Update

The self portrait is now complete and drying, as is a second Starving Scarecrow. At the moment I'm underpainting Sunset with Petalliforms, a picture that was planned and prepared last November. 31st Century Crucifixion is ready but I need to paint a detailed colour study first. My skills appear to be improving with each finished picture and I'm learning more about framing and decoration too. I hope to customise more frames in future. But enough of paint work!

I've added an events page to my website, which I'll probably take down after the exhibition season. The two paintings exhibited in Nantwich church sold, making a total of five sales since the start of May. As I type, two paintings are on display in Nantwich book shop too, with hopefully five of my best to be shown in the last exhibition of the summer at Bickerton.

31st Century Crucifixion Plans

Today I've prepared the underdrawing to 31st Century Crucifixion, one of the few large sized painting planned for this summer (by large, I mean about 50 to 100cm edges). This one is about the destruction of emotion by technology and uses a mix of geometrical shapes and more realistic organic forms. Other pictures in progress are; A balloon released by a small child long long ago; Alain the sad bathysphere, which is about working in isolation under pressure; Light at the end of a long dark tunnel, uses a trapezium shaped panel; a second version of the starving scarecrow picture; a picture about the changes within post war Britain depicting the god Albion; a sad construction called Arrow stabbed vine; a surrealist portrait of hypnotist Derren Brown; and a new self portrait. There are 3 or 4 others ready but not yet started too.

With luck all of my painting for the year will be mostly concluded by October allowing me to get some work done musically. A long standing project with my best music to date, currently called the 12 seasons, awaits completion and I'd like to work on a second symphonic work like The Spiral Staircase.

I must remain confident that all of these works will eventually be seen/heard, and I do so with an increasing and glorious certainty.

Glory and Riches are Assured

Glory and riches are assured, as each day gets better. Work is now continuing on Judith Beheading Holofernes, a major picture that will be important for learning processes, a bit like Genesis of Terror in that respect. The Bunbury exhibition is on at the moment and I'll be participating in two more this month and two next, including one juried show by the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists. Although I'm full of artistic ideas and selling paintings I feel I'm neglecting music. Some of the tracks for the half-complete album about four seasons sound very good. Ultimately however, nobody, or at least very few people, would hear it. No sales of The Spiral Staircase is disappointing because I know some people out there will like it. Perhaps I could try promoting my music at art exhibitions.

Rhino

A poem for the Rhino painting:

Through his eye we see
a wilderness,
grass,
dry bones,
the sky.

We see a tree,
born,
then die.

I see you,
through his eye.

New Frames, New Music, New Inventions

Framing today and new frames for The Art of Painting, Spear of Destiny and one of the medium sized ones, either Dead Bird or No Good Ideas. The second glazing layer to the curious Judith Beheading Holofernes picture has been completed and tomorrow I begin work on a large painting of Albion.

The exhibition season is here now too with my first paintings of the year on show over the weekend in the Cheshire village of Marbury. Soon after that I'll be exhibiting in Bunbury, and entering a picture for an exhibition in Birkenhead.

Things have been quiet regarding music and game development although some new music tracks and sound effects for IndieSFX are being compiled; it's normal for such things to be constantly in progress with a steady train of new sound content there.

New inventions include a sonar proof coating for submarine equipment that consists of lots of fine hairs, like a sea cucumber. A slow but quiet engine would be important, a hydrodynamic drive perhaps.

Fifty Seven Channels

My latest song. Actually I wrote this a few months ago but had to reconstruct it from the chaotic pile of 100+ papers of unedited music fragments! Musically it is a four chord punk rock song.

Fifty Seven Channels

I liked to watch the goggle box when I was young.
I'd stay up late,
and it was great.
We only had the B.B.C. and I.T.V.
but I was hooked.
I sat and looked.

But now the times have changed.
I stare with shock at the digital age.

Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's no-thing ev-er on.

I didn't mind the adverts when I was a kid.
They were not long,
or am I wrong?
But nowadays it's bloody adverts all the time.
It drives me mad!
It makes me sad

at how the times have changed.
Is this the choice of the capital age?

Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's no-thing ev-er on.

What happened to the dramas that were written well,
with depth and scope.
Today's a joke,
for now we only get things with celebrities
who no-one knows
on "talent" shows!

Yes how the times have changed.
I check the guide and then cry with rage!

Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's no-thing ev-er on.

(spoken)
Right that's it!
I've had it with this rubbish.
No more set top box.
No more scart leads.

But wait, what's that I see...
a million new channels for a one off fee...

Now I have a million there is surely something on.
Now I have a million there is surely something on.
Now I have a million there is surely something on.
Now I have a million there is surely something on.
Now I have a million there is sure-ly some-thing on!

Art of Painting Progress

Work is still stalwartly continuing on The Art of Painting, with one more day's work of this layer remaining. My next task will be to complete the underdrawing and initial preparation for a new Albion figure, then start on the Judith painting, which will be my largest and most complex painting to date. With luck, I'll try both of the figures for the Threadneedle Figurative Prize, but time is against me. I'd rather produce one good painting than rush one though. If quality demands it then without question I will miss the deadline and not bother with the contest.

Painting Update

Alas! My 2D/3D self portrait was not dry enough to allow the necessary layering before the RBSA competition deadline, so I must revisit the picture at a later and more leisurely time.

I am now glazing the art of painting picture, which, because it features a self-portrait at its heart, I may just enter into the RBSA competition itself. The Art of Painting is perhaps too bold a title though, so I might rename it.