The History of the Kingdom of The West
Scrolls

'Gendarme kay lay feex.'

Photo and Contribution
by Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

'Gendarme kay lay feex.'
Aldith is right -- it's better to do repair work at home with everything to hand, not on-site. The first thing is to fix the erroneous line of division on the chief in the Arms. There's no way yellow is going to cover up ultramarine blue, so the first step is to take up as much of the paint as possible.

I mask off the area I want to remove. Bearing in mind that there's going to be a seam where the repair is made, and to give a little extra room in case some paint wants to peel up with the tape, I decide to cut a straight line across just above and below the area. Normally I would place the tape straight down, but not with a painted area underneath the tape -- it needs to be protected. I cut four pieces from the edges of a sheet of paper (to get true, straight lines); laid each piece of paper down just back from where I wanted to work, and taped it in place. There's just a sliver of tape making contact with the paint now; the rest is protected under the paper. Once the area is masked off, I put more paper over the rest of the document to protect it.

Removing paint calls for a lot of water, paper towels, and clean brushes. I dip a bright (that's a brush which has a flat, straight edge, shaped like a chisel) into water and wipe it on the edge of the container -- I want the brush thoroughly wet but not dripping. Placing it on the tip of one of the wavy blue "flames" I draw the brush in a hard sweeping motion up the blue shape, onto the masking tape in a swift swipe. I try to avoid getting into the yellow so we don't end up with green added to the mess. Dunk the brush in water to rinse the blue, wipe, and repeat. After three goes, most of the blue paint has come up. I repeat this for each blue shape. Originally I had thought to leave the yellow paint but then decide to just remove it all; then the only "seams" will be along the edges. So I toss out the blue rinse water, clean the brushes thoroughly, and repeat the process for the yellow flame shapes. Again, the yellow water is thrown out, the brushes are cleaned, and the entire area is swabbed with clean water, making sure all of the paint is off the surface as much as possible, without destroying the surface layer of paper.

What's left is a "ghost" image -- the paint has dyed the paper, more so in the blue areas than in the yellow areas. This ghost image has to be toned down even more as I don't want it shining up through the repair. I also want to seal the surface of the paper to make sure the dyes don't contaminate any paint laid over it. Once the cleaned area has dried thoroughly, I water down some permanent white until it's the consistency of milk, then paint in the entire area. The white will seal the surface; I use permanent white because has a better seal than others; there will be less likelihood of it being picked up by the next layer of paint over it. Once the white patch has dried, a haul out the tracing paper again and sketch out the proper line of division by breaking the rectangle up into even amounts and sketching in the picket fence shapes of the urdy line division. When it's right, I transfer the sketch to the paper using a sharp HB pencil and drawing very lightly.

At this point, I peel up the masking tape very carefully. A little bit of paint comes away with the tape, but that's okay. I paint in the yellow parts and make sure I run the paint just over the slightly ragged edge of the seam where the repaired area abuts the original painting. Once the yellow paint dries, I repeat this with the blue. All that remains is to mix a little dark yellow and touch up the outline on the yellow field to either side of the repair.

-- Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

The West Kingdom History Website was created by and is maintained by Hirsch von Henford (mka Ken Mayer).