Programming Joys

A long day working on the shopping cart implementation on my website, well the PayPal payment integration, and I can sound the horns of victory and report that by this evening I managed to get it working and test purchased a CD from myself, which is the only way to be sure.

The PayPal API documentation is remarkably poor, it makes me (for once) thank Microsoft for its good quality Windows API documentation. So much in the PayPal gobbledegook seemed to be missing or contradictory. It looked like it had been updated here and there at random over the years. Another curse of any established API is that if can often split off (so-called branches) and have different options for different development environments, and different languages which pop up here any there. As an old-school programmer, my tools of choice are a text editor and my brain. Once you know one language, the others can be picked up in a few hours. The only ones I've studied were Pascal, Cobol, and dBase in college in the dark ages, but I'm self-taught in Dragon 32 BASIC (in childhood, which years later turned out to be useful because Microsoft invented it and it is still used today), Commodore 64 machine code (in childhood), Amiga assembler (teenhood), and C++ (adulthood) which I use for games.

Every step was slow today, line by line testing and crawling. One false move and everything vanishes in web programming. It's like typing a novel in a minefield. Taking a payment is also more complex than you might think, needing at least a list of items and prices and postage calculations, and taking and storing and emailing these details hither and whince (is that a word? It sounds like the perfect companion to hither!)

Well, the system is now live and for the first time in a long time I can sell art, books, and music online again; most notably music for the Music of Poetic Objects which is on CD now and isn't available from anywhere else.

Now I'm tired out and headachey. So much learned today. My strategy for any job like this is learn, do, test, then forget it. Tomorrow, the joys of art.

Programming to Stand Still

Woke late after a night of strange dreams. The most notable one featured a stocky, murderous child (dressed in something like lederhosen) who killed another child. I had to guard him, awaiting the police. I went to a kitchen to get some food and opened a tin of tuna for myself, although the fish inside was more like white fish. Also in the tin was a whole grey fish, about 40cm long and with dark, slimy skin. The skin was loose revealing horrid insides when peeled away. I shouted to my unseen mum if she knew the correct bits to eat; she didn't, so I told the boy that he could help himself to this fish, and left him to it. After a short while he said he'd finished it all, which surprised me, and I grew suspicious. I went into the kitchen. The plate was empty and I discovered that he had hidden the stinking fish inside my nice wool coat. I was furious and intent on exacting violent revenge. I then awoke.

A frustrating day. I started by staining a frame, the large ragged wooden frame for "So, How Have You Been?" that I've been making this week. Choices came down to brown or black, and I went with black after a quick Photoshop mockup. This was stained and varnished.

Then I investigated the shopping cart on my website, which it seems doesn't work. It seems that the PayPal integration is out of date (but it should theoretically still work fine). This is the curse of all programming. In a year two, everything goes out of date and you need to learn something new. Programming is all about learning new things just to stand still. Things break constantly for no reason, and we must battle just to try to get back to how things were, in a pure world where everything was quick, efficient and simple.

So I've spent all day researching the PayPal API, Curl, php, json scripting and other complexities, an arduous trawl. I try to approach technology like a child, wondrous, unafraid and by repeating 'I can to it, I CAN do it!' even if completely mystified. I believe that I'm capable of learning how things are done; we all can, eventually, but this isn't easy, and sometimes seems to be a near-impossible struggle. After six hours I've achieved nothing but headaches and failures, and still don't know what I'm doing wrong. In four years of my current system I've only sold one thing online so is it even worth it?

So a long day ends with no achievements except a stained frame. Problems and puzzles bother me enough that I'll probably keep trying and thinking about this, but it feels like a waste of skills, a gamble whether anything will come of it. This is typical of programming and why I've grown to hate it; it's one of the most Sisyphean of jobs. Art is easy; what we do is, at least, visible. A lot of programming is really hard work and hidden, or actually achieves nothing, and then goes out of date and becomes useless to everyone.

It amazes me how many years I've been working on my games, like Flatspace II and Future Snooker, as written even on this blog. This year I found myself still updating those old games, just to ensure that they worked on new computers as they did when they were made. Perhaps everything needs updating, even art. The more we create, the more we must caretake.

Hair in Miniature Painting

Some woodwork on a new frame today, but in the afternoon I thought I'd do some painting. Why start new painting when there are half finished paintings ready to be completed? Thinking about that, I had six waiting a glaze layer, some for over a year.

I have a miniature portrait for an old work called 'Love is Dead' in progress; I was unhappy with the first version of it, so started work on a replacement a year ago. Today I decided to add a glazing layer. I normally paint one underpainting in opaque colours, then one glazing layer. This, I think, is optimal. Years or trying alternatives revealed very little quality difference between one glazing layer and many; in fact it's possible to destroy the smoothness of a painting with more layers, more doesn't always mean a finer, softer finish.

But more layers can have a few effects. Firstly, they can allow a deepening of shadow (if, by accident, you had foolishly not made your underpainting dark enough). They can add special effects, like glazing with a particularly beautiful but transparent hue, such as ultramarine violet, which is really only possible to use in a many layers (I've never managed to even do that with it, it's just too transparent, yet it is extremely beautiful. My best use of it was in combination with azo yellow to make a highly transparent and beautiful range of greys in a painting called The Time For Love Is Nearly Flown).

My miniature so far was evenly painted in a greyish/greenish/yellowish hue and needed a coloured glaze, so I've simply matched the colours on my palette with those of flesh. This was complicated by the fact that I'm painting from a black and white photo, so I needed a colour photo of another face to copy from. The key is simply to match tones; light glaze on the light colours, dark over dark. Once everything is shaded smoothly (by sort of rubbing the paint in with a very soft brush), details can be added.

The expert miniaturist, and one of the few true sfumato experts in the world, David Lawton, told me that he disliked painting hair. I can understand why because hair can't be layered easily. It demands definite lines, not gentle 'smoke'. The key here is to paint those lines, as finely as possible, with the most liquid medium, and the finest point. I use a half-rigger for this; a discovery made in the past year. For me, riggers are joyous and essential tools for fine details. I've yet to understand why sets of so-called 'miniature brushes' are short and stubby. Maybe I'll find out one day.

One thing about hairs and layers is that you must be aware that the hair might necessarily be painted on the last layer, but not always. Generally, the more detail on every layer, the better, but if you paint your eyelashes in the underpainting (assuming you had a magical super-liquid medium and a dry background, which you won't have) then you would have to repaint them, and at least as finely, during glazing over them.

I'll probably add another layer to this, to darken up the inky blackness of the background, and darken the hair. This is an exceptional work for me because I aimed to paint many layers, the subject is about care and attention and love; the level of work and love in the painting itself is part of the art, it's a painting about the obsessive love of painting, so this must be evident, and the painting of it must be obsessive.

This can dry now. If I can sleep well enough I might glaze something else tomorrow. Last night was too restless due to general excitement.

Black Wood Stain and Golden Fluid Acrylic

I wanted to enter a diptych (or triptych or tetraptych) into the R.B.S.A. Portrait Prize, but, after enquiring, it seems that I have to fix the works together so that the separate images are in one frame or as one, so that rules out three or four for sheer practical reasons. I think the simplest option is to screw two frames together with a strip of 3mm wood as a separator, and enter two.

I've stained this strip with black, a mix of Golden Fluid Acrylic Carbon Black and water (about 1:1), which makes a fantastic black wood stain, better for staining wood than the solvent-based stain one I have. I've found that this mix applied with a sponge is generally the best way to paint anything black (I've even used it on my hat!) Solvent based stains tend to work better than water ones on wood however; water stains are usually weaker in power and make the wood expand, like any water does (even my Golden mix). I wonder if I mixed a solvent with the Golden paint I'd make a better stain? Immediate solvent options I can imagine would be isopropyl alcohol, or something stronger like ethyl acetate or acetone.

New Paintings

Well I started today by photographing a new painting in its frame, There Is Still Hope. I do think paintings online look much better in frames, it proves that these are real paintings not mere digital images.

Then I took a look at my old sketchbooks, looking for inspiration for the commission, or food for the eye to help the dream-like process of visualising. Here's an average page:

My sketchbook have always been more like ideas libraries. I've always made and stored far more ideas than I could paint, partly because when the ideas flow, it's good to keep them for later, perhaps for future years. The problem with that is that painting ideas can go out of date, and even meanings and feelings can no longer be as correct as they once were. I suppose one advantage to this though is that the best, most timeless ideas, will remain powerful.

After rediscovering a few paintings in there I became inspired and ached to paint them! Such a crime to have these lying there unseen in books, those sad children, locked away in the dark!

Just get them done, as quickly as possible, while they are still fresh, I thought. I often think I can spend more time agonising on why than it would take me to actually paint them. This is the way I used to work often; assemble 10 to 30 paintings, normally over winter, then paint them over the next summer. The problem is that the finished paintings tend to just lay there, unseen, and good as not there at all for most of the world, and we only have so much space (I don't know a single artist who isn't also the guardian of an art storage facility). Over time, I began to slow down, painting less, and only for specific reasons or events or contests.

Yet in art the best things are the often the things made for no rational purpose. It seems to be these that in the long term turn out to be the special works. It is perhaps that spark of joy, enthusiasm, and excitement of the new idea that is the eternal thing, and the key thing when making art. Nobody remembers Mozart for his unwritten music! And the goal of competitions etc. well, those are artificial anyway, and their purpose of enthusing us and supplying a deadline isn't important if we have our own passion.

So, I've grabbed a few ideas and will draw them out this week, with the aim of painting them as quickly as I can. Re-reading this blog has at least reminded me that I can paint much faster now compared to a few years ago. What is an artist to do but paint? In fact, what is an artist to paint but not what the world wants, but what his or her soul demands?

I've drawn out two today: The Safe Box, and Land of Beauty and Sorrow. Small, weird, meaty works that are (probably) about social media and the technological world. On we march.

June Plans

The start of a month means a monthly goals list (more of a to-do list).

I'm working (unusually) on two painting commissions at the moment and must make plans for these, one at least will be on public display so must be an indisputable massterpiece... that's the only criteria, but I must decide exactly what and how.

I'll write some Clown Poems too. I've had a poetry collecting in progress for many months. Oddly, I've not published any of my poems since the ones I wrote per-day in 2010 (as 365 Universes). My alst book, Deep Dark Light, included some, but they were rather strange, stream-of-consciousness things that defy normal poetry classification. I think my poetry has improved a lot in recently years (improvement is such a subjective term!), partly due to getting to know and meet with local poets, so I really should get a collection together. The 'Clown Poems' are simply themed around the circus. I've written 30 or so, but need to structure the book so that it's more than a mere collection of poems. The structure of the book itself needs to be poetic.

I also want to work on some new song vocals and re-record some for existing tunes. I love singing, it's a matter of gently squeezing each cell until some sound squirts out. Each cell must simply express the flow of the music, thus singing is like free-dancing.

Seven Years in One Post

At last at LAST! The four days of tweaks and blog changes are done, four of the most intense days I've had in a long time. I spent Sunday, Monday and Tuesday underpainting a new painting that espouses my ideas of 'symphonic painting', ideas which are probably scattered here and there even in this fragmented blog.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I gradually faded off from blogging at around 2012.

2012 was a great year for productivity, a bounce-back from about 18 months of lows and anxious difficulty. I painted the Richard Dadd painting and made the cabinet for it, completed 'The Many Beautiful Worlds' novel and published the poems I wrote in 2010, founding Pentangel Books.

I continued the trend of pushing as many boundaries as my resources would allow. The Eden Iris in 2014 was a logical step up from the Dadd Cabinet, circular, hand carved, and with much more complex engineering. I began to continue to learn many new skills, to supplement mere painting. Lindsey Piper's Art Up Close started a new art club in a Nantwich photography studio, that of Adam Capper and a small group of us, perhaps under 10, met there regularly.

I entered my first art fair, paying £1500 or so to exhibit in Chelsea Town Hall for the Parallax Art Fair, but this was a huge flop for all involved; two scorching days at the height of summer, and a major football match perhaps contributed to the lack of visitors (the art was, sadly, really good quality and many artists had travelled from across Europe to attend; in contrast to many other fairs I've visited). The plus side of the fair was that I met a few fabulous artists, and made contact with a short-lived gallery named Gabriel Fine Art, who I subsequently exhibited a few times with.

In 2014 the art club building succumbed to its decay and I took the initiative, running a weekday art club myself in a church hall, although it was always a struggle to find enough regular participants. I had my first London solo exhibition, The Phenomenology of Love, in March 2015, and in July my first art performance event, also in London at a Gabriel event where I played piano for the first time, with other artists Sabine Kussmaul projecting video, and Escargot reading stream-of-consciousness text in French. This event began a trend for live performances and a lit the touchpaper of a passion of piano playing.

I appeared on local radio station, RedShift, to promote an art event. Liz, the wonderful station manager asked if I would like to host an arts programme, and after some hesitation, I agreed and joined the RedShift team to produce and host ArtsLab from October 2015, closing the doors on the moribund art club soon after.

I continued to paint, write music and everything else, of course, but I took part in many more live events. In 2016 I began to attend monthly art performance events in a small bar, helping to organise these with Sabine. Sabine and I collaborated on a few performances and installations, and in September I premiered 6 of my piano pieces in the magnificent surroundings of Chester Cathedral, to her projected videos.

After a first year of seeking and listening to avant-garde (well, to me!) music, the radio programme ArtsLab became more experimental as I changed the format, inviting anyone to create material to premiere, all in an attempt to boost engagement and the number of listeners. This requirement for new content, and the exploration of new music changed my music. The albums The Anatomy Of Emotions and Cycles & Shadows, as played in Chester, were in a new direction to my music from before.

In 2017 I began to perform with Deborah Edgeley as 'Fall in Green', myself on piano and keyboards, with words by Deborah, creating a contemporary lieder form of music. In 2018 we performed about once a month, adding to the invaluable experiences of staging live performances. After two years on the presenting radio I left ArtsLab to start a YouTube video version of the show, ArtSwarm, for a mix of reasons: the workload of the voluntary radio show was all-consuming; I'd explored experimental audio thoroughly and wanted to move to a next logical step; and so few people could listen to the internet radio, we often had less than 10 listeners.

In 2018 I published my first non-fiction book, 21st Century Surrealism, and held a solo exhibition (my 15th) in Stockport, inviting poets from the Write Out Loud group to contribute poems. This collaboration has led to a second; an exhibition exploring ekphrasis, and my latest album, Music of Poetic Objects.

Well, this is another mammoth post, so well done for getting this far. I thought it would be useful to put this update here, because quite a lot of this information is missing on this blog, and I wanted it to all feel neat and complete in one space, at very least. God bless the organisers! I'm more convinced than ever that the purpose of life is to order and to organise. Thus, those who do so, we cleaners and filers, are the most living of beings.

Now it's time to catch up on the things I should have been doing this week. Enjoy your weekend.

The Blog is Reborn

Well, it is done. I've spent most of this week updating the 1200 or so posts on this blog.

I'm filled with a mix of joy, but much regret that I haven't paid more attention to it in the past few years. The first few years worth of posts, from around 2008 to 2011 give a good diary-style account of my art activities in a nice format. After that, Facebook, and other similar distractions, intervened and came to replace these posts, but in recent times, Facebook has become a strange and unpleasant environment.

There are a few reasons why, I think. First, the site has become complicated to look at and to use. The pages are flashing, blinging, instant attention-grabbing displays. This is something that, on the internet, has grown notably more of a problem in the past few years. Even the BBC news website annoyingly includes links to other pages in the middle of stories. People might complain about the reduction of attention spans, but then exploit this by trying to distract people more and more. It's like a disease: distractomania, where people dart from one thing to another, like a fear of focusing on one thing, a fear of missing something better, perhaps.

This was always a bit of a problem on everything internet related, but in the past two or so years, Facebook has been so focused on advertising that every other post is an advert; items designed to distract. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with advertising, but distraction makes people unhappy because happiness is giving your care, attention and focus on one thing exclusively. Distraction, therefore, causes unhappiness, and naturally causes anxiety because anxiety is a chemical breakdown of extant neural pathways in anticipation of forming new ones; a mushing of learning. It makes us ready for new action, but is, as a result, the opposite of relaxation, which is, neurologically, riding the rails, so to speak.

Secondly, the 'social' aspect of Facebook itself is rather odd, and changes as the number of 'friends' grow. We are expected to connect with our friends (and people we might encounter once, and strangers who might become friends). These begin as a limited group of people we know well, then expand into a larger group of slight connections, and into total strangers. The vastness of the group makes it feel less 'friendly', but at the same time, it is too small to broadcast general information to the world, thus, Facebook recognises that many people want to make posts public, worldwide and eternal (Twitter-like formats have a better system for this, everything is visible to everyone and we can, in turn, choose who to listen to).

On Facebook, this is all to confusing. Having more Friends is better, but too many is unwieldy, yet we can hardly cull a few off; that would feel rude, but also would reduce our feelings of impact in the world. It's like a lose-lose situation.

There's no intimacy and few actual feelings of friendship on Facebook because the place is like a virtual expo, something like the E3 show, a bustling hall full of several hundred people and sales-stalls. The people, in this vast swirling exhibition or sales fair, are chosen by Facebook's algorithm, so although we're not seen by everyone in the hall, we are seen at sort of random. Any conversations with someone in a virtual corner and not remotely private. We all have megaphones in this hall.

We also discover that we all have sales stalls too, and this makes everything worse, for we distract each other as much as we are distracted.

The very instant nature of social media makes posts short and snappy, and also ephemeral. Long posts like this would be difficult to type and edit, and so many sites are so geared towards tiny phone screens, that large posts, even news stories by major news organisations are discouraged.

One big positive that Blogger has over Facebook is that the content is relatively simple, that we can download our stuff, and delete it if we want. With Facebook, we have the impression that they own everything, won't delete our content even if we ask, and that we can't control what they do with it. The Donald Trump election and the Brexit vote were key events in the history of Facebook, they made the social media experience horrible en masse; it was like entering a battlefield of angry catchphrases.

To the future. For me, I've posted some updates of my activities here and there, but the blog became a resting point for the ArtsLab listings, the weekly list of the music and guests on my two-years of local radio broadcasting. I also shared a few philosophical and pseudo-scientific ideas that I also included on my website; but a general idea of what I was doing, feeling and thinking as an artist has often been lost, or scattered across Facebook and Twitter (which is as good as lost).

I toyed with the idea of locating some of these posts and posting some sort of update here - my obsessive neatness and desire for completion would be the end of me! But I've settled for tidying up the HTML of every post here and adding new, more easily located, tags/labels about painting, music, poetry etc. I've removed many links, as these tended to go out of date scarily quickly, and dead links can lead to exploitation. You might have to search for the ends of those links in old posts, but that at least, today, is easy.

Gosh, this is a long post, well done for getting this far! I'm assuming that you are now some researcher of art from the distant future, and so, hello from the murky past of 2019.

I haven't really written posts since before ArtsLab, so I'll work on a post that tries to summarise my more recent art activities that are absent from this blog. This is nearly impossible, as my posts can be as long as this for one day, but I'll try at least because I wouldn't want my life to miss out a huge chunk, like van Gogh's did when he paused writing his letters to Theo.