Art Photography Stands Complete, Ugly Ducklings Become Swans

I built a flatbed guide to align the towers yesterday, and set a 3mm piece of MDF in the centre to accommodate the uneven wood bottom, to make the L-plates the main support.

The towers were laid along the line and the L-plates glued to their sides in exactly the right place. Once the glue had set, after 10-mins, these were drilled and screwed firmly. Today, testing. The existing rivnuts on the bases generally fit, some better than others, but enough that I didn't have to make adjustments, all good. The towers are now very accurate in height and verticality. For towers 1175mm tall, they're so close that any tiny movements due to stepping nearby or touching them is bigger than the difference between them. Without a new room with a flat concrete floor, this is as good as I can get.

Then, setting up and testing the camera alignment. Cheeseplates were again fitted, first using one loose screw as a pivot, the camera set between them on the steel rods. The screw was gradually tightened as the alignment got better, then the tilt checked with a spirit level, and the screw moved to tilt the plate just fractionally. Eventually things were set correctly. The final calibration was on the main camera shoe, the step I'd neglected yesterday. After this, all was set. The cheeseplates were fixed down with hot-melt glue, and when it was set, screwed to lock them in the exact place. A final test of the resolution and alignment:

This gives a resolution of 331.845dpi, to the 1.25mm thick ruler. The resolution will be higher for thicker objects (paintings on 3mm or 6mm board, or 10 to 20mm deep for canvas). This is good. Not too high, as the image files would be too large. I'd aimed for 300dpi plus 10%.

The project has cost me £94.12 in new buys, £146.74 if I include the Smallrig parts (some I had previously bought), and more still if I include the many rivnuts and the few bolts needed. This is double what I'd anticipated, and it's taken 4.5 days, longer than hoped, but this should speed up and simplify my art photography, particularly for larger works. One reason I'd avoided painting larger is that it was hellishly difficult and stressful to photograph them. I'm amazed that the old flimsy tripods ever managed to take an accurate multi-part photo of my paintings. Perhaps they rarely did, it's just that such inaccuracy is tolerable for most people.

So, this improved rig is a necessary step forwards for my art. One of my tenets is that any short-term effort to improve things by 1% is worth it. Spending £100 or £500 to improve your art by 1% is worth it. Over time those 1% values will add up, pushing you beyond those artists who didn't invest in those 1% improvements. The tortoise betters the hare, ugly ducklings become swans drip by tiny drip.

Stands v2 and v3

A lot of engineering is doing things in the right order, but sometimes you don't know the right order until it's too late. Yesterday I took off the cheeseplates with the aim of resetting them in the correct place. A first levelling test this morning revealed than one tower was leaning 14mm to its right, this explains the 14mm skew I experienced when first testing.

I decided to ignore this, and simply shift it 14mm left when using it. The flatness and angle of the top will be set later, so the lean should not matter beyond this. I set it up, but the skew remained. Either the orientation was flat with a sideways drift as I slid forwards, or the orientation was at an angle with no drift. The drift was small, about 30mm, but annoying, there should be none! I fixed it in place, knowing that it's not a serious problem, though a painting that might just fit may slide out of the correct view.

Then I thought it might be the camera, not my stands, and sure enough the so-called 90-degree steel L-plate on the camera was not at 90-degrees. There are adjustment screws on the base and one was loose; the camera was twisted anti-clockwise, which explained everything. If I'd realised this before attaching the cheeseplates I could have fixed it and would have left things.

But the 14mm lean AND this skew problem were too annoying to ignore, and I knew I'd end up starting again from scratch as I've done with countless projects, countless paintings. If it's not right, I must fix or start again. I'm not a perfectionist but I have a low tolerance for imperfections. So, I began to effectively make stand v3.

This afternoon I scraped off the hot-melt glue from the cheeseplates and removed the L-plates from the towers. These were really strongly welded on by the superglue, unexpectedly so. The L-plates are caked in glue and wood fragments, I'd have to dunk them in a lot of paint remover to clean them. At £6 each, it's easier to buy more, so I'll do that. The towers are scarred but it's superficial not structural. I'll invert the towers, use the top as the bottom to restart the setting process.

One step is to make a guide, from 18mm MDF, with a 1M guide line and 90-degree flat base in the right place, to place and set the towers exactly vertically. This is now complete.

This two-day job will take a week, but this is part of an iterative design process. Build, expect errors and lessons, rebuild, etc.

Photography Stands Part 2

A busy couple of days working on the photography stands. My solution to fixing the cheeseplates to the towers was to use hot melt glue. This was a tad nightmarish, as hot melt glue tends to set instantly when touching the cold metal, but after 2 attempts on Tower A, and 3 on Tower B, scraping off in between, the two were fitted closely enough, certainly under 1mm height difference. Once initially stuck, I filled the little oval lakes with glue, then screwed them flat.

After that, fixing the L-brackets to the footplates, which was a matter of lining up the towers, which stood well by themselves. Everything was accurate, so I glued the L-plates to the sides with superglue first, and 10-mins later laid them down, drilled and screwed, so these were exactly in the correct place.

Here's the tower top, with 15mm tube holders.

I didn't consider at first that the footplates will need to be removable. There's no way I could store these huge things when assembled, and they're rarely needed, so a next step was drilling the footplates (by hand) and fitting M4 rivnuts so that I can bolt and un-bolt the towers to the bases. After drilling 4 per side, only about 2 each side were accurate enough - these have be be very accurate, much more than 1mm. 2 out of 4 is fine, but in retrospect I could have done this better. I managed to fix one fairly easily, by removing it, drilling the hole bigger, inserting the rivnut edged with thick superglue, then assembling the top. The glue takes a few mins to set, allowing me to bolt it together and allow it to set in the exact correct place.

Today, testing. It's already a lot easier than the tripods, but they are not quite perfectly lined up, which in retrospect should have been expected. Lining these up to be straight over the lengths of a metre-or-so would be nigh on impossible by hand. The solution is to permit calibration. This pair are always used in tandem. It seems that a twist of 14mm on the 600mm width will set them just about right (to about -/+1mm on the 840mm length). It doesn't actually matter that much anyway, the skew would mean a similar skew on the photographed paintings, but still, it would be nice to get things as good as I can manage.

My plan is to fit another accurately glued rivnut, M6 this time, on the front right edge of the footplate. This will fit a rounded-headed bolt to be screwed in or out to calibrate perfectly. Once done, it will probably never need touching.

Art Photography Stands Begin

Bought some wood today to make new stands for the rails for my art photography. I have a conundrum. I had 6 lengths cut, 95mm wide by 1147mm long, from 18mm deep MDF. These 6 pieces had to be cut from two pieces of MDF, so the 1147 length was about 1mm out for two of the lengths (numbers 2 and 5 in the picture; I chose these as the central plank). Each width isn't perfect but this is less important. The length needs to be as accurate as possible. I've glued them together to make 2 bunches of 3. Here is the end:

This, ideally, should be completely flat. I need to work out the best way to do this. If I had a band saw or table circular saw (or table anything) this would be easy, or much easier, but I haven't. I could use a router, but 72x95mm is a big edge, I have no router bits 72 or 95mm long (the depth in the view above is 95mm). I wondered about fitting a cutting drill to the router. I could sand it flat, but would ideally need a right-angle sanding table. My drum sander is best at removing wood but is hand-held, like all of my sanders. Alternatively, I could saw it by hand somehow. The jigsaw should be deep enough. A hand cut would probably be more accurate than the current edge, but not perfect, and it might be less accurate. The 1mm tolerance there now might be enough.

Alternatively I could cut it shorter and glue a flat piece accurately on top, using a gap filling plaster-type glue. I'd need to experiment again with glues. I've had some good results from wood glue and chalk to make a thick glue; but I'd have to do this separately for each of the two stands (the two groups of three) so that itself might make the results less accurate than they are now; it's most important that they are the same, the exact height isn't so important.

Stockport, Hedge and More, Hockney

Two busy days. Yesterday, a physically demanding day dropping off artwork to Stockport. I booked an Open Off-Peak Return train ticket for the 11:10 before realising that the gallery didn't open until 13:00, so we decided to take the 12:10; yet at 10:24 I thought that perhaps the taking the 11:10 was an essential ticket requirement and panicked that we wouldn't be allowed on the 12:10, so I dashed the mile to to railway station to at least collect the tickets before the trip. I had to pay £4 extra for real tickets rather than 'e-tickets' on the smartphone I don't have; another premium. I made it back for 11:10 after a near-run there and back, then had to rapidly eat, wash and pack before departing at 11:40 for the 12:10. We made it, and the trip went without a hitch.

After the drop-off we wandered around Stockport for a couple of hours. This became exhausting, I'd forgotten that the town was so mountainous. We explored a few shops in unexpected summer heat, then dashed for the 15:04 train (which, like the outgoing train, was late) and home, buying things to cook and eat on the way. After the meal, Deb re-potted some plants, and ultimately the hours flew.

Today started by a big job of an annual trim of the garden hedge, re-packaging new heavy-duty staples (which involved heat and solvent, they're so badly packaged), wrapping presents for my brother's birthday, repainting a porcelain statue which I'd accidentally broken. The glued parts have set well but there are two tiny fragments missing. Not yet any other work done.

I heard that David Hockey died. I guess that Francis Bacon, David Hockney, and Lucien Freud were three key artists of British mid-20th century art, in that order with Bacon the shining star. After that Gormley, Kapoor, and the YBA's but these are the next generation. I also discovered that our 11:10 train was over 45 minutes late anyway, so all the better to skip that.

Kafka Glazing Complete, Art Photography

Second day of Kafka glazing yesterday.

Today started with art photography of three new paintings: 'Song Of Innocence', 'Love And Fragility In The Age Of Perfection', and 'The Blood Of Winter'. Setting up lights and the camera track took over an hour, and photography, digital stitching and disassembly of the rig took until 13:00. Then framing 'Song Of Innocence' for the Stockport Open drop-off tomorrow. Thus the day has flown on these small but important tasks.

I modified the lights a bit today, repairing one light and naming each leg for each position, as some stick or don't work in some positions. The tripods are the most complex and awkward part of the photography set up, each has a swivel head and the pair need perfect parallel alignment at an exact height. There's no need for adjustment of the height, so a fixed wooden post would do the job far more easily, so my next job is to build this. While photographing today I experimented with height adjustments for 300dpi, and this can be improved. The resolution before was nearly 400dpi, making the photographs large to process, and requiring more segments than needed. I'll aim for 330dpi.

Glazing Kafka

First day of glazing the Kafka portrait.

John Deaconitis, All Things Bright And Beautiful Plans

Felt a little lost yesterday and over the weekend, darting from one thing to another in an unconstructive way. This was partly due to the circumstance of needing to visit Cotebrook on three consecutive days, that plus charging into developing 12 paintings at once, and aiming to write bits of my book - scattergun plans.

Last night I listened to my latest music purchase, Queen's The Miracle, an album which was (when it was released) our first CD purchase for our new and amazing CD player when I was 16 years old. Oddly, my memory of this event takes place in our old house in Culland Street, even though we left there in 1985 or so. Anyway, I've had Queen's albums up to The Game for years, but have recently decided to buy the rest as a reward for different milestones. I've bought the Deluxe Version, which comes in rubbishy cardboard packaging which went immediately into the bin; but the music is brilliant, especially the second CD. I didn't like the album much in the 1980s, but now I love it.

Last night I sang along, and have even jammed along on guitar, which is always great fun. At night though, I fell into a despair, and today too.

Today I think this is a new disease: John Deaconitis. I used to think that John, the so-called 'quiet member' of the band, somehow let the band down by leaving Brian and Roger to tirelessly (in every sense) perform and promote Queen since Freddie Mercury's death. Queen are uniquely a band with a fixed canon (we must discount the Queen and Paul Rodgers album); and Brian and Roger have promoted their legacy and performed their past works for longer, now, than the band itself was active.

John wrote 'I Want To Break Free', and I felt this was a not-so-hidden message. I suddenly felt that he was the most emotional member of the band, perhaps the most fragile. I thought of Anthony Phillips, the original guitarist from Genesis who couldn't cope with the pressure of being in a band and quit after one or two gigs. I, with Deaconitis, was hit again with the devastation of Freddie Mercury's death, and suddenly felt unable to continue in art. I thought of the desperate quest for financial security, which is an ever-present trap for art; nobody is secure, the engine of success is to charge forwards aflame. For an artist, art or death must be the only options, and only in death can an artist succeed.

In the morning I wrote a few more words to my oil painting book, then investigated plans for making some new stands for art photography, though these were distractions from my main plans of painting; these unwelcome distractions due to my searching brain. Then, at last, I felt cured and started to work on one of the new painting ideas. One way to limit being overwhelmed is to plan works in group of 4. Here's the original idea:

The painting is as much a mood as anything, perhaps a quest for love or recognition. I expanded this a little, using a dandelion as a visual theme. Now the figure in repose, perhaps like the woman in The Untouchable Strawberry, is a monolith and monument. I changed the title to 'All Things Bright And Beautiful'.

In my mind, it's a funerary monument, yet organic and beset with weeds, a monument to art. It's not so much personal as heroic and romantic. I'll complete the drawing transfer this evening. Tomorrow I aim to paint Kafka. Onwards we charge.