A full day. Woke late and started work on by cutting 4 lengths of wood for the second tier keyboard stand, these need to be an exact length. The 16mm will (should!) fit twin-slot shelving supports which will slide between them, and those shelving supports will be the main verticals of my rack.
Then I traced over the final 'Gynocratic' painting. This took a while, perhaps because the surface was toned with Burnt Sienna, which is a good choice for fleshy tones. In my years of painting, I find it best to use an imprimatura that matches the predominant colour in the work. The imprimatura undoubtedly tints the whole work, adding a unique glow. One of my earliest was my first self-portrait which has a green cast all over it due to the phthalo green imprimatura, but my experiments in these contrasts didn't produce many great works. Generally, when the imprimatura matches the hue of the painting (such as orange for a fleshy painting) the results look smoother and better with less effort. Sometimes contrasts can help a bit (eg. flesh on blue) but they also make the results less smooth, certainly that.
Dali recommended Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine Blue for imprimaturae and I concur: there are few alternatives. I also use Raw Sienna (or other earth yellows) to give a yellow base, as Leonardo da Vinci used. I sometimes, rarely but sometimes, use green or violet, or even red. Violet is difficult because the violets are very delicate in oil, but I could (now I use acrylic toning) use something like dioxazine - but I don't trust these evil organic pigments! The staining ones (dioxazine and the phthalo blues and greens) are too strong, not pretty, and probably not stable - their strength would be masked by their power in any purely-vision (vs. chemistry theory) based test. The imprimatura, being the most base level, must be the most stable so should be an earth pigment.
Anyway, the tracing needed lot of hand drawing to bring out the lines. It is done.
Then I cut some MDF: 6mm for the new God Being Killed print. I needed a backing board to stick the print on to. I also cut two supports for the keyboard stand. Then I placed the wood down, the twin-slot rack, and the two pieces of wood either side like sentinels - thus exactly getting the spacing right. Then I glued these and applied weights:
Then I had to cut the print so size, which I did. I had to decide how to fix it to the 6mm panel. Once before I've glued a full print to a panel, but that is a little excessive, so I simply stuck the top 10mm of the paper (well, cotton rag) to the MDF, using water soluble PVA - a good safe glue to use. I applied a strip of wood there and leaned a weight over it, so the image above shows lots of things drying overnight.
See how Dali again helps! It's odd that his heavy books have perhaps been more use to me as weights than as books - but no, all books are useful in many ways. People have always compared my work with Dali's - since well before I knew anything about Dali or about art at all. Unlike my heroes in art of Beethoven, Ingmar Bergman, and countless others, there are other artists like Dali, David Bowie, Kenny Everett(!), who are not at all influences when others assume they are, and/or compare with my work with those artists as though I know of their work and have been influenced by or imitate them - which is, naturally, an annoyance if not insult. Most of my Dali books were bought for me as gifts, though of course now, I know lots about his life. 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship is an essential resource for any painter.
I also cut the Perspex for the print - the frame is too delicate to handle the weight of 6mm MDF with glass, this is one reason why I decided to make a new frame.
I also restored the frame a little, filling in the holes which were once there for mirror plates, and generally painting any damaged areas. The frame is now ready, apart from the spacer.
It's now nearly 8pm and has been another full day.
In brief breaks I've watched most of To Kill a King, a film about the great time of the Civil War. Nobody who knows anything about the English Civil War or the French Revolution could even think of revolution as a good thing. The Russians, the Chinese - they learned nothing. How I despise Oliver Cromwell. It is interesting to compare the film with the older Cromwell, the character of both Cromwells as an obstinate, egotistical firebrand is about the same. Few actors could compete with Richard Harris or Alec Guinness and the new performances are not nearly as good as those great actors, but then the new film is more about Thomas Fairfax and his wife. Not a bad film at all.
