Rubaiyat and Surrealism

Today I've been working on the composition for the Omar Khayyam painting. All is hush hush for the moment.

In other news, www.surrealism.co.uk has been updated. If it has a flavour it is leather. If it has a sound it is the crackle of an Edison wax cylinder.

It's an excellent site that explores and extols all sorts of surreal activity, writing and sound, as well as the visual arts. The webmaster is a really nice bloke and for a mere £9 a year it's a site any surrealist could join without undue pain.

Facebook Page

I've come across a few visual artists who have a Facebook "Page", fan pages that can be used for images, videos, music, text and anything else. I've create a page and uploaded all of my paintings there and all of my music that has clips, including some full streaming tracks. The address of the page is:

https://www.facebook.com/msheeky/

The Landscape of Anna Q. Nilsson 2

A good day! It seems that what I paint really affects my psychology to the extent that every bit of a picture affects my mood according to how that bit feels and what it means. Today, an eagle and so I felt predatory.

The underpainting to The Landscape Of Anna Q. Nilsson is now complete. The hair on the actual portrait is my next task, and also the composition work on the quatrain picture.

The Landscape of Anna Q. Nilsson 1

I've been painting the underpainting to The Landscape Of Anna Q. Nilsson today and going through the full spectrum of emotions even extending to the erotic! I'm only on day three of my six month tour of painting duty, but even after just three days wish I could get out more.

Initial negativity gave way to joy. I'm growing in powers daily and in the past week good news has been supplanted with better news with each coming day. I expect the next six months then to be better than ever, ironically because the days will be more arduous than ever, more intense, with more concentration spent for more hours.

The painting went adequately. A second day at least will be needed. The work is smoother and finer than ever but this complex work is complex chromatically. The finished painting will go on show in Marbury village church, 9th and 10th of May. After this is done I'll begin design work for the MOMA Wales competition.

Sad Songs

And a poem today too.

Sad Songs

I listen to sad songs
to make myself cry.
It stops me crying
at other times;
times in the day,
when it would be wrong
to cry.
So I listen to sad songs
at night,
when it's alright,
instead.

Anna Q. Nilsson 2

Back to painting Anna Q. Nilsson today and a second underpainting layer. There are many ways of oil painting, and painting in lots of delicate layers is often seen by the invariably snooty people who do it as the best way of painting. It's really one of the easiest ways to paint.

The best portrait I have yet painted was my self portrait which was done in three prefect layers; a plain green imprimatura (wash) to tone the canvas; a perfectly accurate and smooth greyscale underpainting; then a highly transparent glaze layer. It's no surprise that this came out so well because I had a good source image; me! That's rare for the way I paint because I'm limited by the artistry; if an idea calls for a windmill I must paint one even if it means making my own model.

This portrait is an acceptable likeness and unusual in that the source image is very blurred; something that painters of the past didn't need to worry about!! The only feasible option is to paint the picture blurred too. Trying to sharpen up imaginary lines is impossible. The whole task is not easy, but that's why it's rewarding to try.

This picture is for a local show and purely an example of my portrait painting, so I'm free to experiment. I've decided to limit my palette to black, white, yellow ochre, and burnt sienna just for fun.

Eve Eating an Apple While God Looks On

Finally completed, this was a response to a statement about the lack of imaginative abstract pictures. Ultimately this is a square apple being eaten by a circle. The square then is masculine, the frills around the circle make it both feminine and "bite" into the apple. The grassy floor extends to an artificial perspective box that terminates in heaven, shining down from the eye of God. The circle there is an identical size and colour to the spot on Eve, which aside from any breast/nipple references here is the rouge cheek of shame, at biting the forbidden fruit. The figure in the floor and the tree reinforces this feeling, and the forbidding sky near the far right (and therefore end of the story) shows the dark consequences of Eve's actions. There is much more depth to this picture than it's simple construction indicates.

Rubaiyat

The Museum of Modern Art in Wales is holding a competition to illustrate the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a list of quatrains mostly with a religious theme. The competition will be a challenge; these are among the most illustrated of all literary works, mostly in the late 19th and early 20th century, times when complex figurative and historical paintings dominated art. Any new illustration then has a lot of competition from the weight of history. Secondly, the judges are world experts on illustrations made for these rubaiyat. Thirdly the rules are sufficiently open ended to bamboozle most people, and fourthly the closing date is the start of July, so that's about twelve weeks, which is not long for me and far too short for any modern pre-Raphaelite. I love a challenge. I must enter this!