The above image is the un-restored version of Peace on Earth as I received it 11 days ago on January 25, 2010.   It is amazing to be re-working this "piece" 39 years and two months after it was completed in Weston, CT that night in the living room.   As you can see, the marker has faded, as has the thin poster board.

To begin the restoration, I needed to fit the art inside a "pocket" so it wouldn't move while I worked on it.   The pocket had to be exactly as thick as the art so that I could lay stencil film over the entire piece while also having a smooth transition for cutting and using a straight edge (if I needed to use one.   As it turned out, I did NOT use a straight edge to cut vertical and horizontal lines in the thin film.   Doing this by hand, very carefully seemed to work best.   The first task was to paint all the white areas in white gouache (opaque watercolor).    In 1971, I had not painted these areas at all.   They were left as "white space" which, as you can see, was no longer white at all!

Above, we see some thin, plastic "frisket film or stencil film."   I applied this over the entire piece.   You can see the reflection of the drafting table's light in it.   After the application of this, I then began to cut very lightly into it with an Exacto knife (using a #11 blade) in only the areas I wanted to paint with white gouache.

This image above was actually taken AFTER the entire cutting took place and AFTER all application of white gouache in all involved areas.   This second (of two) frisket film sheets was applied prior to the application of Windsor and Newton "Jet Black" opaque watercolor paint.   If you look carefully, you will see some of the black areas were damaged as I removed the stencil film AFTER filling in the white areas.   Due to the age of the art, the paper easily lifted as I removed the somewhat adhesive stencil film.   This "lifting" can occur in situations like this.   The solution is to prepare for a major touch-up after the main areas have been repainted with white and black.   Interestingly (and with some dismay) this lifting ALSO occurred for the white areas (painted today).   Later on you will see these areas and how extensive they became.

Above, we see a more distant shot of POE after the film had been carefully cut over only the black areas.   Note how the first "E" in PEACE had much damage to its surrounding black areas upon removal of the first stencil (after the repainting of the white had been done).

This shows the thin application of black gouache over the stencil for the black areas.   I then used a blow drier to speed up the drying.    This took about 10-15 minutes.   Below you will see another image of the same thing.    You can get a better view of the stencil "frisket" film there.

Below, we see the "CE" in PEACE after the jet black had been fully applied and before stencil removal.

Here, the blow drier is being used on the "NO HEAT" setting to dry the gouache paint.   It is worth noting that this restoration is being done OVER the " Structure and Chaos II "   drawing (under the yellow tracing paper).   I wanted to finish Peace on Earth first before adding the final design lines to Structure & Chaos II.   The yellow tracing paper is impervious to paint and (as you will see in the next image) much debris.

As I was drying the black paint, often it would lift up from the unimportant areas (on the film itself) and fly away.   This is common.    I then had to use the blow drier to blow the paint flakes out of the way.

Here we see a close up shot of the "A" in PEACE.   There would need to be a lot of hand touch-up work due to the lifting of the white paint when the stencil (for the black) was removed.    This gives a better idea of the previous faded color for the white after 39 years under glass without ultra-violet protection.   The NEW Peace on Earth will be framed with "museum" glass -- which provides 98% ultra-violet light protection and virtually no reflective properties.

Here we see more damage to deal with.

This is the piece AFTER application of both white and black gouache but before any final touch up of the areas that had lifted.

Before the final hand touch ups, I masked off the painting with tracing paper and then blew away all of the black paint flakes so they would not turn my white into gray!

Success! The touch up process took about 60 minutes to complete.   Note that there is still no fine-line border to define the sun's curve or other side-line boundaries.   Also, the piece has not yet been re-signed.   The pencil lines under the yellow tracing paper are those from the incomplete "Structure and Chaos II" drawing.

Here, we see the completed Peace On Earth after all touch ups and the addition of the border lines and the "new" signature.    Arlene and I both agreed that a NEW painting (to replace the old one) would not be the way to go.   This restoration was a fun project for me since it seemed to bring back to life most if not all of the bright details in "Peace On Earth."

These are just some new re-framing notes, After looking again at POE, I began to see some changes I would like to make in the re-framing ideas I had come up with earlier.   These earlier ideas are shown below.   (An addendum to this framing design is also worth noting.   It will be shown that THIS design was not actually used.   In Part 2 of this restoration, the updated framing and matting design will be shown. Part 2