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.
