Hudson Glazing Day 2

An awful night of poor sleep and stomach twitches led to a waking morning of extreme grogginess, a mild headache, and stomach discomfort.

In a clumsy daze, I started work on the Hudson glazing, and managed the sky. Today, the opposite of yesterday, everything about the painting seemed disastrous and bad, as I battled like a soldier marching through the thick mud of time, gazing though the viscous air, swimming with my friends the brushes as I cut through the jelly-like space between my mind and the outside world. For much of the first few hours, my teeth were gritted tightly to wrestle my viscera into some sort of alignment, all the time battling to make the painting work despite my wounded state.

The sky was darkened compared to the underpainting, and the sad storm near the tree darkened yet more as I'd planned, adding more intensity there. I touched a little on the Rachel Hudson portrait, to make the background more red, more pink to give this crucial element attention.

At 4pm, I still felt tired and pained, and decided to stop. The darker sky to the right, and the plain green plains remain.

My mind was also occupied with the Prometheus upgrade, which I'm eager and ready to start. Our trip to Morecambe will get in the way, but it's perhaps better that I start before we leave.

This evening, still somewhat dizzy; perhaps, I thought, due to coffee, a drink which often drops my blood pressure and makes me feel dizzy and extraordinarily weak. I found some spare picture glass, so cut the pane for the frame for 'You Know How It Is When You Remember A Friend'.

Cromwell and Bird Cage Frames, Hudson Glazing

Yesterday, assembled the Cromwell and Bird Cage frames, a day of bright sunshine in contrast to today's dull darkness. Then considered more upgrades to Prometheus, three big changes which must be done simultaneously and will mean the creation of new file formats, which is always complex and irreversible.

Today, a first day of glazing the Rachel Hudson painting, a painting I'm increasingly certain is a masterpiece. It's reminded me of the importance of being startling; but much is to be considered. The sky is next, and a crucial element to the overall emotion. I must try to capture the sad mood of the study.

Next I need to glaze the sky for Transubstantiation, and the King of Death painting. Those are all that need completing, though I have a new new ideas ready to begin, should I feel I need to.

Cromwell Frame and Guide, Lavender Cologne

A day of innovations! I started by preparing entries for the Castle Park Open, then work on making the frame for the Oliver Cromwell Vegetable painting.

I had the idea for a new tool. When hand-cutting a frame which isn't square, but slopes down to the inside, it can be hard to mark the measurement on the inner edge and line that mark up for cutting; so I needed a tool that would line up the marks and to allow a full diagonal drawing on the wood or moulding for accurate, consistent cutting. So here it is in aluminium:

The tips of the flat part needed to exactly touch the edge of the triangle, and it needed to be as parallel to the base as possible to make the angle correct. It worked well for the Cromwell frame, which has a second innovation in it. After staining, I planed the inner edge and stained that a different colour from the outside. The result is a bright green frame with a yellow-orange inner bevel, just as I'd hoped for this painting.

Then the frame was cut and glued.

This afternoon, work on some little work in mastering John Lindley's new album, mostly a job of relative volume balancing, as nothing else is within either my control or desire for this.

Then, a new lavender cologne. I used to use Boots Lavender Water as a cleaner and general solvent, and occasional sleep aid, but they've stopped making it, so I'm making my own and experimenting with formulae. The simplest option is half water, half 40% pear brandy (which tastes of perfume, completely unsuitable for drinking!) with 1.25ml of lavender oil. It doesn't mix perfectly, I could do with adding some dipropylene glycol to help the mix, but that's an extra expense.

I'll see how it evolves.

Bird Cage In Terra Cotta, and More

A steady day of paitning, first completing the glazing to 'Bird Cage In Terra Cotta':

The Parrot-Man is highly detailed:

Sigh! As is all of my work! Yet we live in abominable times of digital images, and judgement from afar. I say again, these paintings look much better in real life. How I wish i could exhibit them. Of course, I could organise some sort of exhibition, as I've done countless times, but I really need a proverbial break; a regular place to show and sell my certainly brilliant paintings, whch are now better than ever before. I will keep battling, of course.

After him, I glazed two more paintings; the smooth panel of Kratos. I glazed only the sky. I could do a better job on the monolith, but lack the time or incentive, and here the figure looks rather expressive in his roughness. I then glazed 'A Brief History Of Transubstantiation', again not fully, the 'flat' grey wasn't glazed, though it would be smoother had I done so. This lack of smooth perfection bothers me, but I remind myself that time saved here can be used to create other paintings. I could even glaze it tomorrow or another day.

Then, the release of SFXEngine v1.34.

Onwards we charge. My book 21st Century Surrealism has now sold 348 copies and I must make another book on art to update my ideas and theories on contemporary art in particular. I think we are at the dawn of a golden age, a dawn, many centuries from a dusk, and I must strive to pioneer this new day.

Parrot Man Glazing, Mastering Visit

Yesterday, testing and filing SFXEngine, then some small painting work on the two Parrot Man paintings, adding words to one. Time was cut short by a visit from John Lindley to work on the mastering of his album. Several of his tracks were peaking and needed correction, but fortunately he had a few source versions which were workable and could be reversed.

The late afternoon and evening was cut short by a 2-hour power cut, the third in a month. This is becoming tiresome and worrying.

SFXEngine Update

A full day of updating SFXEngine. Lots of complex work done. Key upgrades include:
-Zerosample (silence) level and length now settable via the Project Menu.
-Fix to the linear interpolation, and added cubic Hermite interpolation. Interpolation settings added to the Sample Menu.
-Loading and automatic resampling of samples to allow seamless loading of non-44100hz samples.
-The start of unlinking the system to 44100hz. A new start-up procedure and background options to unify the system to a potential new rate. This will require a new sound and project format, and recompiling all plugins, so would be a substantial amount of work.
-The demo now includes all DLC and all DLC examples to demonstrate these important effects. DLC engines are coloured brown and labelled (DLC) to clearly differentiate them from the basic engines.
-Better dynamic resizing of sound list, engine list, environment list as used in Argus and Prometheus.
-Fix to sample millisecond length calculation for long samples.
-Unified WAVEFORMAT structures, default buffer size set to 32768, and other smaller changes.

The upgrades were largely complete by 4pm, but the testing and preparation required a few more hours. Testing will continue tomorrow.

Kratos Spray, She Just Looks Empty, Polar Bear

Much of yesterday was spent investigating new filters for the resampled versions of Prometheus. It seemed that changing from 44100hz to 88200hz required the base cut-off reducing by 25% to give an approximate similarity by ear. It turns out that, if changing the sample rate, the filters can't just be rescaled to fit, but demand new filter designs. I think the best solution is not to worry and treat this as a limit; if making a song in another core sample rate, everything needs to be uniquely designed for that rate. It's not too serious, and makes some things much easier (no loss of speed, as the plugins need nothing new and dynamic). The spectrum analysis may not work, however.

Anyway, back to art today.

First, spraying Kratos with gold. He looks suitably bronze. I expect that he will never be exhibited much less owned by anyone by me and my heirs, but it's better that he exists than remain a transient plasticine model like most of the others:

Today, I charged into two new paintings. This one is not new, the idea is from 2016 or so, and has been on my hard drive, waiting, for many years. I've gone through many iterations with the design. Revisiting it every now and again, changing the colours, the sizes, experimenting with this and that, never committing to it, never really satisfied.

But today I though I'd expand the idea sketch and charge into it.

Older ideas aren't as satisfying, there's a magical feeling with creating something new and instantaneous in one blink, but this can be a prejudice. The ideal art is long lasting or eternal, so the concept doesn't have to be new, and I've many paintings which I've grown to love which I didn't like at first. One of my most beloved paintings is my old Claire Luce portrait, which I look at every day, yet, technically, it's crude to my current painting abilities. Still, cutting edge art should be as new as possible so that it communicates well to the people of today, and reflects the times of today (for the world and the artist). At the same time, a painting can't help but be contemporary when painted.

I've made a few changes to the concept and will add some figures. The overall mood will be the same or similar; emotions are eternal, but with more of a narrative. This was originally concieved, I think, as a part of the Rachel Hudson series, but not now. Now it's about isolation, being ignored and forgotten, then discovered as a majestic monument.

Another idea worked on today is a simple Polar Bear portrait, the bear as a sort of god echoing to infinity. This small and simple work is drawn and traced already. It needs a colour study next.

Hinges and Hermites

A slow day, with some little progress.

I experimented with my wardrobe design, cutting a slot into the edge of some 12mm MDF to slot a hinge into. This worked well, but after consideration I've decided that some sort of drop hinge would be better and easier.

At 4pm, I looked again at yesterday's Scarecrow painting. It was too dark, so I decided to do something about it, and erased the barely-visible signature and re-signed it lighter! I also made 6 stars brighter. These seemingly tiny changes transformed the painting for the better!

For much of the day I've been researching audio interpolation algorithms for Prometheus, and this evening and added Cubic Hermite interpolation. I discovered, amazingly, stunningly, perhaps even horrifically, that the linear interpolation I'd been using for the past 20 years didn't work, and may have never worked, or not worked in years. I still can't believe this, as I feel sure I would have thoroughly tested it at the time. It may be that a Visual Studio version has been treating casting differently; this was the only problem, that a long variable was not changed into a float as required.

Well, I fixed that, and added the better Hermite interpolation. Here are three waves, with no interpolation, linear, and cubic Hermite:

Looking at the wave, linear is a lot better than none ('nearest neighbour'), and Hermite a bit better still, though the fact that I haven't heard the difference in years indicates that it's barely an issue. I considered a 'random' interpolation, which may be better still. Anyway, Prometheus v3.42 is now complete.

Memory Of Elgar, Nobody Cares Glazing

Yesterday's frame repair (sans the syringe needle and its glue):

In the evening, I painted a glazing study to prepare for today's 'Nobody' painting, and with a spare section of canvas painted something new in transparent glazing colours, 'Mother And Child Discovering A Memory Of Elgar':

Today, glazing 'Nobody Cares About You, Really. Get Over It.':

Only the background and floor was glazed, the burning scarecrow will suffice as it is. There are delicate stars in the sky and delicate grasses on the floor but crude digital images will not see any of them. The detail and quality of my paintings is so much better in real life than on these terrible screens.

Pigeon Dream, Frame Repairs, Galleries

A sleepless night of stomach agony. In the early morning sleep I dreamt I was in a room at my old primary school, or possibly a country house. Outside, in what looked like the play area, three pigeons were strutting and pecking. One was pecking violently; smashing his beak into the floor and hard stones quite alarmingly. At one point he smashed down hard at a flint stone and it shattered, causing blade-like shards to fly in all directions. One of the other pigeons was injured by these, with two or three large gashes on its human-like fleshy leg. I rushed out to help, and started to clean and dress the wound with water and 'Steri-Strips'. One wound there, older yet still bloody, was crudely stitched with white cord. I was shocked at the behaviour of the violent pigeon and turned to look at him. For the first time I saw that he was in a far worse state, lying motionless and in pain, his purple flesh covered with bleeding wounds.

Today I filed Prometheus and examined yesterday's frame. It had a few splits in the wood, so I experimented with developing a solvent-based wood filler which might work for fine art or craft applications. Something water-based would swell the wood, and it must ideally not be chalky or white, but transparent or and easily toned. I made two tests with sawdust and picture varnish (an acrylic resin) and Paraloid resin. Both set hard, perhaps too brittle to sand, but looked excellent with stain, a perfect colour match. I think the Paraloid B-72 would be best.

The splits were too fine to be filled, so I used a syringe to inject wood glue and clamped the frame shut. This did the job wonderfully. In the afternoon, I painted the Kratos sculpture brown, an under-layer. I need to do more. I need a gallery to show and sell my work. My paintings really need to be seen in real life.

I was reminded that I have an unfortunate phobia of art galleries. My first experience of entering one, years before I painted, my digital computer prints in hand, was so negative, the proprietor so critical and aggressive towards me that I felt like killing myself upon leaving in utter dejection. This, at the time where the my game publishers were stealing from me and being equally abusive, became a catalyst for me to ignore all third parties and isolate myself from the cruel world. It took many years, and a whole new life, before I entered a gallery again, the Silver Star in Chester, to quite a different and instantly positive experience. Every other place of exhibition has been due to an open competition, invitation, or personal booking. Now though, I need a gallery.

I must work harder. Time is short. Life is short. Onwards we battle.

Prometheus v3.41, You Know Frame

Most of today, and much of yesterday, was spent updating Prometheus again. Initially small changes to tidy things ahead of the possible (inevitable?) switch to double sample pointers. The recent automatic resampling feature in Noise Station, and adding this to Prometheus, made me consider the ease (or otherwise) of changing the core frequency.

Prometheus has always worked in 44100hz, and probably always will because my sound sample library is in that format, and it's good enough. Anything more tends to make files bigger without really 'improving' quality. Also, perhaps on an unconscious level, there is an attractive CD-like quality to this frequency, in the same way that a film at 24 or 25 FPS looks more 'cinematic' compared to a 30 FPS film.

However, I didn't think it would be difficult to change the core frequency, it's a matter of setting the primary sound buffer, then resampling all of the samples and modulators. So I've added this feature, and now I can run Prometheus in any frequency, with 44100, 48000, 88200, 96000, and 192000hz as basic options. I don't expect I'll ever use it, I think it would be overkill. Since the first version, all samples have been 2x oversampled, so have operated internally at 176400hz since 2002 (and much more for the analogue waves, I use 8 or 16 times oversampling there). This is the primary reason that these super-high frequencies are available in digital audio, to retain clarity over multiple layers of processing, which I don't really need. The new changes mean my samples can go up to 768000hz, or more! Well, this feature may come in handy, and it wasn't too difficult.

The coding process is not 100% complete, there are two final tasks. First, samples/modulators are not resampled when loading programs/instruments. That's because those don't store the frequency in their files. Second, the plugins all assume 44100hz, so all of the analogue generators are out of tune, the filters cut-off the wrong frequency, and time-parameters in effects like delays are wrong (now that one second can be different from 44100 samples). These things are easily fixed, but doing that for 150 plugins and recompiling them all will take a day or two and it can wait. This feature can remain half implemented. It does, however, operate fine when importing songs, and the sample playback works fine too, so I can save out final songs in other frequencies; though resampling my native 44100hz samples into, say, 48000hz, only to have it shift back to 44100hz for burning a CD isn't something I'd like to do.

After that, tired by the anxiety of programming, this surgery on a live system, I decided on some woodwork. I started work on making a frame for 'You Know How It Is When You Remember A Friend'. For the first time, I used my new frame calculator, specifically so that I could cut the exact full length before cutting each side.

This allowed me to stain the full length, then plane along the sharp edge to give it bevel, lit, not in gold, but in raw pine, nature's gold.

It worked well, and relying on the computer meant less calculation and less waste. I'll use this design again.

She Was Always Asleep At School Underpainting

A first day of underpainting a new work 'She Was Always Asleep At School'. For some reason, the A-ha song 'Hunting High And Low' kept running through my head while painting. I realised it was a memory from school.

I decided to play a best-of A-ha album and was reminded that my favourite, or even actively beloved, A-ha song is 'I've Been Losing You'. Based purely on the cursory examination of this compilation, that song plus their two big hits of 'Take On Me' and 'The Sun Always Shines On TV' comprise their only good songs (though few here are actively 'bad'). Their English lyrics are often poor, on the cusp of being comprehensible, never mind poetic. This is a trait of many Scandinavian bands, such as Roxette, but notably excluding Abba (or Bjork, who exists on a totally different plane, if one counts her as Scandinavian).

Backups, Kratos Polyfilla

Backups yesterday. I discovered that I'd lost about 20 of the most recent Prometheus sequences. This was a worry, I've no idea how these could have been deleted. My best guess is a failure when copying them over for conversion to the new Delay Pan format, as the external repeatedly lost connection. Fortunately, everything was backed up as I've not done any new music apart from Beatle City in August, and I had a second copy of that.

Also yesterday I applied 'Polyfilla' to Kratos, filling in cracks and texturing the floor. I loved the experience, it was really easy to apply with a knife, felt like painting in 3D, and it was easy to change the fluidity when mixing the powder. I can imagine an ideal sculpting form would be cardboard and hot-melt glue for a core with Polyfilla on top. I plan on painting the Kratos sculpture gold.

I should get painting but it's dark and I lack motivation. On my mind are programming changes to Prometheus which would use double pointers, removing a long standing limit to sample length. This would require a change of song format (the 5th since 2002), and is something not to be taken lightly. I'm not sure if the change is important or useful, the current 90-sec limit isn't too bad. Generally speaking, when faced with a new idea or other new thing, I try or do the new thing, but sometimes this can be inefficient. Changes like this have no going back, yet, when I have an idea like this I almost always do it.