I’ve sketched out “Prophecies of War”, the next painting in the book — “And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far, ancestral voices prophesying war!” After this, two to go plus the cover! The end is near! I’ve been doing test readings to Nefarious and I think it’ll hold a child’s attention. To make the book easier to read, every page of text is going to contain the previous and next lines of the poem, allowing the reader more control over the spacing of the images. That is, for this page, the accompanying text page would be something like this — of course this is not the image it goes with; I just wanted a context for the layout:
Anyway, back to sketching this thing out, but here’s that real page, in outline of course. The last two pages are the interior of the pleasure dome, and then the final “milk of paradise” image. Conceptually I see the pleasure dome being full of poppies and other psychoactive plants — thus the imagery of the poem — and I found a great page on Wikipedia that’s acting as a resource for these paintings: Psychedelic plants.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
It was hard to get a photo of how the work is going on this painting because, well, it’s night time and this apartment does not have good lighting. We’re considering moving — a nice 3,000 square foot art studio with a garage door just opened up that we’re thinking seriously about taking. It would be an amazing space for us all (it’s got three apartments and about 20 foot ceilings) — with Caitlin’s welding skills we could build hot rods! Woo woo!
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
I finally got a prescription refill, so I don’t feel as brutally drained — just barely getting through the day — as I have the past couple evenings. A very nice improvement! I’m still slowly but surely chugging along on Kubla Khan. Three more paintings after the ones I have on the go, and I can start moving on to doing the final touches and glazes, and then I have my first kid’s book ready to be published…
‘The River Maze’ is progressing nicely:
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran
And I’ve started on ‘The Mystic’ as well:
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
I’ve found the conversations I’ve posted at Blog of Pain have been quite helpful. When you experience something in a vacuum, it’s subjectively quite extreme, but when you talk to others about their own experiences, it puts your own life into a context where you can see things a little more objectively. New interview posted at bodmodsex as well.
Waiting anxiously until 11pm when Caitlin gets back…
Recently I got one of my “Bearded and Cross-Bones Zentastic Logo” shirts in the mail and I’m really happy with how it turned out… if you want a Zentastic shirt, I recommend this one. Unfortunately I got paint on mine in the first wearing, which sucks. Most of my clothes have paint on them.
If I moved more shirts, I’d dedicate the funds to the “Free Andy” (mentioned a few entries back) legal fund to stop the prosecution of body artists (or at least one body artist) in Ontario. I know I’m just an occasional reader these days, but I know that as that I’d rather see Andy defended in court by BME (a legal fund was a project I always wanted to do) than see staff flown to various events around the world… It’s sad too, because if I look at how much the legal battles over BME cost, a very small percentage of that money is all it would take to defend Andy (and perhaps set a valuable precedent). But sometimes totally inappropriate priorities are forced on you.
Caitlin is out of town this weekend, so Nefarious and I went up to the mall and had a late lunch there and went to the pet store… I’m considering letting her get a rat, rabbit, hamster, or similar such animal, and I think she’s mature enough to properly care for it (and she definitely misses her dogs a lot and mentions them often). We popped into the photo booth as we were leaving. She’s a lot more photogenic than me!
Other than that, the num-lock key on my keyboard has locked into place so I can’t turn it off and it’s driving me bonkers! This computer is slowly but surely failing, but I’m a cheapskate and don’t really do anything that needs a more powerful computer, so I’m really loathed to upgrade.
