I am typesetting a small book and have run into two difficulties placing
figures, which are constrained to even, i.e. left hand, blank, pages.

The first place figures appear are opposite each new section. I coerce
this with the following commands:

\page[left]
\noheaderorfooter
\placefigure
\page
\section

This scheme works when the previous section ends on an odd page, but when
the section ends on an even page, \page[left] correctly inserts two blank
pages, but the first, instead of being blank, retains a \vrule\pagenumber
in the running head. It is little work to remove these artifacts with
Acrobat, but I prefer these headers were empty.

The second place figures appear is within sections. I use the same set of
commands, which places the figures where I wish, but each figure must be
placed precisely at the bottom of an odd page. This looks OK if the bottom
of the page coincides with the end of a paragraph, but otherwise the last
line is not flush right. I am looking for a solution that says, 'place
this figure on the next blank even page disturbing the text flow as little
as possible.' I have tried postponing, but without success.

The attached archive includes a test file, an empty graphic and the pdf
result. The ninth page shows the recalcitrant \vrule\pagenumber, and the
eleventh page shows the result of splicing a figure in mid-paragraph.

Any suggestions how to resolve these issues would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Michael A. Guravage