30 04 2020

Tamz has bagged the leaping girl/reindeer pic for her husbands cd cover, nice news.
Have to get it photographed. Will wait till Annettes lot are finished, get a job lot done.
No word from Annette on the last one, I've done what I know the background will be so it can settle and the details implanted when she gets in touch. Farting about with much lettering, 'meat' and 'keys' both contain haiku which are hard to manage.
That aside...thats it really, except the book and the GSB video are getting encouraging remarks from people I like. All helps.

28 04 2020

unnecessarily dinky?
Will press on - and have nearly finished another for Annette.
Got another two deer and girl ones on the go but may junk them, not sure how much there is to be learnt from this.

27 04 2020

The stuff below (previous entry) really threw me - at first because the image in the dining room window seemed to be very clear, a bottom, arms, maybe a face - or perhaps l really have an on overdeveloped imagination. Who was screwing who on the dining room table?

Now, where has the image gone? Subsequent

snaps of the window show it empty.
I do not have the savvy to jigger about with photos. It wasn't me.
AND the photo has been folded in such a way that the communicant is clear and the window missing. Looks purposeful to me. Can't remember if the snap came to me from my mother or my father.
Thought I was my father who took it but it was a big party, the catholic side f the family turned up (my mothers lot) and I remember them being about. I remember my virtue and enjoying the fuss in this rite of passage. Didn't think much of the frock. Too tasteful. School friends had frills and flounces.
... Father Scammell did the ceremony, there were masses   of little girls being done from Mylnhurst  Convent, we had a breakfast in the church house on big trestle tables.

Anyway, regaling this firmly to the internal file of the unsolvable,  the painting trolls on and today I hear from Annette who has given the go-ahead for a couple of other pix. Plus an offer that I do the drawings for a cybernetical book, which I shall reject, firmly.

26 04 2020

My first communion. The window behind me, downstairs, contains the above images. Baffled; especially as further attempts to snap the window show

 it to be empty.

No doubt more on this anon. Cant think where else to store the images.

25 04 2020

Ongoing pottering. Meant to do taxes this morning and have shelved that to prepare large salad. So that's taxes this afternoon. Well, it gives the pix time to settle.

24 04 2020

Still fiddling on this theme. Its quite comforting. Working from a chair and taking it easy, by an open window, dreaming away... response to confinement, probably.

Silence from America now worrying me.

23 04 2020

Still fiddling with the theme. Really uninspired, pedantic, laborious and other negative thangs.

VERY nice endorsement for the cartoon  book though:) Woke me up happy. Nothing from American client.

As soon as this weather clears (it rains) I will get into some outside drawing. Fresh air in lungs.

22 04 2020

Start of a few on a shamanic ish theme - recalling humans relationship with wild animals before the shit hit the fan. Unnaturally dinky but likable. (so far)
No developments from American client. Will keep head down and get on with other stuff, hoping the poor woman isn't in trouble.
Water pouring through ceiling and down walls on studio stairs. Clearly a blocked gutter and the roof water of all the houses is finding a home... nothing can be done in this weather, in a lockdown.  Every towel in the house wet or in service.

21 04 2020

Shopping yesterday which resulted in a tube of amazingly expensive ochre and 6 fantastically expensive chisel brushes. Good brand which I naively assumed meant good brushes. Ha; the cheap old Lidls ones I last bought were far better. (bristles don't come out, shape held, flexible)
No canvases. There are some old stretchers somewhere and maybe enough canvas; perhaps with the pliers I can make some? Takes such a toll of the hands but if this lockdown is truly good for another three weeks, I'd better try it.
Didn't get much done yesterday, just fiddling with the two finished and about to embark on the third, which  I had previously decided not to do. Will enact; its a job.
Moscow residency postponed for a year, I'm told. By which time I'II be 71 and possibly not up for it. Assuming I'm alive :)

19 04 2020

Project humming along but not very joyfully - I'm expecting trouble and that is inhibiting. Decided next problems, if big, will result in a change of artist - III find a designer to pass it all onto.

These two are the latest to be primed and overprinted, both donkeys years old and unloved by all. I liked the octopus. It was hard to prep the dead animal and it was clear that it was a real and complicated living beast. I regretted its death and haven't eaten octopus since.. .despite that, thought the caption was terrifically funny but seems I was alone in that. 

The little nude studies were part of an experiment. One learns. No need to keep the tests.

Now it seems that the September residency in Moscow will not happen.  

17 04 2020

Signed (=initialed, new policy) and dated - in an attempt to stop messing about. Mountains, yes, well... anyway, finishing some of the american clients pix. Focus. Wish I had some more canvases though and ochre! No ochre in the house. I can make a decent facsimile but I'm fond of the real thing. Which is why there isn't any left. Lock down set to continue. Amazon?

15 04 2020 #2

Very decent days work with three outlines for client ready to be dealt with when dry and this...

 which obviously needs work but  I'm going to try not to fiddle with. Flank of deer darker so feet thrust forward; mountains more described. Got biog and photo off to Philip and apart from feeling knackered, quite happy.

15 04 2020

New painting shaping up - might even leave it incomplete, it is so pleasing. If I can get more canvases, that is... got 4 little ones and then that's it.
Client making more changes. Shes the boss.  I am accommodating, though due to lack of canvases have to overpaint, which takes drying time. La La.
Stuff for Philip gone down well. Next stop is photo and biog for the mag. And more coffee, natch.

13 04 2020

woke early with the challenge of a new picture ringing in my body. Stopped to pick up email (nothing from client; are we done?) There was instead a letter from a friend wanting drawing or images of some sort for a physics and philosophy journal. Have I got any lying around? Well of course... so passed the morning going through folders - I've so many - and took the opportunity to look at the big drawings currently stored in no.11. Found some images there that would perhaps do. Wrapped up and labeled some others. And binned a ton! V pleased with myself.
Philip happy with direction, wants some of them (and I haven't asked but I'II put money on there being no dosh in this) and  I have promised to go to store and look through some paintings tomorrow. He can do big colour. And I started the new painting this afternoon and though its quite uuum interesting so far, it isn't what I meant. Going to take a while to get into shape.

11 04 2020

entering 4th week of lockdown and baffled to note that my output has plummeted. How has this happened? I suppose my mind is filled with the paintings-for-client and now each step must be approved, which slows it all down.
However, I could be working on my own stuff. I'm not so focused on the other stuff, after all - shes doing the thinking, I just respond.
Spending a lot more time on social media, so called. Hey ho, why not. Miss my mates.

09 04 2020

Got three roughs off to client, only one to go. Started staring at fresh canvas where my ideas will tumble crazily unless I get some notions structured soon. A lot of thinking gets done in conversation, I reckon. Internal dialogue too whimsical, even for me.

07 04 2020

Cleaned studio. Started work on Oswald funeral portrait. Every animal that has lived with us gets a funeral portrait as part of my grieving and the dining room, where they hang, is filling up...
Finger not as bad, swelling gone, not right though. Intermittent pain and grip difficult. Good excuse for being lazy in these days.

05 04 2020

Swelling on finger much lesser, still not pliable. About to do a slow and careful clean in the studio - left handed - sweet note from client which clarifies some stuff. Will address when hand usable, studio clean and a new piece established.
Missing family. At this time it was planned that I should be in England for my sisters 50th with all the family. Feel most cheated.

04042020

Out of action! Something has happened to my middle finger which cant bend without pain that bashes about the hand. Remembered the tubes that paintsticks come in and though they were in the recycling bag they were still there, perfect size and immediate easement of pain. Painsticks haha.
Client has queries and wants changes to my roughs that I don't understand. All on hold.

03 04 2020

Got these prelims and some other roughs off to client yesterday - she is ill and busy but will deal with it tomorrow afternoon. 

Managed with Bobs help to correct and mail the GSB paper - all done now (until the next catastrophe -) and now my life is my own, albeit briefly. Sunshine outside.  Will take some walk now prior to cooking lunch and then cleaning pallet. 

01042020

spent the morning beating this into a starter-shape, it might yet come together... in the meantime the mother is waiting and the child is dying, it is a nightmare.
The paper that successfully and expensively got off on time now needs some changes that I cant effect. Am lying low and hoping they'll forget I exist.
Life was much more relaxed before the oasis of lockdown