A tiring day. The plan for the last two days was to paint a picture called The Lightning Of Creation but the smooth poplar wood panel was too absorbent and yesterday's sky looked ugly. I should have either primed it to ensure no absorbency or painted Dutch style with solvent rich media, where the paint behaves like watercolours in the early stages.
Today then I cleaned the panel off and used cellulose thinners to great effect, even the dry oil paint was removed and the original gesso priming. The board was sanded down to the wood and reprimed better than the panel when new. That took over three hours because of the different ways I tried to repair the damage.
I also did my usual editorial duties for Bytten, and wrote two poems on the theme of "Opportunity" for a future photo-book collaboration project. I've sketched out two new songs too and need to get these finished tonight. I've ordered a new batch of epoxy casting resin and pigments and hope to use the poplar panel on a multimedia artwork that combines painting, collage and resin casting, and converted some CD files to MP3, cleared out my old CD-ROM backups and ordered some Lego for the casting, with the hope of using it as an experimental mould (it has the advantage of squareness but also the ability to easily change the size). I re-traced The Lightning of Creation to a new surface, applied the imprimatura and sealed the back of that and the poplar panel with GAC100, then drew up a rough list of sound effects for three new sets. Tomorrow I'll go to Chester to collect my Albion painting.
