Steady steps today. First, ensuring that my new payment system is set up and working on www.marksheeky.com, www.cornutopiamusic.com and www.pentangel.co.uk. It's always good to update these things.
Also, for the first time, I've put first edition copies of The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death on sale on my site and Pentangel. The book is available on Amazon, but I had 150 copies printed when I first published it, and so had a choice of paper, finishes and other details that the modern automated publishers (a staggeringly recent phenomenon) don't offer. My books are the same in almost every way as the Amazon version, but the cover is thicker and uncoated with a pure white, velvety finish. Well, these can now be ordered from my site for the first time; until now they were only available from me in person at any events I attended.
Then an article for John Hopper of Inspirational Magazine about dramatic contrast in art. More on this in future weeks.
Then, framing. The big "So, How Have You Been?" frame. It looked rather strange in its brown and black, I wasn't sure if I liked it, and I began by sanding it off a little to distress and lighten some edges. This had an interesting effect and I decided to leave it.
The next step was facing my accursed foe of perspex! Horrid stuff, a nightmare to cut even with the sharpest blade, and here it crackled and tore under my blade like ice bitten by skates. Ideally I need some sort of tiny circular saw, yet tiny teeth tend to melt the plastic and clog up. Even pre-cut perspex looks a flaking mess on the edges. I considered options; a hot wire cutter (rather messy and gloopy, I imagine), then dreams of a solvent-based cutter. Surely acetone will melt the stuff; it's a good solvent for most acrylic resins. Perhaps a sword of frozen acetone, or, more realistically, a thin bath to dip the edge of the perspex into. When I get some acetone I'll experiment.
Yet, it's far safer than glass, and for anything big I'd not use glass for that reason. After that, a spacer from mountboard and a backing board from 3mm M.D.F. (which is hard to find these days, it seems, although B&Q now sell 3mm H.D.F. which can be used for the same sort of thing, albeit less beautifully).
Then cleaning up the mess and ready to assemble. The worst bit about perspex is the static charge, it sucks every dust particle and hair from the air like magic, even snow-like flakes from 15cm away magically jump up to stick to it. There are two tricks that can help:
1. Never wipe it or touch it with anything. Wear gloves. This creates static (of course, it's loaded with the stuff the moment you peel of the backing plastic). Another downside is that wiping, even with the softest of cloths can scratch it so very easily.
2. Use a hoover constantly running to create negative pressure and blow dust away into it. This works but it's noisy and difficult in itself. I must make a perspex nozzle for the hoover!
3. Use masking tape, or another weak tape (like Post-It notes) to remove dust. This works really well but has to be done particle by particle, it can take an hour or more, during which more dust will settle. Can I get Post-It note tape?
4. Have a black background, to see the dust with.
With that, you can eventually minimise dust, but it's still nightmarish and it's amazing how dust and hairs and scratches and fingerprints can magically appear despite all precautions.
Eventually, the frame was assembled. I take care to make the back of works as attractive as possible now, sometimes even painting them too.
Here is the finished framed painting. "So, How Have You Been?", oil on canvas panel, 80x60cm in its frame. I love this painting, it's an entire Bergmanian romantic drama in one image.
