. The painting was improvised, though followed my typical themes; starting with a blue 'sky', a sandy 'floor' and adding structures and figures. It seemed to be a man striding, made from blown sand, walking towards a palace. I thought that it seemed to reflect an idea of hope for something better in this dust-blown life.

After that, I painted the colour study to Inspection At Theresienstadt.

At all times I listened to Beethoven's final years and moments in the BBC Radio 3 'Composer of the Week' special serial, from 2020. I was again moved. The transience of life, the hope and hopelessness of art. Where can I show my art? Beethoven felt special, vastly better than others, he recognised his talent. I feel this too; yet I know, unlike him, that everyone feels like this, that everyone feels that they are special - maybe not immensely special, but everyone feels a bit better than the rest and wants appreciation for their unique and special talents.

In the afternoon, Deb visited for a Fall in Green rehearsal, for tomorrow's charity performance. Without her I would be as misanthropic and hateful as Beethoven; but we have each other, she is my world.

The Love Reliquary, and Website Organising

A slower day, but I've labelled a few more paintings.

Every time I post art on social media I get messages and comments asking to buy it, all scams and fraud. A message via Facebook over the past few days supplied an address, a flat, which is the registered address of two limited companies, both registered in the past year, with no accounts and a director who seems to be an obscure catering student. The message came from a Czech woman, though the tone of the message seemed male to me. I expect that she and the student are victims of identity theft. The thought of a sale made me research things like postage and payment options, a useful upside, though I think generally, it's best not to sell to anyone online, merely put them in touch with 'my gallery'. Oh for a gallery!

The productive parts of the day were adding framed photographs of paintings to my website. This involved some coding to switch between framed and unframed images. This was complicated by the fact that some paintings are framed but don't have photos of the framed work, so I needed several codes: unframed, framed, framed and photographed. Only the latter should give the option to view a framed image.

The image page also shows sculptures and digital images, which are never 'framed' so I needed a fourth choice of 'none', too. The logic wasn't difficult, and after that I had to convert all of the new images and upload those too. This solves one issue my website always had, that some works, like The Love Reliquary or the God Being Killed painting, were shown in frames, and some were not. Plenty of works have important or interesting frames (like Being The Elephant Man) and it was always a toss-up whether to show these framed or not. Now I can show both.

The thumbnail link on the gallery page shows whichever is best, often the framed versions for things like The Monstrance Of Life, and the main page always shows the unframed painting, with an option to click for a framed image.

I was amazed to find that the Richard Dadd Cabinet wasn't on the site at all, only the painting; and The Love Reliquary and The Love Reliquary II weren't there either. I can't remember why, and I've added them. The Love Reliquary II is one of my best works. I entered it into about 8 competitions when I completed it, and it didn't get past any round of judgement. Perhaps I hid it from my site so that I could enter it into more - but it all seems hopeless now. It's less than 10 years old, but too old to enter into most competitions, despite the fact that it's remained unseen for almost that entire time.

I think it's only been exhibited 3 times: in Chester Art Centre in a one-night show I set up myself, in the Silver Star Gallery in Chester, at the 'Relics' exhibition, and in Warrington Museum in 2018 for their Contemporary Arts Festival. For almost all of its life it's been locked in its foam-sealed box. A saintly relic indeed.

Stock Taking Day 2

Another long and physical day of stock taking, wrapping, unwrapping, and art photography. Frames photographed included 'Mermaid Completely Accepting A Loveless Life', 'Songs Of Saint George', and 'Death And The Queen Of Spades' here...

... but many shared frame styles. So I used the same frame image for the Bunting Game Triptych, those Anti-Valentine's Watercolours, and the recent film star portraits.

The morning was stressful and horrible for a few reasons. Unpacking and checking everything revealed a few nice paintings in awful quality frames, which I've really moved away from. How I rushed things in those early days! My early framing efforts were very poor in technical and aesthetic standards. The painting 'The Romantic Life Of Rene Magritte' was touching (and stuck to) the wood of the frame and its paint has been damaged, so I must repair that. I toyed with doing that today, and started to fix the frame too. The frame is a blotchy arrangement of green, brown, black and gold. It has a charm in its own way, but the sides and top are a greater mess.

There are a few paintings in similar frames: the Charlie Chaplin one, The Silkworm, The Glorious Birth of Summer, Depression Caused (etc.), Money Just Running Out. All of these need new frames and in a near panic wanted to unwrap and fix them all, taking some out, then deciding to put them away, to file and forget. Ultimately, I did a little work on the Magritte frame, and stored the tainted painting back in a more secure condition. These restorations can wait for a future day.

I hope I can find time in 3 or 4 years to do this. I hope that my stock of newer and well framed works will sell or deplete. I had a tragic feeling that the situation could be the same then, that I'll never have the time or space or funds to fix my old works, that nobody would see them even if I did reframe them. It would be shameful to show them in their current state; but the paintings themselves are not so bad. I can do much better now, of course. This should hopefully always be the case.

Most of the works on shelves, 50 or so paintings, are now labelled. I estimate this is 150kg worth; I worry about the integrity of the shelving! Almost everything in good frames is photographed. Ultimately, even if I exhibit only these, I'll have enough for many exhibitions, so the rest can wait.

Here's a glimpse at my artworks spreadsheet. This only shows what's framed and how, and what is scanned and how. Not shown are fields for sizes, print sizes, time taken, prices, and to date 1258 rows. This admin takes time but it can be worth a lot in the long term. I always take a long term view. There are artists who achieve overnight success, perhaps, but these are few and those that do would find that fleeting fame useless without solid foundations. Art is a long term activity.

0 or 1 indicates a framed work, with glass type (blue/pink) next. The cyan text indicates sold work. The S indicates if a 300dpi scan is present, with an orange background if the frame has been photographed. The coloured blue/red boxes indicate whether prints are available, with an x for proofed giclee reproductions.

Art Stock Take, Frame Photography

Many artists don't title or sign their work. Probably less than half label the back with this basic information, and perhaps only a small minority catalogue their work. I do all of these things, plus have print quality digital images of (just about) all of my 1000+ artworks - but not all have frame photographs. Not all are framed, and the early ones were not framed as well as I'd now prefer. I framed them quickly to show off and enter into things, those were the days. Now I paint and seal them up in tombs; but of course, they come out when the time is right.

I started the day by working out what I might show or sell online. Almost every gallery I've approached in the past 15 years has ignored me, so it makes sense to prepare for selling my work online. I can do this, but I dislike the idea generally, partly because the paintings look much better in real life and are somehow devalued by being turned into 'digital' commodities. One of my main reasons I started to paint was that it was not digital, I wanted to escape the digital world. But; I have hundreds of paintings and nowhere to display them. I've sold one or two paintings online before, and I need both the money and the space.

My investigations led to which paintings I have photographed in their frames, and which not. Most with newer and better frames do have frame photographs. I started by amending my master list of artworks with little flags to indicate which images are photographed/scanned, and which included framed photographs.

I also needed to find the works themselves. The storage room upstairs is now a spider's pantry of artworks wrapped in cling-film silk. All have labels on the back, but those are often hidden when wrapped, so I decided to stock-take and label everything, and to photograph a few paintings in frames.

So, in the afternoon, I ran up and down stairs, noting, labelling, wrapping and unwrapping painting after painting. I photographed 7 works, with 3 more sharing frames (they use identical off-the-shelf) frames. One notably hand-made frame which hasn't been photographed before is the one for 'The Fictitious Secret History of Aspartame', here:

It's not a trivial process to get ideal images like the above. The small ISO and huge F-stop means an exposure time of 5 seconds or so, and the image needs careful placement to be square-on. As I write, 199 paintings (or drawings) have images in frames. I've got a lot done in terms of labels, I may continue for another day or two.

Studies, Beethoven, Surrealism

A slower day of studies and plans. I drew out tone studies for 'Inspection At Theresienstadt' and the Cromwell painting, prepared a small canvas of each for colour studies (which I do in oil), and prepared the canvas for Theresienstadt. Here are the studies for the Descartes painting, which I filed today:

In the evening I released the Flatspace Music Pack 2 on Steam.

I need something more, more! I listened to the next step of Beethoven's 'Composer of the Week' special from 2020. I have some Beethovian aspects to my character, stretching to broad misanthropy and frequent hatred of people. Everyone probably shares some aspects of Beethoven. Like Vincent van Gogh, he has a mythological character which is easily hooked upon by artists. I appreciate struggle in poverty and against ignorance, and the concept of struggle for making the best art. I may strive for the best, to do my best, in stoic solitude; but I'm not world famous, or a deaf German, and barely touch alcohol. I love the piano, and improvising; but I need more drama and overt genius in my art. It's horrible to contemplate that I may be closer to that despised emulator Brahms - no! Passion inheres, I would be ashamed to emulate a style. I am, at least, recalcitrant.

I must return to roots, to 2004, to 2007, the dawn of my art. Last night I read about the dawn of surrealism. I always disliked my work being compared with surrealism, I use the term only because it easily conveys 'what my paintings are like' - but from the outset I painted in the way I did, and knew nothing about art then. Surrealism is unique as an art movement because it was intended as a revolutionary social movement, changing the world by promoting a new way of thinking. One key problem with surrealism is that its theories of thought; on the conscious/unconscious mind, and on Freudian symbolism were incorrect.

The paintings I paint are not surrealist, any more than Beethoven's Late Quartets are; but all unusual works are considered eccentric, so unusual or anti-social that they stand out; his were. The word 'surreal' has come to mean this, but there are many forms of this eccentricity, and their connection to the surrealist movement are more tenuous. The word 'surreal' to mean this certain sort of creativity is perhaps the art movement's most lasting monument. I've started to describe my music as Surrealist Rock or Surrealist Pop as it fits this definition, as does the music of Sparks, for example, or perhaps The Shaggs or the Legendary Stardust Cowboy other acts which emit thoughts in a 'raw' sort of way.

Website Updates, Argus v1.41

An anxious day yesterday, frenetic with two jobs. First, I updated my website to list painting prices on the main gallery page. This instantly improves the site; one instantly sees a shop-front rather than a mere display:

The work wasn't difficult but took a lot of planning and testing. I had to correct many prices in my vast catalogue. The other job of yesterday was installing Bogi's skirting boards.

Today, I upgraded the artwork quality on the website to 1200 pixels throughout. Until now, paintings were 600, then 1200 when clicked on, but modern computers and modern internet connections make the larger size better in all circumstances. I've also prepared the Laxative single for Bandcamp, and continued to work on a small picture frame bought from a charity shop for £1.

It was made of varnished wood, very hard to paint over, hard to do anything with. Removing the varnish would be very time consuming and probably not create a smooth result (there were knots and dents anyway; the frame would never be perfectly smooth). Painting over it also makes a somewhat rough result. The corners were very poor, with huge gaps; I managed to fix those perfectly. Ultimately, I used layers of paint and filler, sanded with wire wool. A paint combination of van Dyke brown overglazed with dioxazine gave a nice dark with a violet sheen. The finish evokes Bakelite.

Most of today was spent creating a 'Spotify Canvas' creation set for Argus. During testing I discovered a small bug, so fixed that and used the opportunity to upload the Spotify Canvas Creation Pack to the main build, so it will ship with the program.

Deb and I watched a film called Kafka yesterday. I think I've seen it before, but a long time ago. It was very like Brazil, but lacked the escapist fantasy and romantic elements to its great detriment; this made me think that those elements are the ones vital to Brazil. We all dream of escape, of a magical perfect act or moment to solve everything; for Godot to arrive. I developed a short film idea in the night based on this, but can't film it now, if ever.

Descartes Complete

A third half day and the final day of glazing the Descartes painting. I made a few small but vital changes today.

My main need is a place to show and sell my art. I have a plan or destination for my current paintings in progress, a competition or opportunity. Those are short term destinations but important incentives, but I need more ways to sell work from my considerable collection.

I began oil painting in October 2004, my first tentative steps as a test, as a hobby. At the start of 2007 I decided to take it more seriously, and joined my first art club in the spring of that year. I've worked constantly since, but compared to the work span of most artists, I am only just starting.

Descartes Glazing Day 2

Another day of glazing, this time more tedious and lacking in drama. My lack of anger angered me! An artwork is many things, and I want it to be all. In a song, the melody hooks the listener but only the words can make one love a song, because the words mean something special, say something special. Instrumental music has its own challenges.

The colour study looked more dramatic due to better light/dark contrast. I'll try to address this.

After this, work on new paintings. I've made a couple of small changes to the Theresienstadt composition, adding more emotion to the eyes; that central face will reflect how the view feels. I also added a second 'box' of light, the windows, the façade, this time overlapping the death pile of corpses. This adds an element of eternal cycle and movement to everything; this is no longer a story or message, but an observation.

Descartes will take one more day. I've changed the title. It was (when conceived in 2009) Time Independent Portrait Of Rene Descartes Suddenly Realising That Every Thought Stems From A Prior Thought Or Memory Experience. The title stated that the painting was firmly about determinism, but the painting represents, most clearly, a moment of epiphany after (or during) an internal dialectic. There are no particular references to determinism, the title was there to make a statement of my epiphany on the matter; it was an artwork in itself. As it stands that title would harm the painting for two reasons. Firstly, it is 'wrong', in that the image can't represent (at least, not only that) what the title states. And secondly, it's so cerebral and complete that it harms it as an artwork, it tells too much.

The new title (so far) is Time Independent Portrait Of Rene Descartes Thinking. The sense of self that Descartes was so concerned about arises from an internal dialectic (ironically, two selves). My current thoughts about the painting are that it shows this - but the image hasn't changed since 2009, so expressing that wouldn't help. What is it about? Who can say. The title should be as clear as it can, but can't be explicit.

Descartes Glazing Day 1, Glazing Theory

Rose at 08:00 for a full day of painting. This turned out to be one of the darkest June days I have known!

Here's the underpainting from last year:

And after today's first day of glazing:

You may note some colour differences. Everything is a lot smoother in the glazed areas, but the underpainting itself is high quality, not everything requires glazing. 90% of the time, a glaze layer improves things, but sometimes it can make a good underpainting a little worse.

Why glaze at all, you may ask? Glazing serves 3 purposes:

1. Pigments may vary in their lightfastness, so it can help the security and longevity of a painting to give it several layers.

2. Fine detail requires a glaze layer because oil paint is thick and gloopy. It's impossible to paint fine lines into wet oil paint. Imagine dragging a stick though wet porridge; you can carve a rut, but never make a fine and neat line. Oil paint behaves exactly like this. Painting a fine line on a dry background is possible, but for this the background must be your desired colour.

3. The chromatic effect, the beauty of the colours. The brightest and prettiest colours are too transparent to paint with directly, and look very different (usually worse) in solid-mass tone than in transparent filter-tone. Colours arise in two ways: reflecting from a solid mass, like opaque red paint; or transmitting though a filter, like a white surface viewed through a red filter. These two types of mixing, direct (additive) and filter (subtractive), give different results, and a master of painting needs to master both types. The super-luminous greens in the lower image are possible only by glazing transparent yellow over green (note that, with current 2-dimensional RGB technology, photographs of a painting like this will not accurately portray what it looks like in real life).

I have much to do.

Cromwell, Theresienstadt

Some more painting plans today, firstly to clear out many old ideas. So many ideas linger for years, waiting to be finished. It would sometimes be joyous to just delete them all and start again, but each time I consider it, I think that it would take hardly any time at all to finish them all, and I decide to charge though them quickly. So today I started plans for four new paintings. I've completed four in the past week, so I can work in batches of four!

First, I've completed the drawing and canvas preparations for the Oliver Cromwell painting. I need to assemble more images and work on some basic studies. I like to produce a shaded pencil study (contrasts are so important) and perhaps a painted colour study too.

After that, division up of some existing or planned works. One is new, and currently called Self Inspection at Theresienstadt. It was inspired by this painting made of the Theresienstadt Ghetto, a Jewish concentration/death camp in Nazi Germany:

Facades For The International Commission by Bedrich Fritta

Note the eyes in the rooftops. The painting began on the left, with the hidden activities; elicit love, and a moribund or morose prisoner behind the bars. Facades of shops or normal buildings are covering up a pile of corpses. Eyes on the roof watch; eyes of the guards. The message is that everything is being watched, but things are taking place in the shadows, out of sight. A corpse reaches up a mangled hand towards a black door, a door next to an anthropomorphic tree; the grim reaper. Behind the door birds swarm; the message here is that death is the only escape.

The drawing reminded me of my old 'Waiting For B.T.' picture for some reason. I've decided to revisit this with my own homage and interpretation. The themes of the original can be true for ordinary life; some parts of life are overt and public, some (the truth?) hidden, and death is the only escape in the end. My version toys with the visible and overt, the positive joys, and the dark and disturbing realities and anxieties; but neither is dominant. Truth flicks between both, the truth is both at once. Is even death an escape? Is death positive or negative, overt or hidden? I don't know.

Stomach Pain, Frame and Tripod Fixing, Oliver Cromwell Not Dying Twice

Another awful night of stomach agony. This reminds me how blessed I've been over the past year not to have experienced this so much. This led to a day of great tiredness, seeing the world through a strange mist of fatigue and confusion. The digestive system so closely reflects the mood. Historical cures for mental disorders were always purgatives or diet related for good reason.

Still, I got many things done.

First, I de-framed 'The Love Affair' in preparation to restore and fix its frame. I've got 20 or so old paintings with visible screws in the frame, and my aim is to remove and reframe all of them. Here's the de-framed work:

This frame is a complex work of rippled plaster, which makes it easy to remove any evidence of screws perfectly.

Then, fixing my tripods. One of the tightening bolts is held by a nut behind some thin and brittle plastic such that if you over-tighten it, it strains (and in this case breaks) the plastic. I glued the broken plastic and added a second flanged nut on top, then applied Polymorph all over both. This is much stronger. The metal bolt ideally needs a rubber tip or better grip for the cylindrical shaft, but for now this is at least a bit better than before.

I also announced a Taskforce sale, in honour of 30 years since the Amiga version appeaed in CU Amiga, then looked at some painting ideas with an aim to paint lots this year. I re-awakened one that I've started before and set to sleep in 2021; 'Oliver Cromwell Not Dying Twice'. Here's the idea:

I sketched out a bigger version back then, and kept that sketch to reuse the paper, but looking at it today, I decided again to paint it! I made some changes to the 2021 sketch and restored the carrot fronds in the hat (the 2021 version made these a limp carrot, but Cromwell is a fearsome and proud vegetable villain). I added a second character on the 'hill/shoulder' on the right, a frightened protagonist and defensive mother tree.

My plan for the next few days is to sketch out and plan more works, and complete the Descartes painting. I need money and will orient my activities more towards sales; paintings, CDs, books, software. I'll reduce the amount of music promotion and reduce live performances.

This evening, I went to mum's sister to do some woodwork. A new skirting board needs four cuts: 3x 45-degree vertical cuts, a common cut in skirting boards. I used a power-plane to do this, which is very smooth and can be very accurate at such cuts. The fourth cut was, unusually, a curved cut with a coping saw (a 'Charlie-Chaplin-cane' cut) to match the profile of the board itself. For the room itself, this should really also been another 45-degree cut, but the work is to replace an old rotten board, so it needed to be cut the same.

A busy day ends. Deb is recovering slowly from her cold. I wonder if I'll be able to see her soon.

You Know How It Is When You Remember A Friend, Continuum Hypothesis

Another painting completed today, one last touched in 2022 too, making this the 4th completed work of the week: 'You Know How It Is When You Remember A Friend':

As with the other works, this was envisaged as part of a series, so I paused to wait for those plans, as a series can benefit from the unity of having matching underpainting colours. After 2 years though, I'm keen to finish things. The only painting officially in progress now is the Rene Descartes painting, though there is one with a title/theme about Social Media Paranoia that was underpainted but abandoned.

Today was a first long day of painting. I don't feel like immediately starting on Descartes and may pause to plan new paintings first.

In the night I thought about the Continuum Hypothesis; in partcular considering the set of integers and, say, integers divisible by two. Both are infinite, but you could think of the latter as 'half the size' of the former. I thought that this was a ridiculous, and that both sets are the same, differing only in the language used for the numbers, not the content (1, 2, 3, etc. vs. 2, 4, 6, etc.).

This reminded me that zero or infinity do not (and can not) exist in the real universe and that any mathematical description of the universe cannot be accurate if it involves the use of zero or infinity. In an earlier idea, I thought about eliminating multiplication and division, but that's not necessary; all that is needed is to exclude zero and infinity.

We could use a new symbol for zero which is simply very small, and in all practical application the same as zero, but it is not. The same applies to infinity, which we could call that 1/zero. A new symbol for 'near-zero', perhaps a z with a line though it, can be this tiny number, 'ideally infinitesimal', as small as small can be, but not zero. The number is defined as the smallest physically measurable value, or smallest definable quantity of a function of, nature. I hypothesize that this number, when applied to the physics of the universe, was larger in the past than now.

I'm reminded that the philosophy of mathematics is often self referencing and divorced from practicality. If a maths or any system exists to describe and predict things in the real world, it must primarily equate to it; it must feature the limits (and perhaps imperfections) of reality.

Sacre Coeur, The Red Madonna

Another night of constant stomach pain and barely any sleep. In my semi-awake state I started to plan a new Dadd Cabinet. It's been 12 years since the first one and my woodworking and craft skills are far above that stage. The major hurdle is the money for the expensive materials. I need at least £200 of oak lengths, £100 of specialist art glass panes, and £100 of gold leaf and gold plating.

I reframed an old painting called Smooth Vasovagal Reflex, one of my most sexually explicit in imagery, though the work itself was about the vagus nerve function. I'm unlikely to exhibit this soon. The painting on Perspex is in excellent condition, but the frame only so-so. It has the old, 5mm thick, edges, and ideally needs glass to protect the delicate painting surface (Perspex is easily scratched and the damage nearly impossible to repair flawlessly). The glass would make it all too heavy. For now, I've wrapped and packed the painting away.

In the afternoon I did a little more painting, though my stomach has been in constant grinding pain. I glazed 'Sacre Coeur' and 'The Red Madonna', a pair of tiny paintings which were to be a triptych, but I decided to give up on the third of the series. These are essentially love tokens for Deborah.

The second is a flaming heart in the same bold colours. As with yesterday's painting, these were underpainted in 2022. I was worried about the glazing colours, which to use. Reds can be so difficult, but I loved this result. My only other option was to use red all over, glazing red over the turquoise background (which is a mix of raw umber and cobalt turquoise green). Yet, cobalt turquoise blue is one of my favourite colours, and it would be a shame to hide those magical hues under a red glaze. I must say that these paintings look far more stunning, and very different, in real life compared to their photograph. The glazed colour combination is a key part of the look and indescribable feeling these emit.

First Painting of the Year

A slow day of weakness and constant stomach pain yesterday. I started to gear up to do some painting and ordered 3 oil paints and 2 acrylics for £85; painting is reassuringly expensive. Reassuring because it means that people probably aren't doing it for this reason. It's rare to find an niche art in these days of cultural overwhelm.

After more tidying and preparation this morning, the afternoon saw my first act of painting of 2024. I glazed 'All The World Will Be Your Enemy', which I underpainted in July 2022. It's been patiently waiting face down for a glaze layer for two years. Here it was when I left it in 2022:

That took about one day, which for me is 9am to 6pm, but in this case it was spread over one afternoon and one morning. The plan called for a spider's web, but those thin lines were tricky in the thick underpaint, so I saved those for today. Today's glaze was initially and primarily to paint that detail, but I ended up glazing most of the painting.

Glazes here are very parsimonious and frugal. The tiniest amounts of paint are lightly brushed over the surface, sort of rubbed in with a soft flat brush as one would massage in oil. I started with the sky, then the flesh of the face/mountain. Fine details, like these white flecks, were added with my favourite detail brush, a half rigger:

Then the web, in opaque paint. Here's the result:

I could have added more. The monolith-like figure was largely untouched, as was the claw and the lower right mountain. and many areas may be improved with a bit more work, but I think this will do. This was the first day of painting using the new easel head I made last June. It worked well, held this panel much more securely than the beech head the easel came with.

Open Mic, Excessive Consumption

Last night's Open Mic event was as enjoyable as all are. The force of energy that is Andy Stubbs (always the outstanding artist, his performance of The Shadows' Apache made the original seem tired and twee), and brilliant guitarist and host Dan Toft stood out, with a performer of Beatles covers also giving a professional performance. Apart from Deb's (ours as Fall in Green) and mine, all of the performances were covers. It was a late night, finishing at 23:45 or so, which with a 12.5 mile journey home somewhat takes the shine off these events; but we will be back.

Today was spent on admin for the next A Drive Through The Town single, with its new B-Side. I needed to finalise the music and design a cover today. For this I used my 'Aspartame' painting.

I've done most of the admin for this today, but there's probably half-a-day's worth of work left. That can wait.

Art Photography Day 2, Cat Covid Release

Another full and exhausting day. It feels like I spend hours and days, and waste so much of my life doing tiresome admin and filing. Endless record keeping of my art; and for uncertain reward. Few artists even bother to photograph their work. Perhaps my record keeping is a ridiculous obsession? No! Record keeping is a vital part of art itself. We know of so much art and so many artists only because they were the few who did keep such records.

Here's my art photography set up:

The new lights really help hugely. They didn't exactly work perfectly today. One leg refused to fit, and I had to get the chisel out and carve its wood into shape. The tripods were not right this time. The screw which locks the vertical movement broke the plastic housing, and still would not hold the meagre weight of the camera rods (not visible here, I used the camera to take the photo, but you can see one distant tripod).

The tripods too are flimsy, and too easily knocked. I searched for a laser level which had a tripod-screw-pass through, but no such thing exists. I need a way to lock the tripods in place, and lock their exact orientation.

Still, I managed to take 20 or 30 photos, to 'scan' four paintings at about 370dpi. These gave the best quality and best colour reproduction of any photographed work to date. I was always particularly unhappy with the strong blue cast on many works, particularly notable on 'Hand of Destiny'. See here the new yellow, and very accurate, version, and the older blue version:

It barely looks like the same painting.

Even with my much more powerful new PC, it struggles were a mere four images to stitch together. I don't know how I might cope with a larger image.

It's also the release day for 'Cat Covid!'. June Holland congratulated my on Twitter, which was nice, and Deb bought the album which went live on Bandcamp today. I'm blessed with such support. The rest of the world ignored it all, despite much work at trying to convince it otherwise. Local radio was particularly disappointing. The station 'This is the Cat', broadcasting a mere 500m from my current location, uniquely seems to shun local arts and artists (or just me?). I can't explain it.

Bad artists have many friends and supporters, through a combination of pity, and the knowledge that they are no threat and may need help. Good artists have only enemies: jealous rivals, critics who always point out greener grasses and better alternatives, and an indifferent public who remain unconvinced or wary of those who, by flaws as much as merits, transcend or bypass the social order. All artists, however, may attract the occasional adoring stranger. These aspire to be like the artist, hope for escape to that joyous post-arrival-of-Godot paradise, where the ideal artist lives.

The day has flown on this technical work. I need more days to update my website with the new images, prepare the next 'Drive' single, and do a dozen more jobs that are not painting, when I'm starting to want to paint. Tonight we're off to the Earthly paradise of a new Open Mic event in Congleton.

Onwards.

Painting Photography, What Has Happened Vocals

A busy day. The new painting photographs look much better; better colour matching in particular. You might not see much difference here but the top (new) image is much closer to the actual painting, and had almost no processing, versus extensive toying with the inferior second one.

I also finished the modifications to the lights, and added vocals to 'What Has Happened To My Dreams'. I rushed this though at 5pm, and it can be the B-Side to the next 'Drive' single. A new Flatspace pack store was made live on Steam. I've rehearsed tomorrow's two songs. Lots of little jobs. The day has flown with a feeling of low productivity.

Painting Calls, What Has Happened To My Dreams, Ways of Working

A remarkably busy day for one at the time of artistic change. I'm normally slow and lacklustre at such times, but not today. The jobs of music and software, which have dominated my 2024, are coming to an end and I'm ready to move into painting. I did a few administraion tasks in the morning. Promotion work on Argus and the new album will continue over the summer as I paint.

A few hours of the day were spent working on a song called 'What Has Happened To My Dreams'. Musically it has an remote and epic feeling, like the old 'Snow' tune from Flatspace. Here are the words:

What Has Happened To My Dreams

I'd like to fly, but in my dreams I'm falling
I'd like to float, but in my dreams I drown
I'd like to love, but in my dreams there's no-one around

What has happened to my dreams?
My laughter is now screams.
All the beauty, all the cares
have become nightmares

And I don't know why.

I make a wish upon a star, and it says
it's just the way things are.

The music work revealed a little anomaly in Prometheus, so I fixed that. It's now on version 3.37. After this, I started to look at the paintings I have in progress, those in stasis since last summer. I spent a few weeks (over months!) of 2023 making studio lights to photograph these better, but I never fully tested the lights. Today I decided to do so, so set everything up for art photography.

They worked well, with much better results than before. They didn't need a diffuser, the plain bulbs (6x 810lm daylight bulbs) gave a good light. The stands were very unstable though. Everything is very flimsy and delicate, but this is partly because it was all made efficiently, from scraps and light materials, and with the knowledge that all prototypes are to be modified as needed. After the photographs (which I've not yet stitched together) I spent a couple of hours updating the stands. I've added wooden pieces to hold the legs vertical. The legs are bolted on, but they can slide sideways in trapezoid fashion. The stands can also fall backwards, so I've added a small heel-like piece of wood to them to attenuate this.

Setting these up added an extra 30 or 60 mins to the process. Like many of my complex processes, this one follows a written step-by-step protocol, and the complex one for this photography always reminds me of the bomb activation scenes in Dr Strangelove. This way of working means I can update the procedure as I learn; and stops me needing to remember how to do it all. I have many such procedures.

There are two ways to improve a process. A 'mechanical' way like this, which is a series of logical steps that any fool can follow. These are the most valuable lessons, because, fools as we are, it's something that we can't forget or that needs special training. The key with these skills is to write them down. These skills need a step-by-step list of instructions. I make many of these for various art procedures. Every scientist must experiment and test, but the results must be noted securely to be worth anything.

The other type of skill involves practice, training. This is a physical skill, like learning to play a musical instrument, which can't be rationalised so easily. These must be worked at constantly, but are that much harder to learn and master as a result. I'm always doing both, but keenest to find those mechanical tricks as they are easiest to enact and to retain.

Cat Covid Video, Bathysphere Frame, Argus

Two relatively full days, firstly finalising the 'Cat Covid!' video. The drum solo section was a little too simple, with a cat zooming in and out and a rotating glowing frame. Yesterday I changed this to some video sections instead, and added a quick zoom of the cat for the guitar 'meow'.

I also spent some time fixing up the mice, which had a black border. For anything involving alpha channels or masking, the colour should extend beyond the edge of the object, with the mask defining the edges. Here, the initial render had a black background. Yesterday I changed that for one with the blue sky, and used the alpha to define the mice themselves. The result is a much better mask:

These details are small, but bothered me. One final detail was that the lightning shape had some flat edges, so I re-cut that today. The final video is complete.

Another job yesterday was making a new frame for the bathysphere painting, due to enter the Bickerton exhibition next month. The frame smells of the smoke my parents fill out garage with. I hate cigarette smoke and everything connected with smoking. My expensive custom-cut wood is ruined, and will forever be. My life feels doomed and I feel as trapped as ever. I'm reminded that there are only two choices in each day; to do your best at living, or to die.

The finished frame is much better than the old one:

Finally, yesterday, Argus was approved for release on Steam, so I had some admin to do there. This year, I've approximately released one new thing each month: Cycles & Shadows, Gunstorm, Gunstorm II, the town mural, the new album A Drive Through The Town, Argus, and a few little things like the new Flatspace Music Packs, the singles, and live performances every two weeks. Perhaps only Argus has any chance of making money. Artistically, the music is better than anything before in production quality, and the same for live performance experiences. I must continue to ensure this, even if nobody but myself will ever know.

Exhausting though all of this is, it doesn't feel like progress; profitable, or profound or artistic. I can feel the urge to paint.

Cat Covid Video

A second full day of work on the Cat Covid video. The number of layers means that, even on this super-fast PC, it takes about 15 minutes to render the final film, from 5 full sets of 4230 frames, plus the video clips. It's complex, and certainly much easier to put together than many of my films made using AviSynth, but it's not hugely satisfying artistically.

Still, this draft, which has taken about two and half days, is just about good enough, and has pushed some limits hitherto unpushed, which is one key goal when doing anything creative.

I'll keep musing and working on it over the next few days.

Cat Covid Video Work

Two days of work on the Cat Covid video. A slower day yesterday, I filmed a few sequences and noted down the song structure and frame-count.

I gradually came up to speed today, starting with monthly backups, then charging into video work. This will expand upon the Argus and live-action combination videos of 'Frans Hals' and 'AI And Celebrity'. The first used masks to insert live action into specific screen areas. The second video did this too, but had an additional top layer which overlayed the first to make those areas glow.

Cat Covid will build upon this and will have an animated background with video inserts into masked areas, and have a masked top layer too. I may had a third additive layer (making 5 layers in total; background, mask (and video), additive glow, foreground, foreground mask). The final result will look, I expect, something like Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer video, highly animated. This is partly because my video contributions are generally of head-and-shoulders. There are few locations.

So far I've filmed a few scenes of myself as a vet, and the sung parts in my 'Cat Covid' outfit of red shirt and bycocket. I've also filmed some footage of playing the guitar in a striped top, sunglasses, and beret; the look of an archetypical jazz performer. I recorded two takes of that. The latter was closer to the actual music, but the former was more visually interesting, so I've decided to use that take instead.

Much of today was spend slowly building up the animation, pattern by pattern, from the song start. I discovered that the music in Argus didn't play if the track was open in another program, so I've addressed that, and added more features concerning muting tracks. This means I'll have to update the Steam version again.

Lots to do! This video may take me all week.