Fixing Things

I put in a few hours in the Studio today.  I got there around mid day to meet with someone who wanted to purchase a print.  I had the proof ready to go, with its own carrying case to get it home.  She didn't hang around much past our business deal, so I moved on to the next task.  About a week ago I had pulled a boardwalk proof related to another potential sale, but the ultra thin Japanese paper was damaged in a few spots by moisture.  Luckily I have a good copy ready to go, and this one was just being done to have a master color copy to refer to when printing additional ones.  The ink was dry enough now that I felt it was possible to begin repairing the proof.

The simple solution was to tear little pieces of the same okawara paper and carefully glue them to the back of the proof using some neutral pH glue.  I'll let it dry, and next time I'll carefully trim some of the front remnants and use new ink to reproduce the original design.  This procedure would not be acceptable for an edition proof, but as I wrote last week, I'm going to make the best of this damaged proof by turning it into an example I can show classes, since the one I had been using for that is going to the interested owner.  Above you can see the reverse of the proof, and below a detail that more clearly shows some of the patches I added today.

I added about a dozen such patches to the back of the proof.  Some of these covered full holes in the image where I will need to rebuild the design with hand applied ink.  Some cover areas where the design is still intact, but the paper is clearly damaged and potentially weak, and may not hold up to the watercolor process.   Every bit of the image area will be covered by ink or watercolor, so I'm hoping none of the repairs will be easily noticed by viewers when this is all done.  And if it's not perfect, it can still serve as a color guide for the future.