Frans Hals Video, Society6 Store

A day of work on the Frans Hals video, mainly the final tweaks. It's amazing that I could make a video of such complexity in two days, most of the work was done in a few hours yesterday, but the final changes take 80% of the time for any creative project. Here's a still of the state so far:

The video tends to look like the titles to a James Bond film, with sweeping, sliding sections of film flying over an animated background. I did it by creating a complete animated film in Argus, using flat white boards to represent areas where the video will appear. When complete, I noted the frames where the video inserts are needed, then made a second film of edits from the filmed footage. Both that edit and the animated one were synchronised with the music.

Then adjusted the colouration of the film, and rendered out the main animation without the white boards, plus a second animation of only the white boards; the mask for the film. Both were combined using Avisynth. I turned down the opacity a little so that some of the background shows through the film, to make it look more integrated.

As a last step, I added a picture frame object to those white squares, to give them some sort of border. This is the most digital looking aspect, but it looks better, just about, than no frame at all. Certainly very different. Tweaking the settings for the frame texture and the reflection map is rather time consuming and hard to get right.

I found time to add the remaining 16 digital images to Society6 and my website, so all of my 2002-2003 digital prints are now on sale again, but I still have the album artwork. There are many more album covers now. Society6 seems suprisingly dead and tired, little changed since when I first left the site in 2018. A lot of art is from that date, and their own blog has hardly any interaction. The site could use new ideas; better pricing controls, sale options, limited edition items, digital items, 3D virtual rooms to view items, Patreon integration, contests... lots could be added. Itch and Bandcamp do things much better.

Frans Hals Video

A jump to video from painting, as Deb operated the camera to film some footage for a music video for Frans Hals, and Art For Me.

Some filmed elements are better than ever, but I was annoyed by a few, like the ragged look of my shirt (which fell open, this does make it look more rock-n-roll; Deb preferred it this way, though I'd have liked it neater). I mimed guitar too, which, ironically, sounded good in the studio but wasn't at all in time to the actual recording. It's a bit like singing a brilliant karaoke mime to the wrong verse. I will have to do some work on the footage. Ultimately, it will not be accurate.

The Art For Me video involved the Rilke Pierrot mask and singing to a lightbulb; with memories of the memorable scene in Blue Velvet. This looked beautiful at times.

But still, I felt rather tired and sad by it all. My perfectionism saw nothing but flaws, and I find it so hard to add a sense of artistry to video, an artless and time consuming medium I dislike. We can see some personality in a film by Hitchcock, Orson Welles, David Lynch, but very few (if any) music videos have any sense of character or art. Can anyone identify the art or artisan in a music video? They are more like moving advertisements than art; but, sigh, I must try, so I decided to add as much genius as I could to, and with, what I have.

This morning I read that Society6 has reactivated my account, after RedBubble suspended it last week without any warning, reason, or explanation. So most of today was spent uploading images there and adding these to my website, but in my mind I was thinking about the music video. I thought it would be nice to have an animated video with some film sections flying about in custom masks, something like A-ha's 'Take on Me' video.

Starting at 4pm today, by 5:30 I'd got most of a draft complete.

Vista Dream, Love is Dead Miniature, Vienna vs. Crewe

I often feel sad to a suicidal degree, but unlike van Gogh I'll never harm meyself. The universe will do that to me, and all of us, soon enough, and such agonies should be extended, so our cells must be taken care of with the best foods, exercise, care.

I dream of walking with Deb, outside at night. It's so dark that we can't see a thing, total blackness, feeling our way along a roadside path. Then, things slowly brighten and we follow a moonlit outline of a pathway. We walked, with a few others, along some grassy paths, then onto a wider plain. The sky was revealed and was amazingly beautiful; dark, deep blue a the top fading down to a bright turquoise at the mountain horizon. I gazed in awe at this as Deb continued to walk. Then, dawn, and the mountains before me were so beautiful. I asked Deb for her phone to take a panoramic photo of it. She handed me her phone and walked on with the others rather than stop with me, she seemed to care less than I about the view. I stood and took a panoramic photo, imperfect, but I felt I hadn't the time to take a better one. I was now in a vast airport or shopping centre, the mountain view beyond glass walls. Deb and my companions were gone.

I've spent today painting the new (third) Love is Dead miniature.

The underpainting was relatively easy. With miniatures it's exactly like working on a larger painting but on smaller scale, so smaller and softer brushes with thinner bristles but of the same shape as the bigger cousins. One hard part is adding enough paint. It's tempting to add too little. This was painted more successfully than the other two, I was chromatically prepared. See, at the end, how purple the dark background looks, but it's grey, an illusion due to the yellow flesh. After painting I realised that I'd stupidly painted it upside down! The panel was custom sized and cut exactly for the frame but will now need trimming to fit.

Perhaps only one glazing layer is needed for this. The quality of the underpaint is sufficient that transparent glazes from now on will suffice.

What is this 'for'? I wondered about entering a miniature society exhibition, but what hope have I there. Whatever I do, I am inspired and motivated with my art this year. My recent focus has been on music, but even before then, I'd stopped pushing to be the best I can, stopped active analysis to improve in painting, push. 2023 feels like a renaissance year for me like 2012 was, and perhaps for similar reasons, emergence from darkness. I still have energy, but few resources, no princely patrons or supporters.

I'm still listening to the Beethoven 'Composer of the Week' specials from 2020. I still feel a great affinity with Herr B., but am reminded that Crewe is no Vienna, far even from an 18th c. Bonn. We have almost no culture here, no society. After 50 years I know nobody here but Deb, and have no social connections or affinity with anyone or what might be called local culture.

Love is Alive

A busy day after a full day's painting on Sappho. Yesterday was long and tiring, and I saw only mistakes and flaws in Sappho. There has been certain progress in my painting, year on year, but I feel a leap is needed, and leap I both must and will. It's amazing to some extent that I managed that 50x75cm work in a day; this is one sign of my recent improvements. I'm unsure what do to. I'd like to paint it again, but I painted the Roman Legionaries painting three times and difference between two and three were very small, and it's likely that some good elements in one version are lost on another.

I've spent today revisiting Love is Dead and Love is Alive. The former has been revisited a few times. The real rose thorns broke off often, so the frame has been patched up many times over the years, and in 2019 I repainted the centre panel, though it was as unsatisfied with it as with the first version, for different reasons. I've vowed to paint a third version. Here are the first two versions:

Of course, in real life the paintings look better, softer. The 'frame' isn't changed much, apart from fixing up some of the thorns, most recently in 2019 with some Paraloid resin, to secure everything in a good way. The Polymorph vines are very strong, but the material is sensitive to heat, amazingly flexible and resistant to glue (and paint). I also attached the whole thing to a block of wood because the mirror plates to fix it all to a wall in an exhibition were too delicate, too close to the delicate frame itself. I'd do many things differently, were I to make it again, but, it remains a pretty object and one of the best things I've done (or did), and will be a certain masterpiece with a masterly centre panel, and if so, a masterpiece that will have taken me more than a month of full-time hours.

I'd always planned it to be one of a pair, with 'Love is Alive', and I bought a second frame at the time, and added vines too. That version was destined to be white and light, a living version of the above. Today, as well as restoring Love is Dead, I made preparations for Love is Alive, cutting and preparing painting panels, cutting mounts and a 6mm MDF backing piece of wood.

Painstakingly traced and cut with a fret saw. I'd perhaps not use 6mm MDF now. it flakes rather when screws are added, and is very moisture sensitive; but this is one of a pair and it should match the original in size and look. So I'm in a mood of work, to finish and complete, to produce, improve.

Sappho Underpainting

A full day painting Sappho (which may not be the final title). It was difficult to complete this in time so the paint was a little thicker and the strokes looser; this is also a factor when improvising rather than painting from a plan. Clouds I can comfortably improvise, but rocks are a little more difficult, they require form, a form I must model to some degree. Sea waves are more like clouds, but details are painted dark on light whereas clouds are white on dark (wet on wet), so require different preparation.

Almost everything in the painting was improvised apart from the figure. The face was, however, but I really needed a model for this. I had a model for the body but its face was inadequate.

Red Bubbles, Cracked Plates

A horrible day. I started by rearranging my accounts in preparation for the end-of-tax-year, with separate entries for personal and business income/outcome. Most of my 'business' income is personal anyway, but this separation will help in future, should I form a media company one day. Then I traced over the Sappho underdrawing to its dark green background.

After lunch I was informed that my RedBubble account, which had listed all of my digital artwork from 2002-2003, and all of my album art and merchandise, was 'suspended' (deleted, that is) without warning and for no discernible reason. Perhaps this art content was not seen as compatible with the tee-shirt designs I founded the shop with, it would indeed be better if my shop was branded Mark Sheeky Artworks, but it's not possible to change a username or rebrand anything on RedBubble, and nigh on impossible (as it is with any of these slave-driven digital elites) to contact anyone. Our lives are increasingly digital, and dominated by giant anonymous companies who own our creations, own our data, our life's industry, and at whim can destroy it. A few years of dormancy and - boom! We're dead. If you're not making enough money or gaining enough popularity to satisfy these digital aristocrats, it's the guillotine for you! So our souls hang by a Damoclesian thread, but worse than mere death awaits! No less than the eradication of all of our information, our selves, memories of ourselves, and everything we've done in our lives: gone, for the crime of not being rich or popular.

Perhaps the real reason for my suspension is my lack of sales (I hereby apologise for my poverty and obscurity). I've not sold a digital art print or album print, just a handful of tee-shirts or other items not connected to the digital art. I fell into depression then anger at the stupid site and became filled with hatred for the world generally. Then, at tea, my beloved china plate, from which I eat every meal, was cracked down the middle by my idiotic mother who put it empty in the microwave 'to warm it' - I despise warm plates and have mentioned this time and again, but was even more broken by the breakage of my 30-year old friend. It is, annoyingly, not cleaved in two but cracked down the centre and ready to fall in two. I'll keep using it, making every mealtime a study in terror, reminiscent of my childhood studies in terror of being in the proximity of my insane father.

My focus must be painting, and, on a positive note, I think I am doing new things. It feels like a rebirth of sorts, after a few years of little progress in visual art - my focus has been on music. For every painting I have, I now want to add more. I'm now thinking of art in the way I think of my music; creating with the end in mind rather than for its own sake. The initial joyous stab of inspiration used to be my incentive. Now I will craft and plan first, sketch options, consider. Hopefully I can paint tomorrow. Peter's lesson on Wednesday will interrupt the day, but I am aware that his lessons won't last forever.

Beethoven, Portents, Sappho

My night was spent awake, but filled with a new writhing excitement rather than angst. I felt lost in the day however, lacklustre, feeling isolated and disconnected from humanity. Art is my life but I must muster my encouragement from within, from my philosophy that life is about sharing information, about art. I know that my work is generally ignored, and that those that don't ignore me dislike or envy me. Such is the artists' life. I live in poverty, isolation, and stomach pain, and ceaseless work for no reward (except self-satisfaction and the knowledge of ultimate success - of course!) yet, I work and focus on doing the best I can each day and with each solemn and certain breath, and this gives me a unique ecstasy.

I also feel artistically renewed, that my ideas are entering a new phase. May the gods give me time to make more, last many more years. I worked on three paintings; transferring over the Portents of Desire drawing and preparing the surface, then creating a shadow guide for Sappho:

Than preparing that canvas. The mood here is the solitary cry of the isolated poet. My idea for the 'second movement' is pink and fecund. I also came up with an idea for the third in the 'sacred' series which includes Deb's portrait; but the mood must be considered carefully.

As I worked on Sappho I listened to the brilliant and final Rachmaninov programme from in Radio 3's Composer of the Week, then, as I worked on the tedious drawing, the start of the year-long Beethoven programmes from 2020. It's odd to me that his 'late quartets' are thought of as 'difficult' or strange, when to me they are as tuneful and brilliant as the 9th Symphony, or any of his late work; not 'experimental'. I found it oddly synchronous that I felt Beethovian, then tuned to his moods and biography. On we charge heroically!

Sappho

A slow day. My days seem to be one good, full of energy and productivity, and one slow of sleeplessness and stomach pain, zombie-like tiredness, and lacking in motivation. Yet even on slow days I work, and perhaps years or months later I would struggle to recognise which days were which. Such is perception. Today, I completed my quarterly backups, went for a walk though the ragged streets of Crewe; a town of closed shops and poor people. I bought two books for £1 each on the last day of the town's WHSmith, and the last day of the town Post Office.

On these days I'm reminded that art gives life meaning to artists. Art gives life meaning to art critics and art lovers. Art gives life meaning to humanity.

I returned and started work on Sappho, a painting inspired by the Mengin painting in Manchester Art Gallery, and one I painted a study for almost 10 years ago, but knew that it really needed an epic size of canvas. I've decided to forget that requirement (for now) and paint one at 50x70cm, which is big enough. Here's the study:

I've used Poser for the first time in years to pose a model. Perhaps now I can use it as intended, as a reference, rather than copying the dummy-beings it creates as I used to. The rocks I will invent.

I wrote a song about it. Here are the words so far:

Sappho

Poetess
by the paper lamp
of the yellow moon
and the blue-lit sighs
in the drowning glass

Poetess
press the secret words
from your soul-clay
to your future love
whisper painful truth
as you fall
into liquid dreams
of forgetfulness
of the mountain-sky
of the longing storms
of bleak winter's rain

The heavy salted ocean
breathes around your chest
Loves you, octopus
sucks your breath
vowel by vowel
towards death's orgasm