As this long-term project evolves, I’ve decided to change the format of this blog, to open up the process of “translation”, to try and record it as it happens.

One of the first steps of this process is a “colour scheme” for a sonnet, the very first attempt to re-think and re-feel the sonnet in terms of colour. I used to make them as oil sketches; beginning with Sonnet 40, I am trying something new: digital colour schemes (these two have been done in ArtRage for iPad).

Here is the sonnet itself, a cry of pain for betrayed love:

Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all;
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;
All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more.
Then, if for my love, thou my love receivest,
I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest;
But yet be blam’d, if thou thy self deceivest
By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.
I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,
Although thou steal thee all my poverty:
And yet, love knows it is a greater grief
To bear love’s wrong, than hate’s known injury.
Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,
Kill me with spites yet we must not be foes.

Below is the second colour scheme. At this point, I still have a very foggy view of the future painting, but the first step towards it is made.