Final Gilding, Short Story Edits, Paper Compression

Half of the day spent preparing for artwork for the Oil Art Advisory. Inspected the reliquary and decided to glid a tiny patch which had a fragment where the gold didn't stick. This happens quite a lot, and can be attractive, but here it stood out too much, so I began by gilding that tiny patch.

You might see it as the flaky part in the lower right corner of the door's edge. Then, wrote an owner's manual for the cabinet, and assembled tools for possibly fitting mirror plates to the Monstrance of Life.

Then added all of the artwork text to the appropriate folders, for each artwork. I sometimes need to write information about artworks, descriptions etc. and until now have written these each time. Now I'll file these with the artworks for future re-use. I've also put this on the appropriate web pages. I used to describe a lot there, but gradually let the images speak for themselves for fear of spoiling the mood or surprise. I'm now reversing that. In an era of ubiquitous images, it's good to have more information about each artwork.

After that, refined my short story for the Cheshire Prize for Literature, and developed a new dynamic compressor. My changes to the Stone Compressor did not work, and I happened to think of another, so experimented with it and now this 'Paper Compression' is better than any I've made so far despite being simpler.

The only culture I'm engaging with is 'The Twilight Zone' from 1959, 'The Wheel Tappers and Shunters Social Club' from 1975, Kafka's Diaries from 1911, and Tom Karen's autobiography from across the 20th century.

Story, Stone Compression Experiments

I've written first draft of my story, which is untitled as yet. Just under 1500 words, as required. More to do on it.

Then I charged into experiments with my dynamic compressor, Stone Compression. I use the one in Sony SoundForge often, so that is my target for emulation of operation, but it can produce odd results at times. Here is my test wave. I'm to compress at 3:1 at -6db, the grey line in the trace. You will see that above that line the wave 'shrinks' by a factor of 3, which is correct.

I set my compressor attack to 50ms, decay to 150ms:

Here is attack 50ms, decay 1000ms:

So far so good, it looks like the tail is decaying by 1 second. In the Sony compressor however, attack and decay, even wild values have a far more muted effect. It produced great results with many settings, but almost all of the attack/decay settings produce very similar results. Here is attack 2ms, decay 2ms:

Here is attack 50ms, decay 1000ms - the same settings as my second trace above, though it looks very different. How similar to the dramatically different 2ms/2ms version it seems. Basically, it's only affecting the values over -6dB, which is perhaps correct for a compressor, but in doing so it's making the results boringly similar even with wildly different settings. I'll keep my wild version for flexibility, and to be different. This, incidentally is used in SFXEngine, so perhaps I'll upgrade that too, but I'm unsure at the moment, as this change is radical to the way it currently works.

Gilding The Reliquary Edges

Started the day trying to write, well partly succeeding, a story for the Cheshire Prize. I'm out of practice.

The gold and oil arrived before lunch, so I decided to gild after. I ordered 250ml of oil. I have in the past ordered more, 500ml or even a litre, but it's one of those products which thickens or sets in the bottle, and the old tin was poorly packaged and a nightmare to pour from. I only used 50ml or so before the rest spoiled, so I elected for a smaller batch. I made a plastic funnel from lighting gel, and poured into 4x30ml solvent-tight amber bottles from Baldwins. This should keep the precious stuff in good order. The rest I left in the tin and sealed it, plus much clingfilm.

Then, gilding, which was also nightmarish when I first tried it many years ago. For my first ever attempt, in 2008 or so, I applied the oil too thickly and didn't wait for it to grow tacky. I applied the gold, which broke and let through some oil. This stained the surface and make my fingers sticky, making everything worse. The oil never set, making all of the gold break, ruining it with yellowy oil, and creating a disaster.

For my second attempt, and the first reliquary, I decided to use epoxy resin as my size, knowing that this sets chemically not by exposure to air. In many ways this was much more successful, though of course, epoxy can yellow, so shouldn't be permitted on the top of the gold. I used a casting resin designed to be more stable. Applying it thinly was very difficult, and of course it grew thicker by the minute, even though it was 12-hour resin. Being a resin glue it had the power to stick everything, such as the work to the floor permanently.

Other problems include the opposite to the first attempt, waiting so long that the oil dried and the gold would not stick. So, I learned that there is an element of exact timing involved. Another problem was the gold itself. The loose leaf took huge skill to handle and manipulate. I was determined to learn, and made my own little bed, and obtained the correct gilder's knife and soft brush for lifting the gold (a gilder's tip). I managed it in the end, but once I had I started to use transfer leaf, which is a joy to use by comparison. One downside to transfer is that it can't as easily cope with lumpy textures and pits, which loose gold be be prodded into. Apart from this, transfer is always better.

I've also tried using PVA, which can be simply called water-based oil size. This works, but isn't brilliant because it dries so quickly. For this, one must apply a little glue, then gold, then glue etc.

So now, I use oil size. The first trick is to make sure the surface is non-absorbent, or else the oil will sink in, so I may apply a sealer first (like acrylic medium or paint). I mix a little oil paint with the size, to more easily see where the transparent oil is applied, and to aid drying, then paint it on the area to gild. I paint it very thinly, as thinly as possible, almost scrubbed in. In no time, a 15 mins, it will be sticky, like the tack on Sellotape, then it's ready to apply gold.

I cut the gold with a rotary blade of the sort used for fabric. This is easier than using a gilder's knife. For transfer leaf, it's a simply matter of picking up the leaves on their backing and applying. For real gold, tools are needed to pick it up. I seem to have better luck with metal tools than the gilder's tip, on which the hairs need some slight grease, traditionally rubbed on from one's forearm. Once set down, real leaf is tamped with something like cotton wool, but the wool strands can glue onto tiny holes where the glue remains and white hairs start to appear, so this is a pain compared to the joy of transfer leaf.

Today I used transfer leaf (23.5kt) and Handover 3-Hour Size, which seems very good. Prior to this I used Robersons Fast Size, and also LeFranc; all equally good.

Now, another lesson (or trick) is to leave it all, complete with flappy bits of gold on the top. Everything should be left for a day or two to fully dry and only then can the bits of gold be brushed off, and perhaps little holes (these are inevitable, and sometimes even part of the aesthetic, allowing organic fragments of undercolour to show through) gilded yet more.

Painting, Story, and Album Thoughts, and Kafka's Diaries

Today I packed the paintings for tomorrow's visit. How I wish I could paint more. There are several reasons why I paint less now. First, I lack space, the space for completed works, as well as the incentive to paint. I'd love a regular place to exhibit, though I've never had one. To date I've painted for competitions or open exhibitions (near or far), or, after a spell of work, developed my own idea for an exhibition and staged one in a venue of my own hiring.

Covid acted as something of a stop to this, which brings me to the second reason, of diversion into other arts. I've made more music since 2020 than in perhaps the 20 years prior, so music served as my artistic obsession, stolen from painting. Artists must follow their whims, and perhaps mine will shift back to painting (or elsewhere, my artistic drive is as strong as ever). Though, the key lack of physical space is still an important factor. When I started painting I'd happily paint large works but I have no space for that now, too many paintings are in storage, and this limits the sort of painting I feel like doing. Now, I feel like I should and could paint more, again, better than ever, so it's important that I find a way.

Enough deep thought for now.

I spent 45 minutes listening to an excellent Radio 4 programme about liberty, and John Stuart Mill's essay on the subject, and later and equally good programme about chocolate. I eat chocolate every day; a drink of cocoa every morning, and a couple of chunks at least later. It appears that chocolate has no direct health benefits, such as a medicine might convey benefits, but benefits in food are relative. Chocolate may be more beneficial than another food we might eat instead. To some extent all foods are harmful, food wears our bodies down, so the health benefits of food should only be considered in relative terms.

In the afternoon, I went out with Deb, to at least take some fresh air. I bought a book, Kafka's Diaries. I'm reminded that now, after my recent audiobook reading that I'm evolving towards the literary. Last night I wrote out the plans for a new story about an AI chat-bot, but the plot is large and complex, as good as a Film Noir, yet too large for a 1,500 word story. I may be able to do something with it, but I have only 14 days to complete my Cheshire Literature Prize entry, so it may be more efficient to develop a new idea.

I also have sketches for a new album, with two tracks; the Radioactive theme to start, and 'Written on Rice' to end, but with no other tracks. The sketched story outline reminds me of the importance of structure, and I must endeavour to plan the album structurally, primarily. Above all, I must not rest. There is much to do, and I must strive to do it all, and well.

The Intangible Man Audiobook Version 2

Completed and submitted the second version of The Intangible Man Audiobook today. My new process is much simpler, editing the plain waves in 24-bit, then applying dynamics, then feeding everything into Prometheus for filtering, any special effects like reverb, boosting the volume to ideal levels, then limiting.

I'm already tired of this and ache to move on, though I have five other books I could read! I wish I had the drive to promote anything I do. I have a huge and unstoppable drive to create, to move on, to charge into the new, yet I have no drive to promote the old, to tell the world, or share anything. Quite the opposite, my instincts are to shrink from the very prospect of sharing anything. Years of this has also led to a complete lack of knowledge of how to promote anything.

Still, I use all of my brain, so that which doesn't promote is being used elsewhere. One thing I do and can do is enter competitions, and last night I had the genesis of an idea for a short story for the Cheshire Prize for Literature. I worked on The Intangible Man partly for this exact reason. The old book may well have done (though it does feel neater and better to re-read it with more skill and control) but if I'm to write something new, I need to enter that literary world. I have only two weeks to write it and enter.

I will start tomorrow, but I must also pack some of my best artworks for a trip to Knutsford, and the anxious delight of a visit to a gallery. In other happy news, I've finally been refunded by wonderful Amazon for the expensive but useless 4G phone I ordered in November. This was so out of date it had no hope of working (could not connect to data, would not update, could not use VoLTE). The 3rd Party Seller did nothing, not even a message; it was Amazon's appeals process which led to the resolution. My mother is also awaiting a refund from the same seller for the same model of phone.

Onwards we charge with new-found glee.

The Intangible Man Audiobook Second Edition, Substack Ends

A full day working on a second version of the audiobook for The Intangible Man and Other Strange Tales. Seven stories were read in draft yesterday, and the remaining today. This is a lot of tedious work, most of it the editing process. The next big step is processing the audio, limiting and volume checking, and adding any audio effects. I expect this will take another day, perhaps longer.

In other news, my Substack 'appeal' has been rejected, which is something of a blow. It was a huge amount of work to join Substack, to transfer this 20-year old blog to that more up-to-date platform. I'm still in the dark as to what the problem was. I didn't tend to email out posts. Perhaps the platform wanted me to do this more often, and so gain more readership - or, perhaps the opposite, that Substack objected to me using my external mailing list. Or it could be another reason. To say that I feel unsupported by a platform, which currently holds over 3000 posts of my life's work, is an understatement.

Perhaps I should be fortunate that this suspension occurred only a few days after a backup from that site. I can't now create a backup, and I don't appear to have any control over the site at all.

Well, onwards I march alone. My heavy boulder calls. Time to push it a little more, around this stony corner, down a new little pathway.

21st Century Surrealism Audiobook Complete

Two days of solid work on the 21st Century Surrealism audiobook. After each chapter recording, each need editing and checking. Then, boosting the volume, adjusting the dynamics, clipping, and conversion into the final format. This was completed today, and the 3-hour book submitted for publication within the next week or two.

I immediately began work on a second edition of The Intangible Man. Using Prometheus for the filtering, limiting, and other audio effects, is a much better (non linear) way to edit than using SoundForge, and I feel I can read better too. If I can complete this, and The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death this month then it would be a good month, I think. Perhaps, one day, I could work on The Burning Circus, or Deep Dark Light, or the computer book, or even the Blake poems.

Still, even after one book I feel the call to create something new. I can't dwell for too long on this current, tedious task.

Here's the audiobook cover:

21 Century Surrealism Narration, Refund Frustrations, Substack Suspension

Day 3 of recording the spoken text of 21st Century Surrealism. By the end of the process my speech rhythm and audio quality had changed so hugely that I found myself re-recording the entire book! Several sections were already recorded a few times, thus the entire book was read twice and some sections four or five times.

Other aspects of the moment are frustrating. The obsolete (and expensive) mobile phone, which was unable to be updated and unable access 4G voice calls, bought from an Amazon seller for myself (and a second phone for my mother) in November has been returned, with no response at all from the seller. My phone was tracked and delivered to them on Christmas Eve and I'm still awaiting any response. Amazon are ususally brilliant at this, the problems stem from the third party seller.

Similarly, I've ordered a part for my router in November, and each inquiry pushes the due date back, always about two weeks in future. The cost of this part is low and I can perhaps find it elsewhere, so this is a minor annoyance, but annoyance it remains.

A third annoyance is that my Substack blog, which took weeks of intense work to set up is now suspended in entirety due to their doubts about my 37-strong mailing list! I care less about the mailing list than the blog, but it was (and remains) convenient to combine the two. It's easy for me to run the mailing list via Sendy, as before. I don't mind at all deleting ALL Substack subscribers, and using it purely as a blog, but it seems I have no option, and that the whole 20-years worth of posts are now set to 'dead'. I can but appeal.

At least this blog remains.

Good Vibes 2026, and 21st Century Surrealism Narration

The snow miraculously cleared, so we visited Good Vibrations as planned. I've spent a lot in the last few weeks on some art materials, some silicone trays and mixing bowls for plaster, some Laropal A81 resin (which I'm excited to test in painting, as a varnish/stain, or glue), and some paper rolls for cleaning; a regular essential.

Today, started to narrate 21st Century Surrealism as an audiobook. I've narrated about two thirds add have spotted a few errors on the text to be corrected later. In between this, Deb and I went to Frodsham to collect my open paintings. A storm is due to hit the country tonight, so I thought it prudent to go today rather than tomorrow as officially scheduled.

Onwards we charge.

Make Her Sky Makeover, October Priorities

The migration to Substack is now complete. Blogger and Substack have different pros and cons, so for now Make Her Sky will be on both platforms for dear readers to choose their preference.

Many other jobs are pending, perhaps the most urgent is completing my Christmas song for the second Electric Sprout album. 12 artists are now confirmed and two songs, 'One Star' by Paul Parish, and 'Solstice Carol' by John Miller, complete and ready for mastering! Mike Drew of The Forrest Dick Band have also sent a few possible tracks, though more may come. My big hope is that Andy Stubbs will manage to complete his song, which sounds brilliant even in the fragment I've heard.

As it has a deadline, this must be my first priority. Perhaps, concurrently, I can work on the two shelving projects. I'm tempted to start that woodwork today, but it is too damp due to rainy Amy, today's named storm.

Two painting competitions report this month, and I've been informed of a new Nantwich Museum Open Art Competition, which is now open for entries on their website. There is a theme of 'heritage', one of those hugely boring words like 'community'. Such a theme is perfect as it will inspire something exciting and daring, and we're blessed to have a few months to develop and pain something new, even if the judging is by a 1500-pixel jpg (sigh, what would Vermeer, what would Leonardo da Vinci do when faced with the degradation of something visceral and ultra-delicate like an oil painting being judged by a coarse digital photograph?). I can but hope for the sympathy of the judges.

Backup Duties, Substack Migration Continues, Computers and Cells

Backup Duties, Substack Migration Continues, Computers and Cells

Woke early, after a worrysome and sleepless night, worried about my darling Deborah and her insomnia and work stress. How I wish I could help.

Today was a full day. October the 1st, so a quarterly back-up day. Another task was disabling Bytten, the game review website I founded with Andrew Williams. We found fellow gamers and reviewed a game a week for 10 years, from 2003 to 2013, and today the site was switched off pending the lapse of the domain. I must, at some point, publish the reviews as a book, partly because nobody does. So many websites and web-magazines form a transient culture. I am critically aware of this point.

Backups took the first few hours, then a call from Galleria Balmain; I needed to write some new information about myself and about the paintings on sale there. This took the next few hours.

Then, the long job of the Substack migration of this blog. Yesterday I managed 60 pages, each page 25 posts, so hand-tagged 1500 posts, each opened, clicked edit, saw which tags were needed from the Blogger blog, then added them. I really needed to be a web-machine to do this, with 25 tabs open at once, and the Ctrl-Tab shortcut to dart the next tab after memorising the tags for each post.

Today, at 7pm, I approached the end, the last of the 3,032 posts; but then I noticed another anomaly. I had already discovered that any blog post with the same title was overwritten, forcing me to hand copy-and-paste about 149 posts, but today discovered that posts with multiple images were auto-deleting images. Not only when editing and submitting changes, but the very act of clicking 'Edit' and viewing the post makes the images vanish before your eyes!

I suspect this is due to formatting differences between the HTML of Blogger and Substack, and I hope that it only applies to a limited number of posts, perhaps ones where images appear after another in a row, without text between. This should be a minority of posts. But, sigh, this will mean again traversing the 3,032 posts one by one, comparing them with the original on Blogger and perhaps re-uploading the images.

There is much to do this month, so much. Of key priority is promotion of the Christmas album, as well as work on my song. Lots of other music work too. Well, I can do but one job at a time.

I must focus more upon making good art, seeing and presenting connections; this is the essence of art, and science. Already I can see that there is a connection between the Substack migration and cellular activity. Both are about replication and error correction. If I do this digital task well, my cells will act in a similar fashion and extend my youth. It seems clear to me that this is the case, that exacting computer work and filing trains many subsets of the body to behave in similar, exacting ways.

Copying Labels from Blogger to Substack

A long process is in progress as I migrate my 19 year, 3000+ post blog to Substack. Alas, this is not easy.

As first, it seemed that I managed to import all of the posts, but the labels were not there. So the first step was hand editing each post to add the labels.

This can be done relatively quickly with a few cheats, I say relatively meaning that it will still take many days, work, but not many months.

In Blogger, I searched using the 'index:xxx' feature to find a subset of posts to work on. I used 'sort:-published index:0' at first, to start with the oldest post. I need to use the index feature because I can't simply scroll on. It seems that 3000 posts makes Blogger (or Chrome) break eventually.

In another tab, I made Substack to display posts, sorted from older. Then ctrl-clicked each of the 25-per-page posts to open each post in a new tab and edit. The list always defaults to search from newest to oldest, so you need to preserve these first two tabs: one from Blogger, one from Substack.

This, however would be relatively easy, taking a mere 2 or 3 days, except that I discovered that about 150 posts were not imported - agh! This seemed to occur at random, yet there were clues, such as posts with the same title/name were excluded (foolish me for making more than one post entitled 'Dream' or 'Monday', for example).

This complicates things. When finding a lost post, I had to make a list of the missing ones, then add them as new posts in Substack, one at a time. Then, open the post, edit, and set the new correct (old!) date. This was not easy either because the date entry field is broken and takes (no joke) 5 or 6 times of typing the same number -every time- to set the actual date and time. It would have helped enormously to be able to set the publication date when first posting.

Yet, it is possible. The process will probably take me 5 machine-like days of constant action, and all because of a buggy Substack importer. So much work stems from badly programmed systems by other people! What can we do but sigh and do our best to correct, and stoically continue in our task.

It was, it is, a delight re-read my older posts. I must remember to delight and inspire with each new post.

At time of writing, about 750 of the 3000 posts have been edited. Onwards we roll the heavy rock of art.

All Controlled By Someone Filming, Substack

A bitty, bitty, frustratingly so day. Started some scant filming of the 'All Controlled By Someone' video. Amended my entries for Castle Park, and made preparations to list The Love Reliquary for sale in future. The few cabinet artworks I've made need to be seen somewhere, each took many months, but then, all of my paintings do now. New postal scales arrived, already useful for painting weighing and a cheeseplate which, after testing, will help to upgrade my art photography rig when I can afford to do so.

I set up a test blog on Substack, and thus this post is mirrored there. The (almost) 20 years of blog posts appear to have been copied over, but without tags, and tagging 3000 posts is a substantial undertaking. There are many formatting options that need to be checked too. I can't edit HTML in Substack, which is a shame, as I liked my neat code (even if Blogger didn't/doesn't like my particular brand of neatness). Substack has more features than Blogger, the latter is barely functional for following or subscribing. Any switch of this is a major undertaking, the trust of decades of work. Both support import/export/backups, but which is the most future proof? Which more reliable? Quantity of readership doesn't bother me, this is primarily a diary of use to me, and perhaps of interest to others or a distant history. Will Substack persist after my demise, if so, for how long?

My key goal must be completing the music videos this week. The list of jobs for October is already large.

Backups, Ray Davies, Frame Decoration

Monthly back-up day. Found an old frame in a charity shop yesterday, and a copy of the short fiction anthology Waterloo Sunset by Ray Davies, so I read this while the computer chugged. The writing is so-so. Later, I did some online reading about Ray and The Kinks. The stories are generally character descriptions, and I realised that the same is generally true of his songs. My songs are more visual; like my writing descriptions of scenes or images, which chain to form a narrative. With Ray, the characters and their behaviour drives the story.

After this, work on the frame. It was a lovely find, must be 100-125 years old. The very rusty attachments gave way to a very faded print and some even older holes; this frame was made for more than a print:

It has a beautiful aged patina; those brown stripes are genuine age in the gold, an effect that modern frame makers aspire to emulate. Some parts had a few flaws though, the gold scratched off, and all of the gesso on the corners flaked away. Today, I tried to fix those a little, and filled in the wider gaps in those front corners. It's difficult to preserve the patina, but I did my best, and the frame is certainly better than before. It's hard to find a filler that fills well but is very smooth, with tiny particles. Most filler that fills well is too thick, but that is hard to sand or smooth.

After that, work on the song production for 'Smashing My House Of Cards'. Small steps made today.

The Flip Side, David and Sabine, More Recording

A busy few days.

The appearance on The Flip Side show was brilliant, though took quite some setting up. I needed to have the keyboard to play live, set this up in front of the screen, and connected it to my audio interface. Then connected the mic to the other channel. Lighting involved three lights; amber, cyan, and white, plus a fourth disco light behind me, where I hung a painting rather than the usual blank wall there.

I made a special stand for the camera (seen with the wood base above) so that the camera appeared level with the faces of the presenters on the screen; thus my eyes would naturally be looking at the camera as I talked. The show itself started at 7pm, and at least half of the day involved preparing for it. The hosts kindly involved Deborah a lot too, and we performed a live rendition of Clown Face, but the spoken audio was quiet. Without headphone monitoring, this was difficult to get right. I should have worn headphones here.

A delightful and friendly show, but the other Flip Side episodes I've seen were/are too. It was a joy an honour to be part of it.

I spent Friday morning writing a little more to my painting book, but the chapters and structure needs work. I've re-written the same thing many times, each in a new chapter with more depth and information, but I'm unsure if this is at all a good way to do it.

In the afternoon Deb and I went to Chester to meet the miniaturist David Lawton, who has become a good friend over the years. With most of my friends, I hardly ever see them, and often don't communicate for months or even years; yet whenever we meet it's always a pleasure and like we've never been apart. After our chat about many artistic matters; artists, techniques, sharing our recent works; we went to Sabine Kussmaul's graduation exhibition which opened yesterday in Chester. I've not seen Sabine since before Covid (that threshold of our shared lives) but again, it was like we'd not been apart at all. Artistically, we've both moved more towards music over the last few years.

It was inspiring but I'm still feeling a little lost. Painting, writing, music, and even programming, all competing. I enquired about showing work in the Crewe community art space and was told that they'd have to check out my portfolio - which felt like a rejection by a place which shows scribbles by school children. Perhaps, I could assume, my work is considered too adult, rather than them not having a clue about any aspect of my art. Well, we met Estella Scholes yesterday and with kind words said that I should be aiming higher than Crewe; true. If my work is to be seen, I must be the one to show it. Of course, the vast majority of my exhibitions have been like that.

Some kind soul on the video show asked if one artform inspired another and I was reminded that this has often occurred. Music Of Poetic Objects was an album of music for paintings, and I often wrote poems about each painting. Perhaps then, I don't need to be torn. Perhaps I can criss-cross and make paintings about songs, and songs about paintings and it can all be one gesamtkunstwerk. My life is a Gesamtkunstwerk - we really need a snappier word for this!

My emotions have been wrangled by getting a new mobile phone, a gift from my mother, as she bought one too, but hers was a different and worse model, which filled me with guilt. My old (merely from January) phone was/is terrible, and so full of bugs it was barely useable. This one is still full of bugs and flaws, but better than the other one (I still managed to find a crash bug in the first 2 minutes). Mum's is more awkward to use, and the lettering is tiny; but both phones were rather expensive. I would, could, should have warned her to be careful with things like phones; they're so technical and such a gamble to try or buy! Much research is needed. Sigh. Well, it is done.

Today, after a slow start I've been working on music, a song called 'More', which I started a few weeks ago. It needed guitar parts and recording these, and experimenting with them has taken all day. I've made rather screechy sound, like the guitar in the Beatles' 'Tax Man' with a setting of ATA on the guitar (away, towards, away, all three pickup active). It's very buzzy/hummy, but this can be all be part of it. I've hardly edited it, all of the noises and hums can remain.

Hours, over an hour, was spent with a mute-strum of one string, with lots of experimental settings, lots of plectrum choices. In the end, I only used it for the verse and ditched a lot of complex parts that were in the chorus.

Painting Book

More steady work on the painting book for the past two days. Reading and researching a lot, but I must remember that the most important parts of the book are the parts that can't be found elsewhere, those unique insights gained by my experience.

Writing: Underpainting, Shading, Glazing

More days of writing, underpainting, shading, glazing. 31,402 words so far. ArtsLab number 5 is also now online thanks to Ray Hayes. Tomorrow we'll be going to Good Vibrations.

Writing

More writing, on impasto, metal substrates. Lots of time was taken up with research. Writing, deleting, writing. 25,012 words.

Oil Painting Book

A day of writing, about underpaintings and plastic surfaces. Everything is taking a long time due to research. Word count 22,760.

ArtsLab, Painting Book

Spend the morning updating the ArtsLab text, in preparation for any possible re-uploads of it to MixCloud. Added four more episodes to my account there, chosen by importance. I chose the first appearance of Deborah Edgeley, and the interviews with the since deceased Ian Parr and Dorli Nauta, and the first episode of Series 2, where the new format first appeared, complete with an interview by Jonathan Tarplee.

Worked from 13:00 writing and researching my book on painting, today mostly writing about imprimaturae. This book is taking, will take, a long time. I'd prefer it to be done in a few weeks like my novella, but I feel it will take several months.