Larger works are always surprising in how much longer they take in each step. Getting up early, I was finished polishing the bole by 10:30 and, after a quick cup of tea, I began gilding. Even with such an auspicious start, the gilding of this icon went on far too long and I wasn’t able to stop until 7:30 pm. I learned a lesson from this: It would have been far better to set a goal of completing so much perfectly and then stopping. Without this goal the work became too much and went on after I really needed to stop (from stiff hands and blurry eyes), but couldn’t.
This was also the first time I had to break up the work into sections rather than laying all the gold, then polishing, etc. It worked surprising well, and next time I won’t have any worries about how that will work.
I think that the gold is going to work well for this icon, but I’ll know for sure on Monday. Tomorrow, my day of rest, is very welcome after this week!
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