Beginning The Overlays

I had originally intended to screenprint the gauze overlays for the main Amarna panels, but it was proving difficult to find a way of doing it large enough, without excessive cost. Besides, since I have been sketching, painting, and drawing very much more often over the last few years, I’m much more willing to risk my arm (as it were) by doing it in a more immediate manner.

So I found a local printer who was willing to print out my manipulated images of Akhenaten and Nefertiti so I could use them as guides. They had a torrid time with a brand-new printer that kept on not doing as they expected, but they got there in the end, and I stretched my gauze over the printouts, attached to a padded board, fished out some brown inktense blocks, and got started.

Of course it’s difficult to see where you’ve been on a gauze when the template (for want of a better term) is as strongly marked as these, so when I felt I’d been all over the image once, I drew out the template and went back in by eye.

I still don’t consider I have all that accurate an eye for angle and form, so that was truly terrifying.

When I hung them from the laundry rack in the kitchen, however, they were “there and not there” in a very promising manner.

Whether or not these are the final versions I use (I’ve enough gauze to go again if they turn out to be the wrong colour or if I need to tweak the tones), will have to wait until I’ve been able to set them up in front of the panels, but until then, I think I can say that I’m very pleased!