To repeat the mail I sent out the other day, only this time with the scans in-line ......

Yay!

I've completed the gilding and outline on my big calligraphy piece - "The Second Coming"


The gold isn't burnished yet (the base isn't properly dry yet!) but you can see that it's pretty shiny already.

The writing is "The Second Coming" by YB Yeats ("Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold") I had to write it out 4 times before I got it fitting properly in the margins and without mistakes in the words! Argh!

It's about twice the size in real life as shown on the screen.

I have yet to do :

• the poem heading, (flourished 'he Second Coming'). The "T" of the "The Second Coming" is that big letter that runs down the left hand side.
• finish the red and blue florishing of the first letter of each verse. I couldn't do it until now, because gold will stick to paint. I could only do the bits that were far away from the bits that were going to be gilded
• burnish the gold
  

and .... the fun bit -

• paint the margin!

The original that I've taken the margin from is


I've already done some work in this style. - the muticoloured, shaded acanthus. They are those wiggly leaf things. The flowers are, um, weird flowers that come with the acanthus. ....one of my favourite styles.
You can see two acanthus in closer detail below in a work that I did last year. Below that is just one of them, blown up.


The detail above shows the colour blending in more detail

I'm going to start on the painting first, coz I like doing it the best.

This is the section I'm starting on (in the original).



The Gilding

It's been a nightmare, because it's winter.

I originally used some of Kaz's gesso, but it wouldn't dry even after about 5 days. It showed no signs of drying. One good thing about summer - good gilding weather.

After advice from the Scribes, I switched to Wills Quills quick gesso. Unfortunately, I've laid it on too thickly, and am having trouble doing any burnishing because it's kind of 'squidging' under the burnisher, even after a week to dry. It's just too thick. I should have laid it on in multiple layers. Oh well - live and learn.
I also committed the cardinal sin (I know now) of trying to put some gilding mix over existing leaf, to do some patching. what was I thinking? Now I have plastic coated gold leaf that won't take any more gold leaf. Thankfully I only did a little. I have to scrape back two points and re-do them.