Tired, achey, exhausted even. I often think I go to extreme lengths to get things right, but perhaps this is necessary. I necessity extreme? Today I've framed Gynocratic Paedoparanoia and photographed the work. Here are some exclusive looks at the frame:
Here you can see to odd look to the colouration, actually a sort of stripping of the stain. I'll avoid this in future, it's uncontrollable, but it has a certain allure:
Here is the back. My frames, over the years, have got increasingly professional in finish, and one measure of the care of a framer is how the back of a painting looks. I get annoyed at any defacement of the back, marks and labels there as though the back is not important:
I also photographed the frame flat, and recorded that. This is part of why it all takes so many hours. The basic framing took about 90 minutes, and another 45 or so to photograph and process; huge amounts of time for this simple job; all excluding the days of making the frame.
The artwork image there is, as usual, Photoshopped in, as framed images like this are used on websites and for artwork submissions etc. so much be of good quality. For each of my paintings I have one 300dpi scan or image and one of the work framed.
Then, framing Bird Orbiting A Black Hole. This needed a fine sand, then a new layer of black, then two coats of varnish. Overall it's had 6 coats of varnish, two of water-based black stain; the first two layers were black-stained with tinted solvent varnish:
And flat:
The painting here, and for Masters Of The Sky needed rescanning/photographing too, as the visible area for both paintings is now about 20mm larger. Scanning this dark painting was a challenge, the colours seem much lighter in real life. This tiny painting took four, 8-hour days. The first frame probably took 16 hours, and this one at least that. To spend so many hours on one solitary and slow craft. The frame, simple though it looks, took longer and at least the skill of the painting itself, yet nobody would buy a blank frame.
Finally, a photograph, and reframing of Masters Of The Sky:
A simple frame but this looks very beautiful. I framed it, then decided that I did want and need to re-scan it after all, so removed it, photographed it, and framed it again.
A long few days doing this tiny job. I ache from so much running about, and also ache to make more actual art.
