When I found these two art works recently, whilst putting yet more stuff into our attic, I brought them down, to have a fresh look at ‘em. And I’m pleased with how they look.
The pencil drawing was my first look at reproducing Dirck van Baburen’s The Procuress. I actually chose to leave the Procuress herself out of the picture, which also changed the overall format of the piece (from off square to a portrait type rectangle). Instead we have just the young dandy and his lute-plucking lady.
A terrific book! And the source of this project.
I found van Baburen’s The Procuress in this rather lovely book. It’s an old’un, but a good’un! My mum had a copy back when’s he did her degree. I think I’ve posted about this book here before? But I’ve not found that post, so can’t link to it yet!
16-18th, April, 2014.
Here they are individually, for a bit of a closer look. The pencil drawing is finished. But the oil stalled before completion. So I need to finish that off.
These two pieces are both for sale, should anyone want either. The pencil drawing for £89, and the oil painting for £239. That’s unframed. I can frame them as well, if required. Or a buyer could do it themselves.
Woman Holding Scales, Vermeer, 1664.
I’m planning to do more in this line, as I enjoy it, and it teaches me a lot. I have a few favourite paintings I’ve long wanted to reproduce, such as Vermeer’s Woman Holding Balance, and Caravaggio’s very theatrical St Paul.
Caravaggio’s dramatic vision of St Paul.Together again. Indoors this time.
The first three pics of my efforts, further up this post, were taken outside in the sunshine. These last were shot indoors. But all the pics in this (and almost all my blog posts) are taken on my iPhone. So, hardly pro/ideal! But hopefully they get the idea across?
Phew! What a bonkers day. I had another meltdown today. Outright panick is starting to kick in, occasionally. Not good!
A brief break from home and ‘my shit’ seems a basic medical necessity to me, right now. But our one night away, that we’ve been looking for’ard to for a while (to join in the celebrations of Teresa’s cousin’s wedding), Monday/Tuesday next week, has – like all our other forlorn attempts at holidays in the last four-plus years – fallen through. This time due to not having a road legal car available.
Quite aside from the crap that’s at the root of recent depressions, meltdowns and whatnot, the trip away issues are enough right now to send me über the edge. But sadly communications with my mum have been less than ideal for some time. And, on occasion recently, have gotten worse.
Ouch! Two very sore toes…
This last development, in a series of straws that have been conspiring to break this camel’s back, really knocked the stuffing out of me. And today that, and the failure to find a way to get to this wedding – plus everything else, frankly – just got to be too much.
So I had a bit of meltdown! Shouting, or rather screaming, as loud as I could, and hurling stuff around. Oh dear! In fact I’ve injured my right foot. Something I only realised much later, when having a bath: ‘Oh, right… that’s why my right foot has been feeling a bit odd all day!?’ I must’ve kicked something quite hard!
Perhaps my recent minor dalliance with Tears For Fears, via Scary Pockets sublime reworking of Everybody Wants A Gladstone Bag, has a deeper meaning for me? They were big into Papa Panov, or whatever his name was (Janov?), the Primal Scream dude. Hence Shout:
Well, having vented a bit, and despite all the shizzle not going away, Teresa and I got a fair amount done. We were originally due to be at Hannah’s today. Whilst we’ve loved and will miss looking after Ali and Sofi – Hannah starts a new job soon, with different hours – being at home this time was actually good from several perspectives, including the vantage point of just getting stuff done.
Utterly against my wishes, we’re preparing to let our spare room. Because needs must. It has functioned mostly as a dumping ground in recent years. Occasionally I’ve done some model-making type hobby stuff in there. But now we’re clearing it out, tarting it up. And, hopefully (!?)* we’ll be generating income with it soon.
* The irony here being that I really don’t to be sharing our home with strangers. But as already stated, needs must.
In order to blitz the guest or blue room clean – numerous previous attempts had failed! – I had to basically do a mega-dump (chortle!), out of it, and into any space nearby. Which meant dumping tons of stuff on the bed, in our bedroom. The blue room is still full of stuff that needs removing before we can think of letting it.
We put up some art, and a mirror.
Anyway, we got a lot of stuff out of the blue room, and a good deal of that either up in’t loft, or elsewhere. A fairly large chunk of art related gubbins is migrating towards the ‘new’ art-studio.
This latter is in fact the old shed/workshop. And it’s humongously cluttered, and in flux, as stuff is moved out, in turn, to the newer bigger workshop.
Teresa n’ Chester enjoy quality time, dans le jardin.
Since the ‘year of Covid’, now just over three years ago – lockdown kicked in, March 23, 2020 – Teresa and I have not had much in the way of holiday.
The only real break we’ve had – and by break or holiday I’m talking specifically about time away from home – was a short family trip (four or five nights?) to Wales, in October, 2022. The only reason that one actually happened, as opposed to all our cancelled plans, was that Simon and Claire paid for it. We just had to get there.
Every single break – mostly just one or two nights away – that we’ve attempted to take (and there have been precious few, four or five attempts, perhaps?) has had to be cancelled. Except for one or two occasions – like now – when lack of transportation added to our problems, this has been solely due to lack of funds.
The latest in this small but frustrating string of disappointments is a night away this Monday coming, for Teresa’s cousins’ wedding. On this occasion the chief reason is no wheels (my car is in for repairs; and we’re getting it back later than anticipated).
To add insult to injury, we usually lose a bit of money when cancelling our AirB&B reservations. Plus we have to beg the host not to blacklist us as bad AirB&B folk!
We can’t afford car hire or public transport. I’ve asked family and friends (the latter via Facebook) if anyone has a vehicle we could borrow. No dice.
I think I might’ve posted this video before. Regardless, I’d be happy to post it many more times. How many more times? As Led Zep once asked! Who knows?
Anyone reading my recent posts will know I’ve been having a tough time. Amidst such travails, a blissful musical epiphany is a welcome and unexpected thing. But, whatever (or why-ever, or ‘wherefore’ as Shakey’s Romeo puts it), it happened!
I’ve had a few over the years. And what I’m calling an epiphany some might call some form of meltdown, perhaps? I had a very memorable one dancing around a pal’s living room to Santana and McLaughlin’s Life Divine, way back, in my mid to late teens.
This one came over me whilst drumming to Scary Pockets’ amazing re-envisioning of Tears For Fears greatest track, Everybody Wants To Rule The World. It was partly a spliff, taking my consciousness out of its usual ruts. But it was more the act of drumming, and freely and passionately, that really popped the lid off.
Just as with my pogoing-round-the-lounge to Devadip and Mahavishnu, it was very largely purely eargasmic; a response to music that mainlines to my pysche. But it’s also partly loosening the shackles on some part or parts of myself.
And on both of these occasions I wept like a gale! What I feel this tells me is that I have a lot of feeling(s) within me, that need to find proper outlets. This kind of moment reconnects me with that feeling of freedom and transcendence that great art can sometimes provide.
And with music, as a collective thing, there is sometimes that blissful synergy that can make one feel so connected to others, spiritually. Which, in a world so relentlessly materialist it frequently grinds one’s soul to ashes and dust, is refreshing.
I’m having a mental health crisis. not because I’m some kind of lame ass wuss who cannae tek’ the pressure. But because nobody can take pressure past a certain point.
I’m well past that point. And I’m looking for help. Naturally I’m trying via my GP. But it’s a month – to the frickin’ day – since I hit a meltdown crisis point. And despite trying a whole alphabet soup of organisations, I’m not getting any help.
A whole FUCKING MONTH!!! And nothing has been done. Despite repeated calls to my GP, NHS 111 (option 2*), and a host of other organisations.
* As I type this I’ve passed twenty minutes in a queue. What does this daily experience teach me? That I am utterly worthless in the eyes of society. And why am I utterly worthless – along with all the other schmucks subjected to this living hell – because I’ve already been taxed to oblivion, and overcharged beyond credulity, and there’s nothing left for the vultures.
I’m beyond despair. Entering into the territory of rage.
I finally passed the 40 minutes mark, and hung up. I’m growing ever more certain that people will have topped themselves in that queue! It’s beyond fucking unbelievable.
So, not only do I have some weird conflict between WordPress and Jetpack, that’s stopping me from posting here as I normally would. I also have issues with apps on my iPhone.
What happened was that I wanted several apps that were in folders just out on ‘the desktop’, so to speak. I used the ‘remove folder‘ function. This appeared to suggest that the folder would go but the apps would stay.
Uh-uh. Both folder and apps (or at least app icons) disappeared. So I re-downloaded one of these apps, an FTP thing. But although it shows here:
… it doesn’t show on any of the several screens worth of what I’m calling my ‘desktop’:
If anybody should chance upon this post who knows what’s gannin’ on, leek, could they enlighten me… pretty please!?
I posted about this dude and his passion for Picasso quite a while ago (read that here if interested). And I find myself wanting to post about this pairing again.
Here they are together.
As per my previous post, I have three of the four ‘whoppers’ i Fabre published. And I really want to get hold of any more there might be. I’m aware of just one more, as things stand. Which, alas, seems both rarer, and consequently more expensive.
This is one version of the book I don’t yet have.
I’ve learned, thanks to my search for the cheapest way to buy this book, that it can be bought brand new, for €150! From Poligrafa, the Spanish publishers responsible for all these fabulous books. And in English (or Catalan!), as well as Spanish.
Here’s another edition.
Second-hand editions of this title are all more expensive. But sadly anything at all, let alone say £20-30 (roughly what I paid for the third volume in this series), is way too expensive for me right now.
I exchanged some emails with a chap called Carlos at Poligrafa today, thereby learning of the newer/cheaper buying option. But thanks to me not speaking Spanish, or quite following all his English, I’m none the wiser as to whether any more posthumous (to i Fabre’s passing, that is) volumes are in the pipeline.
Looking exceedingly cool!Nice wheels, Josep! What a dude.
Exciting news! I’ve located a decent looking copy of the 27-39 Minotaur to Guernica book, in the UK. It’s expensive, but affordable. Just. I might see if I can buy it today… (Feb, 17th, 2015)
Today I’m mostly confined to bed. By my own decree. Teresa’s at work. And I am on Easter break. Although it may be a bigger hiatus? That’s partly why I’m in bed!
I woke when Teresa got up, at 5.30am (mad!). But most of the time between about 9am and 3pm I’ve been in a 50/50 mix of resting/dozing, and outright sleeping. Snooker, with Kieran Wilson thrashing Ali Carter, on the Tour Championship, is helping on all fronts with rest and sleep!
An ornery mule, with an artist’s soul.
But around 2pm, after a second long chat with the alphabet soup brigade (the bouillabaisse of acronyms for mental-health organisations), I felt I needed an injection of culture and inspiration. So I hoyked a few art books off the shelves.
Angst meets beauty, in mixed media on canvas.
Having resumed a long derelict interest in making art, I thought I’d also resume the act of feeding on the soul food that art can be. Hence getting these tomes offa the shelves. Turner and The Sea, Guston, and de Kooning. Endless hours of fun and nourishment!
Not so eyebrow, n’est ce pas!?
And to keep my furrowed brows at the correct elevation, something a bit ‘Felix’ lighter!
No-brow? Love the Tintin style cover!
And of course, Viz. Thanks to the Viz Team I nearly died laughing last night.
Having got the ‘art’ bug again, as well pursuing Abbie and Dan’s commission, I’m trying to pick up where I left off. Here I’m attempting to resume my Manolo series.
The left sketch is his face, melting ever further into abstraction. At right it’s the backdrop again. The cloudscape. This time the yellow is overstated. And some former parts of Manolo are introduced, via masking off the background.
Manolo, Spread#4, right, 2nd state.
One thing that bugs me about my methods, is how, in trying to superimpose layers, things often get too busy, and something breaks down. The above would be a case in point. Trying to combine the figural abstraction and the background, somehow neither seems right.
Manolo Spread #5, the ‘Silent Era’.
This frustration prompted me to further ‘worrit’ these ideas. But now in black and white only. It’s another way of trying to reduce and knock back the noise! Of the two I think the pastel effort, at left (and below) is the better.
There’s mileage in this’un. Less sure about this one.
Running the same ideas through all these iterations allows me to explore different ideas via varied mediums.
Ultimately I’ll probably explore these ideas further – or not, if I abandon a vein, thinking it a poor prospect – in one of two ways: black and white prints, or full colour paintings.
Esp’ with the latter, whether it’s going to be acrylics or oils, the opacity of the medium adds yet another different facet to the process. And I can of course do monochromatic paintings and colour prints.
