HAPPY HALLOWEEN

el mike del tren

i'm exhausted. did some painting last night. i've gone back to painting birds. i need to get a printer. i haven't used one in a long time so i didn't bother getting one. but i really could do with one so that i can print off my research etc. i might dust of my battered suitcase and fill it full of painting supplies and have a bit of a move about.

ultimate chips

tommy and little lemon on a trip

me and swish on the train

this lady in the white shirt stared at me, directly for 40 minutes ish. it was quite a grim stare really. obviously i have to blank it out with this rectangle, but it was awkward.

these leaves looked very nice

haven't done any painting for a few days. i don't feel much like it really.

Our new project

today we properly started our new project. we wanted to get it done quite quickly, but it takes ages for pap mash mash to dry. from the photos it looks like old red hair did all the work. i can assure you that this is not the case.

chicken wire frame

swish mixing wall paper paste. apparently you add the water to it. *cough*

about two seconds before my arm got paper mached

wrapping up t'frame

trying to get them into the only bit of direct sunlight left

about two seconds before someone got a little bit sprayed with the hose.

mustard chicken with rice people

it's like crossing the road when the man goes red. don't try and cross the bowl when the man goes rice. wow.

made a huge breakthrough

made 2 simultaneous breakthroughs on 2 of the paintings. finished at about 3am. no where near finished... but it is now making big progress.

i found this old polaroid

tchch ctchh tchch

i had a bath earlier which was literally like an 80's music video. i painted my ass off, made a breakthrough, then un-broke through, made another breakthrough then got tired. had some weird but delicious Cajun / fajita hybrid. the cooking smell took the back out of my throat though.

i was going to put my top 10 current albums on here, but then i thought about how people might then listen to those bands subsequently and then i thought about how they haven't earned the joy of listening to that music. so there we go. no top 10. a few bad apples have spoilt it for everyone else. i'm pretty tired. hence the drivel.

i lost £300,000 at poker to my dad earlier. that was a bit of a set back. especially with the old recession.

framing, inspiration and oh i dunno... food?

I framed up the two sewn drawings i did. they look pretty nice in real life.

i bought myself a copy of a field guide to birds, 1983 edition for obvious reasons. i love this book and i wanted a hard back copy with character. character is important in an inspirational book.

I added the 3 smaller ones to the picasso prints in my room, so that when i am here i can look at them and get the inspiration to paint. I have moved them around since this photo was taken. I've now got the The Two Saltimbanques on the corner and i lay in bed looking at it this morning thinking how amazing it is.

i ate this earlier. it was delicious

Waking up.

I had a dream last night where I was back at school and they marked me on my general language skills, they only gave me 5/10 for sarcasm, which I think is a bit weird really.

The Uterus of Painting Theory

Introduction:

Welcome to the seminar on the uterus of painting. this lecture will hopefully make it more possible for people to understand the simple yet complex mood pattern that i undergo when i am painting in the spiritual sense.

The Uterus of Painting refers to what players of sport call being "in the zone", musicians call it "being in the groove" and the uninterested call it "a weird spell". However it is that point where you are in a fertile creative state, from which your best and most soul satisfying work comes from.

However, as this seminar intends to show, getting into this place is fraught with difficulty and there are many aspects which lead to false prophets.

The seminar will be lead by utilising a diagram (figure A) that will help visualise the creative states.

THE UTERUS OF PAINTING THEORY

The White area : Not Painting

-while this seems an irrelevant state, it's place must be observed in order to gain a basis. It gives a stable to the idea. And while preparation work for drawings/paintings can both fall into this area, i think it wise to consider that drawing as a final solution would not be incorporated into this seminar, for this is dealing with being a painter, ergo the final product would be a painting. So that established, the Not painting period / state can include planning, thoughts, generating experiences via music, love, nature or where-ever your inspiration lies, but you are essentially not in the studio at this point.

The Brown area: The Tea Stretch

- This is the point in which you have entered the area in which you paint (Studio, garage, bed etc) and i normally have a cup of tea to start off. this state can be used (with it's heightened awareness) to provide some generic, over the counter creative output. it is the build up to the next stage...

The Soft Fertile pink area: THE UTERUS OF PAINTING

At this juncture, the studio is lit and the music and sound should be that of a high calibre, whatever that entails for the individual. But conditions have to be right. This is a STATE OF MIND AND SOUL in harmony. music is the flux. this is when true creativity appears, the cold adrenaline and shaking hands of beauty being created. no fear of failure exists in this space, and fear is an irrelevance in creating beauty. the finished painting you might be aiming for, is of no consequence as a product, but only that of the journey on which you progress.

Red Area : Furious Tantrum

NB: you can skip straight from the tea stretch directly to here

this is point that you spit on paintings, begin to chain smoke and break your favorite brushes in fit of rage at the sheer power that you are numb to. you can't see anything. the colours are irrelvant, fake and at this point beauty is in a vaccum.

Pink Area: Malaise.

NB: you can skip straight from the tea stretch directly to here

The most negative and destructive point where you sit and 'do a bit of painting'. the brush doesn't matter, the colour isn't really important. you will use any old paint just trying to finish something. anything. then you sweep into the cycle of loathing that removes the subject from malaise to a place that is not in this diagram.

Conclusion:

Albeit a brief outline of this phenomena, i personally think it's the most concise theory on my creative states that i've ever read.

you can hear happiness staggering on down the street

I had an amazing session painting. it was electric. i chucked the stuff that wasn't working under a sheet for 3 months of cooling off and resumed my 3 paintings that i've been waiting to get to work on. it reminded me of why i want to paint. i can't describe the feeling because i'm not a writer and it's beyond my ability with words. hopefully it will come through in the painting. but if it doesn't it doesn't matter so much, because it felt unbelievable.

Train in vain

here are some photos from the train journey, combined with my usual hilarious commentary.

these were the clouds after i left bristol

this is when i thought i saw natural vermillion. i did not however.

pidgy

about two seconds before this happened, a train guy smugly told us we'd just missed our previous train. he was literally foaming at the mouth he was so happy.

now taking photos of old sleeping women might seem a bit invasive, but this is a documentation of the journey and this old broad snored like fuck for about 70 miles.

conflict is everywhere

i don't really like writing on here anymore. it feels like an almighty drivel fest. i feel really frustrated with my inability to connect with colour. i don't see it at the moment. i've been looking at picasso lots again and it's incredibly frustrating that i can't paint in a way that makes me feel as happy as his painting does. it doesn't even make me feel satisfied. it'll be better once i do some serious work and concentrated work on things. i want to make external work to my bird paintings. but i don't feel connected to my unfocused work because it feels lacking direction. which is blindingly obvious. so stop relaxing and get worked up about it. but stay calm.

right. all the figurative stuff is going back under the dust sheet for another 3 months and i'll try and do colour and music again until it makes a bit more sense, and then we'll go back to figurative.

listen young man, you shall have to go and sit at the bottom of the garden.

if you think the current rise in fascism in the UK "isn't really anything to do with you" then have a little think about Entartete Kunst (assuming that is the correct spelling). and if you don't know what it is, then look it up. it will impact on all of us. this is of course assuming that you drifted onto this blog because you have a passing interest in painting or whatever the hell is going on here

not to mention that i will make more of these shitty posts.

the kind of trip that doesn't conclude with you waking up cuddling a tramp imagining he's a warm kitten and you are a saucer of milk

This is the nicest holiday i've ever been on. these are the photos that i took from it. bearing in mind that it is impossible to take photos on an iphone of flying herons from the window of a train that is moving at 600 miles an hour.

out the train window

this woman was either glaring at me or invading her nose with a finger. lucky old finger.

this is when she was trying to stare a bird to death

this is my failure to take photos of birds at temple meads

this is where good lunches go when they die

paddling in the sea

this is when the wave went back out

the old pier that was destroyed by the germans in 1986

this man was either really tall or a liar

the new pier that was destroyed by the real life equivalent of the german from die hard

this mouse was driving around in a car

i was trying to get a photo of an awesome seagull and then a man and his wife chased it away then saw i was trying to take a photo and the man told his wife off. it was very brief. not at the saga that i'm making it into.

looking in between these slates was weird and vertigo inducing

this was the conclusion of a novelty confectionary binge that started doughnuts, passed through candy floss territory and ended up with ice cream

this is best fry up i've had since the night after rusty's 21st (?) birthday when we went to get a huge fry up and try to come to terms with lacking more brain cells and zoned out over cheap coffee and tried to get rob to stop using bad language in front of families on holiday.

monday night sushi fest

this was the designated border equivalent of germany / poland in 1939

wasabi mayonnaise like the eyes i draw

this warm doughnut came off a machine that looked like it had been invented by a maniac.

we choked 3 pounds into this swine and then we played on time crisis with the actual guns. it was awesome.

happy 4th birthday journal

Well my blog is over 4 years old. this is a drawing of me and jessy having sushi. i'm not doing a big update. just this little one.

yawneo

i wrote a big long post to accompany this, about why i don't appreciate manipulative charity work. but then i thought it made me sound like more of a dick and put this instead.