Eve and Varnishing

Today I did some work on the glazing layer to a painting called Eve Eating An Apple While God Looks On. I managed good glazed greens for a rare time. My failures in the past come from:
1. Using only viridian as my green because of it's permanence and the fact that I dislike the overpowering phthalo greens. I still do this. I love viridian, it's the only green I need.
2. Making glazes too transparent. Now I use more opaque yellows and tend to add a bit of white.
3. Underpainting in inappropriate colours. This is less of a problem with a more opaque glaze though.

Either way, today's greens went well and I managed to paint a square apple from life, and then ate the model! The rest of the tiny painting must wait until Friday.

At 4pm I varnished two paintings to add to the five I varnished yesterday. All went well but it's amazing how much of a skill varnishing alone is. In a perfect world I'd have a room just for varnishing; something with white walls and a hard floor like an operating theatre, and sideways light so that the sheen is visible. My top two varnishing tips are:

1. First apply and wipe off a very thin spray of alcohol, to prevent beading or repulsion from the oil surface.
2. Warm the varnish in a container of boiling water. I discovered this one because varnishing is much much easier on hot summer days.

iLike

I've just added my music to "iLike" a website that allows you to put your music online, and also distributes streaming music to social websites like Facebook and Bebo, allowing you to hear the music and play it on your profile.

Ceedeeomancy

Today I've been practising ceedeeomancy, a form of predicting the future using the shuffle option on a CD player. To do this you pick an album, select shuffle and interpret the playing order. The portents from David Bowie's "Hunky Dory" were all excellent. With repeat on, "Changes" came right at the end and then right away again so that's big changes at the end of the year.

The experience gave me another idea. A quick way of making a concept album without going to the trouble of writing and recording is to take an existing album and write new lyrics for all of the songs, perhaps re-ordering them to assist the story. I'd like to do that for "A Night at the Opera" by Queen.

New Poem

And now, I've just written this. Inspired by the very first bit of the Ingmar Bergman film I saw the other night, Autumn Sonata. It's called If You Could See Me.

If you could see me.
Could see inside,
the real me, here,
where I reside.

If I could show you everything.
What I'm like, and dream of too.
How I feel.
Why I do.
I'd settle for just one like you.

I want someone to know
exactly what I'm like inside.
Exactly what I'm really like.
Not what the others think.

With forty years of closeness,
each conversation, glance and pose,
each word and artwork,
all of those.
You still won't know.
No one knows.

If only I could show one soul,
I wish that it could be,
but all you'll know are these few words.
This tiny piece of me.

Saturday

Not a bad day. I was listless in the morning, still worried about the stupid comments made at my last Art Support meeting and becoming very self-conscious about why I don't like to talk about my art to other people and how the other people there interpret my silence on the matter.

Anyway. Later in the day I decided to draw on my Anna Nilsson portrait, modifying it to make a surreal counterpart for the "normal" portrait version. It came out remarkably well, drawing excellent outlines in single perfect strokes and proves that a few days drawing can hone my skills. As I age I find I have increased in skill, but find that it takes a bit longer to "switch" between them instead of being able to do them all at once. Perhaps the brain cells that die then are the connectors and not the ones that slowly form when learning a skill over a longer period.

I wrote a song too and it's good musically. I'm writing the best songs of my life right now, and drawing better than ever, and having more ideas than ever, yet also having illogical periods of a sort of negativity that I've never had either. I think these activities might be linked because my ideas come easiest and best just after those actually rather short dips. This song was one example; a gentle piano ballad that you'll have to imagine the melody to, which flows like a Beatles tune yet like McCartney's best just came right out of my head.

So Many Times Plus One

I expected
you one day
with your reddened eyes.
No surprise, to me.

I don't want to
cause you pain
but I have to get
it out.

You've hurt me so many times plus one.
You've hurt me so many times plus one.
That's too many times, for me.
That's too many times for me to have you back.

You will say you're lonely.
I get lonely too.

Soon you'll tell me
you feel old
well I've told you that
everyone's the same,
and I don't think
I can cope
when you pull me down
again.

You've hurt me so many times plus one.
You've hurt me so many times plus one.
That's too many times, for me.
That's too many times for me to have you back.

I expected
you one day
with your reddened eyes.
No surprise, to me.

Friday

Enough of the philosophy of art! Today I got back to drawing out Attainment of Global Fame. It features a "crowd" at the bottom and it's proving problematical. The plan used an abstracted crowd like in The Joyous Birth Of The All-New Transhumanic Super Beings but I'm not sure it fits in with the more realistic design of the rest of the picture. On the other hand, I often find that abstraction has more energy and feeling than actual depiction, just as a caricature is often a better likeness than a portrait.

Any crowd scene would be difficult to model and draw. I'm thinking that a mass of toy soldiers or similar figures could be used to quickly model a crowd. The angel figure and the main one are pretty much drawn now, apart from hands and faces.

The Shock of the New

A human being is a society of cells, each cell leading an independent life. Humans like change, and the drama of the new and the different. A society of humans also forms a lifeform, and each civilisation or country assumes the characteristics of a gigantic creature. The creature's tastes are called culture, and like all life it likes change, and the drama of the new and the different.

Art therefore is most effective when it says with passion that which opposes the view of the masses. The red rose in a field of white roses stands out, and that rose is the artist. In civilisation the most striking art then is rebellious art. Secular art in a religious society, divine art in a secular one, mathematical art in an emotional society, delicate and detailed art in a world of abstracted messes, violent art in a twee society, chaotic art in an ordered society, and the art of stability in a chaotic society.

Because of this, tastes change, and what is powerful art changes with tastes. The significance of great art of the past changes depending on the situation of current cultural states. The artist that seeks appreciation might anticipate change in order to make the greatest impact. Such artists might stand out from the crowd for their entire career, while the artists that do not change will flicker and glow and fade, perhaps re-glowing as tastes cycle. Either way, the great creature will subsume and absorb art, and culture will change, and as it does the art will look the same but constantly change in how "good" (effective, fashionable, applicable, appreciated) it is.

Art Group Politics

A tiring day. I awoke late but early too after a very stressful evening and panicked night of semi-conscious worry, the worst sort of night terror. I've been wrestling with a social dilemma.

It concerned my art group and made me think, what do I really think of my art? Do I like it? Do I dislike it? I can identify good points, bad points, the message, the feeling. Am I proud of it? Am I ashamed of it?

Art is communication. To be proud or ashamed of a conversation seems insane, yet, art critics seek to praise or deprecate just that. How should the artist feel?

Half of the time I am proud of it and will happily talk about it. Half of the time I am ashamed of my art and don't want to explain it or talk about it. My social dilemma was a venomous rant by the leader of my art group insisting that members, and I in particular, bring in a painting and explain it. The event was theoretically voluntary.

I solved the problem by taking a god's view, a view in which I see even myself in the third person. In such a view, the affairs of humans are of minor importance. I can simply decide the pros and cons to an event. It is better for an artist to promote art than hide it so the solution is simple. An artist should be proud if his work, irrespective of how he, his peers, or his critics really feels about it. That sentence itself shows the amusing irrationality of the artist.

Thus the good artist must see room for improvement, yet feel pride. An artist must be a salesman, and a paranoiac. A human, and a god. The more feeble the man, the more improvements can be made, and the greater the god the more divine and glorious and perfect the ultimate result will be.