Update: Restoration In Progress– “Great Big White Birds”

This one is close to my heart, so of course I’ve been driving myself the fuck insane working very hard on it. You’ll remember this furisode that I stumbled on, and today I’d like to show you some of my progress.

Stain removal has been very hit and miss with this one, so it’s turned into an operation of pigment replacement. Luckily for me, I’m an expert color matcher. But I’m taking my sweet-ass time with it. I’m not going to say that it’s been a bad time with this, because that’s not true. I have maybe called it a dirty fucker and threatened it with a fork once or twice though.

Anyway, have a look!

We started with the blending game. Basically, I look at what color it is and smash shit together until it looks right:

Then I set that aside to let it dry up. What matters the most is what it looks like when it’s dry. And NEVER experiment on the piece, or I’ll fucking eat you.

While I waited on that, I fixed the eyes that were chipped away, because that’s easy.

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Then it was time to correct the chipping that happened from how badly it was wrinkled.

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And now that my pigments have passed their color matching tests, we’re fixing the birds.

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I also restored the definition to his thighs. I can get away with that because I like them thicc I’m an illustrator, and I know a lot about birds.

So that’s how it’s going. Not gonna lie, when I laid down my first layer of pigment over those corrosion stains, then then heat set them, and they disappeared…I might have cried a little. Uncle Akiii, Grandpaaaa, look! I can fix it!

Now my fucking back hurts like a LOT from working on this for so long, so I’m going to get up and stretch and get some sleep.

BYE