Families of Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan arrive at the port.

“SELF Portrait. Time is Ticking.” This is how Myuran Sukumaran inscribed his latest haunting death row painting.

The graphic image shows him on a black background, with a gaping hole in his chest, where the bullets which kill him will enter his body.

On the back, it is signed off, Myuran Sukumaran, Besi Prison, Nusakambangan and dated April 25.

His lawyer Julian McMahon yesterday brought the large oil painting, still wet, back from a three-hour visit at Besi Prison.

It joins another eight haunting images which the 34-year-old has painted in the past 10 days, many in the hours before and after he learned that he and Andrew Chan and seven others will be shot dead this week.

The portraits include one produced after he learnt the countdown to execution had officially begun. It is titled “Self portrait, 72 hours just started” and dated April 25.

Another indicates that he and Chan were aware before yesterday the end was near because other condemned prisoners on the execution list were moved to their prison. He calls it “Self portrait after our new arrivals, a bad sleep last night”.

And one painted on April 24 is titled “a strange day”.

The three paintings were displayed late yesterday at the port by the men’s Australian lawyer Julian McMahon.

The condemned Bali nine ringleaders, Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, were given formal notice to be prepared to face firing squads in as little as 72 hours.

Family members are now racing from Australia and across the world to spend precious final hours with their loved ones as all hopes of a reprieve for Chan, Sukumaran and the seven others condemned to death are lost.

The nine will be executed within days as Indonesian President Joko Widodo refuses to intervene or show mercy based on his hard-line belief that the deaths will carry meaning in his country’s war on drugs.

HOW BALI NINE LEADERS WILL BE KILLED

CHAN AND SUKUMARAN’S FAMILIES RETURN TO BALI

EXECUTION LETTERS SENT TO CHAN AND SUKUMARAN

Australian and other embassy officials were summoned to the prosecutor’s office in Cilacap yesterday, close to the prison island of Nusakambangan.

Afterwards, Indonesian prosecutors and embassy officials — including Australia’s Bali consul-general, Majell Hind, and lawyer Julian McMahon — went straight across to the prison island by ferry.

There, prosecutors gave each condemned prisoner the mandatory 72-hour notification that the countdown to their deaths had been activated, meaning they could be executed as soon as Tuesday midnight.

News of the pair’s imminent deaths has confirmed their grief-stricken families’ worst nightmares and devastated their supporters.

Justice Lex Lasry, who has visited the pair in Kerobokan prison, vented his anger on Twitter.

So they gave notice of the killings on Anzac Day just to rub dirt in our face #chansukumaran — Lex Lasry (@Lasry08) April 25, 2015

Tony Spontana, the spokesman for Attorney-General HM Prasetyo, told News Corp Australia: “We will give the notification today, but it doesn’t mean the execution will be within three days.

“It could be more than three days.”

Chan, 31, and Sukumaran, 34, are now mentally preparing themselves for a savage and terrifying end.

All nine condemned prisoners have been moved to pre-execution isolation cells in Nusakambangan’s Besi prison, which has been home to Chan and Sukumaran since they were transferred from Bali in March.

It is expected the nine will be simultaneously shot no later than the turn of midnight next Sunday, however, nothing would prevent the executions being carried out midweek, as Indonesia has done in the past.

Mr Spontana said families had already “been given the widest possible time to meet [the] convicts.”

President Widodo has turned his back on repeated and impassioned overtures from Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop to spare the condemned pair, as he has pleas from leaders in France, the Philippines, Nigeria and Brazil.

“I fear the worst,” said Foreign Minister Ms Bishop in Brussels. “I fear that Indonesia will seek to proceed with the execution of the two Australian citizens.” She again appealed to President Widodo, describing Indonesia as a dear and close friend to Australia.

Today, Ms Bishop told reporters Australia was doing all it could to save Chan and Sukumaran as their final hours approach.

Ms Bishop, who has jetted back to Australia after being overseas for Anzac services and other official events, said she was still in dialogue with her Indonesian counterpart.

The Foreign Minister said if Indonesia went ahead with the executions of the two men, its international standing would be diminished.

She said she didn’t want to speculate as to the repercussions if the two men were put to death by firing squad, but that Australia would seriously consider its response.

“I don’t want to speculate at this point ... my focus remains on doing everything I can to secure their lives,” Ms Bishop said.

She said the Australian government would continue to lobby Indonesia right up until the likely execution.

“I am profoundly dismayed that the 72-hours notice has been given,” Ms Bishop said.

She said she had written again to Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi.

“I have written again to Minister Marsudi and the Prime Minister has again written to the President of Indonesia,” Ms Bishop said.

“I do not believe it is too late for a change of heart — I ask no more of Indonesia than it has asked for other nations,” she said.

She said she “spoke to Mr Sukumaran’s mother Raji yesterday, and assured her the government would continue to seek clemency from Indonesian President Widodo for both men.”

“Legal challenges remain before the Constitutional Court and Judicial Commission, which raise fundamental questions about the integrity of their sentencing and the clemency process. These claims should be heard.”

The mass killing may be the largest execution event convened in Indonesia since the horrific anti-communist purges of the mid-1960s.

Members of the extended Sukumaran and Chan families were yesterday scrambling to southern Java, although Myuran’s mother, Raji, is already in Cilacap, as is Andrew’s girlfriend, Feby.

Chan and Sukumaran, arrested in 2005 for leading a heroin smuggling operation out of Bali involving seven other young Australians, will be shot almost exactly a decade after they were arrested on April 17, 2005.

Families of Sukumaran and Chan leave by boat The families of Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan will today make the first of a series of heartbreaking farewells to the young Australians.

The family of Brazilian schizophrenic Rodrigo Gularte, a cocaine runner, fears he is incapable of understanding what is about to happen to him.

Filipino woman Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso, a courier for a major ring who was convicted of smuggling heroin into Indonesia in 2010, was shifted from Jogjakarta to Nusakambangan on Thursday morning, in confirmation that her time was almost up.

As her father, mother and two young children visited Veloso on the island yesterday, her lawyer, Edre Olalia, yesterday insisted she still had a chance. “The 72 hours have not started to run,” he said.

Mr Olalia said he had lodged a second application for judicial review. “There are still existing legal remedies,” he said. The office of the Indonesian Attorney-General disagrees, saying her processes had ended.

Only one of those slated for death copped a break — convicted French ecstasy maker Serge Atlaoui, whose name was removed from the list at the eleventh hour because he apparently has one legal avenue remaining.

Mr Spontana earlier said families will only be able to visit during the first 48 hours. On the final day, said Mr Spontana, they “will be only with prison officers, physician and psychiatrist”.

Despite his statement, a nominated spiritual adviser can also be in personal attendance right up until each person meets his or her own 12-man firing squad.

Preparations are clearly underway for the executions, with a truck arriving at the port of Cilacap yesterday morning loaded with chairs and tents which were ferried the short distance across the strait to Nusakambangan.

The driver said he had been told to deliver the cargo to a field near the island’s police post, behind which the firing range is located.

Sadly for all nine, all diplomacy has failed and President Widodo will use the executions as a lesson to the world.

And none more so than Chan and Sukumaran, who got Indonesia’s special attention when they were transported from Bali in a humiliating military spectacle, accompanied by police officers posing for selfies with the desperately unfortunate men.