Managed yesterday to work on the Wonderland music, and tidy up some musical notation for existing music. I've generally done this for music I've played myself, as a mnemonic, but sometimes I finish the notation a little more. Today I've added some of these scores to my website, for some of The Anatomy of Emotions, Cycles & Shadows, Music of Poetic Objects, and the basic Clown Face melody. The differences in how the score sounds to the performance is huge, compare By Candlelight and my recording of it, for example, but it's nice to have some music up there, in case anyone would like to play these.
Yesterday I also scaled up the underdrawing for a painting currently called Volcanism and Social Media, I'll work on this and the Shakespeare painting today.
One other job is some cleaning and reframing a painting by Deborah's father. It is 40 years old and very yellowed, and painted on a Daler board, textured cardboard, and with no glass or backing board, held with mere masking tape. It was bent and very dirty, and the cheap plastic frame is falling apart. The frame looks nice from the front though, and it reminded me that even old and cheap frames have a unique heritage and are part of art history. It is a photo frame, with lost glass and no firm way to hold the painting in place.
I started work by cleaning the front of the painting with cotton buds and a damp cloth, wiping excess dirt with mere water. I don't intend to restore it or remove varnish, merely clean and stabilise. I cleaned up the bent cardboard on the back and painted it with Golden GAC100 medium to waterproof and seal it. The board was slightly bent backwards, the oil painting surface convex. This is ideal, as painting anything water based on the back will tend to expand and slightly bend the panel in the opposite direction. The acrylic medium won't sink deeply in anyway, and there was little or no evidence of change to the bend. These small steps have instantly stabilised the painting for many more years. One other job is to write the title, artist name, and date on the back. These are essential steps that separate any old painting from an artwork with a history and provenance.
The frame is thin hollow plastic and little more. There is no way to hold the painting, and the yellowed masking tape that was holding it had fallen off, making the painting loose.
I've crudely attached some hangers using epoxy putty - this is much better than before, the hollow back was hanging from a nail, but isn't as neat as I would like. My plan is to use more putty to glue a wooden frame about 20mm wide into the hollow. This will be strong enough to hold the frame together and can be screwed into to hold the painting in place too. This, and the putty, will also secure the flimsy frame. I could add glass and a spacer too. It could be left without glass, as it has been for 40 years, but glass would stop more dirt; it will be hung in a kitchen, so best kept isolated from the atmosphere as much as possible.
