Pippin thinks he is fine.
He is not fine.
That is, he seems to be feeling really good, because he whines and howls at three a.m. wanting to get out of his pen, and he whines and howls every day at 7:00am wanting out of his pen and he WHINES and HOWLS every night at 10:00pm because he is bored in his pen.
But he must spend a minimum of four weeks in the pen from date of surgery, which means he will be whining and howling at me until mid-June. Yay.
He does get outside for short, on-leash walks to do his business, and I'm SO GLAD it is May and not January.
Once outside though, he thinks that he gets to stay out there as long as he likes. If he doesn't move around that's fine. Lately I've taken to bringing my iPad out on our excursions. It gets a little tricky if he sees a squirrel, or the neighbor dogs want to bark at him -- grab that leash! But on the whole, he's pretty calm.
This week his pain meds are being reduced a little, so we'll see how he feels about that. I'm just happy that he is recovering quickly.
I haven't been able to go out, because he gets upset and tries to escape from the pen, especially when I go next door to visit my mother and brother -- he used to go, too, and now I take only Truman, and that does not go down well. So I have mostly stayed home, and that meant finding ways to entertain myself at home -- gee, what a lot of practice I've had at that over the past year!
You can probably guess what I did.
Yes, I drew Aziraphale from Good Omens again. (I had already drawn Crowley from this same pic.) This promo poster shows him looking rather anxious over the impending Armageddon:
I wanted to try drawing those wings (something new!) and those books (challenging!), but I didn't want to do that expression. So I decided to give him a more contented look, as if it were after they saved the world, and he was pleased about still having his precious books.
Giving him this new expression proved challenging -- it went through at least three iterations before I felt it was right:
The wings turned out to be fairly easy -- all those bird drawings I did in February proved helpful!
As for the books, I got to try out a technique I'd read about for doing light on dark areas. There were lines and decorations on the spines that were lighter than the book color, and they were so thin and detailed that I couldn't simply draw in the darker color around those lighter lines. Too small!
The new technique I tried was indenting the paper with a metal stylus, which I didn't have, so I used a blunt-tipped sewing needle instead. The darker color was then drawn over those areas, and it skipped over those indented areas, sort of like doing a charcoal rubbing. Fun!
For added entertainment, I also decided to add some gold leaf to parts of that background pillar thingy. It's been over 20 years since I did any gold leaf work, but I still had my old supplies to hand. The old glue was rubbery but luckily I had ordered a new bottle recently.
It's a painstaking process. You can only do small areas at a time, around 1/2". First, apply the glue ("metal leaf size") with a round sable brush that you don't care much for, as it will be useless afterwards:
Use an X-acto knife to cut a piece of 22K gold leaf, larger than the area you wish to cover (because applying it is an imprecise process).
These super-thin sheets of gold are very fussy -- they will blow away at the slightest air movement, and will try to stick to your fingers or other surfaces you don't want them to be. To transfer the piece of gold to the picture (after waiting 30-60 seconds for the glue to get tacky), use the special squirrel hair brush. First, wipe it across the forehead to pick up a little oil, then touch it to the cut piece. It will stick!
While holding your breath so as not to cause any air movement, carefully transfer the gold to the glued area.
Wait around 3 to 5 minutes for it to completely dry, then brush away the excess gold with a stiff bristle hair brush:
Use an agate to burnish the gold, with wax paper for protection:
I learned all this sometime in the late 1990s at a workshop in Medieval Manuscript Illumination techniques. I was a bit rusty at first, but soon had the method down again. I did not cover the whole decorative arch thingy, just selected areas (actually a bit more than can be seen here, as the light doesn't pick up the gold everywhere when taking a photo). I'm pleased with the way the whole piece turned out:
I shall continue to find ways to keep busy at home over the next three weeks of Pippin's recovery.
Meanwhile, my two new Funko Pop figures arrived! The first ones I got had Crowley holding an apple and Aziraphale holding a book. This "special edition" set has Crowley holding the tire iron from his Bentley, while Aziraphale has his flaming sword.
And they have WINGS! Whee!
Have a great week out there, everyone!
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