Tick tick! After Monday, which was effectively a day off, I slept for eight hours and made eight frames on Tuesday. This is about the most I can make in one day. Each sawed by hand (32 bits, 64 cuts) then marked and drilled for the special batons I fit that have room for screw eyes and mirror plates. 64 holes, each countersunk. Then staining and assembly, one frame per night because I have only one band clamp.
On Wednesday, work on my love reliquary. Three models made; a sad angel, Rapunzel's tower (shown) and the embrace. I researched how to flatten out my veneer and how to fletch a medieval arrow. I'll need 1mm zinc sheets, epoxy resin and at least four pheasant feathers. Design of the paintings ground to a halt. I've been feeling so tired these days. The pain in my throat which has plagued my life for eighteen months was recently identified as a "tonsilith" which are often dormant but sometimes mischievous. Mine hurts with a dull pain in daily pulses, just a little, like a clothes peg on an earlobe or the snap of a giant rubber band enrobed with thin fur on the upper arm. I place this thing firmly in the mischief category.
I watched the film Watchmen, an excellent film about love and the conquest of loneliness. I decided then that there are only two great artworks: human relationships (personal) and science - the origins and fate of the universe etc. (cosmic).
Painting the Birth of Venus today, a painting from months ago that began large and gradually shrunk to a more manageable size. I've found it hard to focus and remained tired to the extreme all day despite sleeping for ten hours. I attribute this to an attack of entropy, the gradual onset of chaos, death, injury, decrepitude. I'll fight it with exercise and discipline.
I'll finish the Venus underpainting tomorrow.
In national and international news the 1930's have returned. This is good news for surrealists. It is a good time to buy shares. World War three might occur within a decade.
