Wet Canvas Dreams: St. Valentine's Day Tip in 21 Steps

Forgot to get a Valentine card? Don't want to give money to card companies? Think the celebration of Valentine's day is stupid? And yet you don't want to fall out with your other half? Let Hannibal Lecter show you how to keep your self-respect whilst treating the special person in your life as, well, special.

Not far behind Picasso as an artistic influence for me, comes Jonathan Demme's presentation of the celebrated cannibal.

Here then, so influenced, is the St. Valentine's Day 21-step solution for an artist to love the artist's lover whilst living the artist's life:

Watch Silence of the Lambs

Study the scene where Lecter escapes

Note the distracting impact of hanging disembowelled victim with entrails as decoration

Become Hannibal Lecter, artistically speaking.

Inform your life's partner that Valentine's Day is dumb, that you don't believe in it, and that you will not be giving a card for it.

If still part of a couple, wait for your partner to go to bed

Cut out 250 hearts of different sizes. Cut them from newspapers, not from people

Make some of the Valentines liver-shaped, kidney-shaped and the shapes of some of your favorite organs. Blind love does not distinguish between painted paper organs

Think of blood and paint the hearts cadmium red. The newsprint will absorb the paint and they will fade to pink. Use cheap poster paints or acrylics. Paint the hearts roughly - they will appear very painterly.

Attach the painted valentines to strings vertically, with about ten hearts per string

Hang six strings of hearts from the ceiling just outside your better half's bedroom door. Put them in two rows of three

Hang nine strings of valentines in the main living area between the bedroom and the coffeepot. Hang them diagonally as if setting a laser beam alarm system. Optionally leave love gates for easy passage