SMOOTHING OVER THE CRACKS...

Every now and then I get an idea which is so brilliantly devastating in its clarity and simplicity that I fel the best thing to do is to forget all about it and take to my bed for a fortnight, in order to spare the human race the consequences of it. However, this particular wheeze would not be denied, and it was a solution to a problem I had encountered in the course of my artwork this week.

Here's the background to the issue. I have been working on the second of two tall ships seascapes this week. This one features the Danish full-riggers "Georg Stage" (the nearer of the two vessels and already more or less finished) and the "Danmark"(further away, and creating my problem). I have been carefully delineating her masts, sails and rigging in pencil, sometimes rather too heavily, in pencil, and this has been leaving scores in the canvas, which didn't matter much until I wanted to change the angle of the set of the ship's sails. This made them much more visible, and they couldn't simply be painted out.

The solution, which presented itself to me in a blinding flash of inspiration, was - why don't I press the marks out? I put my iron on to moderate heat, got my ironing board out, placed a cloth-protected phone book on it, as support to the lower, painted side of the canvas, and proceeded to give the canvas the same treatment as I would to a stubbornly-creased shirt-front. And, much to my surprise, it worked - to a large extent.

This has been another successful experiment from the Tait Gallery - but not under laboratory conditions. Please don't try this at home, children! No animals were injured during the course of this experiment, although the neighbour's cat swapped ends on the shed roof when I leant out the window to sneeze.

Blah!