A busy if not exhausting day today.
I started with determination to fix the horribly varnished frame, which was once near perfect. I decided to sand it down, but oh how nightmarish this process was! I wrecked two sanding sheets on my drum sander - after years of using the same two, I decided it was time for some clean ones, and as fate often chooses, this very first job with these virgin sheets utterly ruined them, clogging them up with molten varnish and lumps of wood. My drill didn't fare well either - my beloved drill which I couldn't have made my Eden Iris without! So I switched to a more powerful mains drill and vowed to attack the frame all the stronger. The problem, apart from the sticky plastic varnish, was the depth of the stain too. I had to sand down about 3mm over the whole frame and the result was naturally very uneven. I persevered, though noted that I'd probably breathed in a lifetime of perhaps toxic dust and nearly wrecked my ears too, so quickly grabbed some ear defenders. At least my eyes were protected well enough. I felt rotten that this small and pathetic frame had led me to destruction. The frame had become my Moby Dick!
After an hour of sanding it was generally clean, so I then took to it with a wire brush to texturise it. Overall, the whole process was one of the worst woodwork ordeals I've faced, but the fact that this was my last wood, my last lockdown wood, and last frame that I had to use, spurred me on. I stained the mashed and scarred frame and, actually, it looked rather nice in the end. This took me up to 11am.
Then work on the Chinese translation of The Intangible Man. This was a matter of hand copying over each paragraph. There are a lot of paragraphs in the book, so I became adept at clicking and using Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V, darting between source and destination programs. Then updating the Table of Contents, and trying to verify it - difficult when I don't speak Chinese (in case you didn't know). This was done by 1pm.
Then a lunch of fried eggs and fried tomatoes on toasted olive-oil bread, then varnishing the now dry stained frame. It was so very rough that many splinters needed to be carefully removed with tweezers at this point. I had on my jobs list the tracing of the new Lachesis painting, so that was always on my mind.
Also at this point, I dismantled the No Good Ideas painting, and cut the backing board and glass to fit the new frame. The backing board was a template for the glass and main painting itself, these have to be cut to fit the frame exactly so I could use it as a future guide. No frame is perfectly rectangular, and no size exact, so boards like this are useful.
In addition to all of this, throughout the day I've been promoting Apocalypse of Clowns, our new Fall in Green release which came out today. Deb has done a great job across social media spreading the word. This is all we can really do. Interviews, newspapers etc. might help (but are very limited in these locked-down, socially distant times), but ultimately, it's live performances and appearances which will spread the word, and these are impossible nowadays. I'm very pleased with the music though. Listening this evening, Herr Kasperle remains a favourite, in fact the music, as well as Clown Face, often brings me to the brink of tears even now, which must be a good sign. I love it so.
After the frame jobs, I put up some racking on the garage outside for my mum who wanted to install some shelves for horizontal planters. This took another hour or so. A fire engine paused outside to attend a house fire in the street. Curious neighbours stood outside staring. I was too busy working.
By this point I was too tired to do much. I've noticed that I've lost 2-3kg in weight over the past couple of months. I must try to put it back. I ate, then started to trace Lachesis while listening to the New Music Show on Radio 3. It remains inspiring due to its eclecticism.
Tomorrow I must complete the Lachesis tracing and, at some point, saw the No Good Ideas panel and frame both that and Monsters of Spring (the troublesome frame of today is for that, I'm sure you remember). I like this extreme busyness, it inspires me to do yet more. I have at least two painting ideas to finalise this week, and of course the new album (or E.P. whatever it will be). I would also like to remaster all of my old PC games. I had mentally thought of doing it this week, but of course, that's impossible, I'd have to set everything else aside for that.
One final job I did, or jobs I did, last night before midnight - I added a page for 2021 oil paintings to my website and listed the first two. I also removed Google Analytics from all of my websites. It was generally useless - I don't really care how many or how few people visit my websites, but crucially, the 'tracking cookie' that Google insists upon is a rude annoyance that I don't want to force upon my visitors.
