My Precious

So much fun in Sunday's Reggie class. We played with gold. 23 karat gold. Reggie had a sheet of symbols, and we got to choose a simple symbol to gild. This was mainly due to time constraints as we started gilding mid-afternoon.

We traced our design onto Arches 90 lb. watercolor paper using Saral transfer paper. Reggie gave us Instacoll (gilding base) and patent gold (4 inch sq of gold leaf).

If you're new to gilding, it's scary and exciting. Mainly, because you don't know what to expect and not sure how to work with the materials. Intstacoll is an easier base for beginner's to work with compared to traditional gesso. There's some wait time for the base to dry and a small window of opportunity to be able to lay the gold, but the results were impressive. After all the steps were complete, (transferring the design, applying the Instacoll with a brush, sharpening edges with a fine nib, waiting for the Instacoll to dry, laying the gold, adding a second layer of gold, removing excess gold with silk, and burnishing the gold) we passed our papers around and oohed and aahed over everyone's efforts. Even though some of us chose the same design, they were all a little different.