The Wedding Gift - The Process, Part 1

 The daughter of a friend was getting married. The family is Christian so I wanted to do a Bible quote. H and her Fiancé had also bought their first home. 

"As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." Joshua 24:15 (KJV) Perfect

I imagine the piece having a large, versal "A" with a vine and birds. Similar to the commission piece I did last year. The "A" would be shaped or hold a bird house with the two birds on the vine underneath the quote. The birds' wings as they sat side by each would form a heart. Part of the vine at the end of the quote would have a small dedication from me to the couple. Under the bird house would be the chapter and verse for the bible quote like a street address.

Chatting with my friend, I casually found out the color theme for the wedding, navy blue and yellow. The start of a color palette. Perfect for the little birds because the bride has very light, blonde hair.

The traditional color palette used during Medieval times was red, green, and blue. While working at Ender's Island on "House Blessing" with Valerie Weilmuenster last year, she introduced a variation using Prussian Blue, Sap Green, (gouache) and Magenta.(watercolor)

I also wanted to use 23K gold in the piece. I decided the word "Lord" would be a fitting place to use the gold.

So imagine a scrap of paper with the colors and gold as test. You have to imagine this little strip of paper because I must have tossed the paper out. 

I used the colors on the left as they are deeper and more dramatic. I think the brand used was Winsor Newton.

I thought I would like to try my hand at tooling the gold gilding. So imagine a little square of gleaming gold gilding with the diamond pattern from my mechanical pencil rolled into it. Just like you use a roller to emboss designs in cookie dough.

I hope you can see the design.

The entire quote and design was laid out on graph paper and then colored with colored pencil so I could better see how the piece (8" x 10") would look.

Using a light box, the design was lightly penciled onto a piece of Arches 90 lb. watercolor paper. This paper takes both ink, paint, and gold quite well.

Before the design is gilded or painted, it is lettered.

And like a bonehead, as I was lettering, I put my paw in the wet ink. It was very hot and humid this Summer, and I thought I had given the first line plenty of time to dry. Since I'm lefthanded, the process of lettering is a lot slower than my righthanded colleagues. I need to letter a few words and then have to stop and let the ink completely dry or risk smearing the lettering as I did in the word "For" above. 

As it turned out, a blessing in disguise as I wasn't happy with the "F". I hadn't intended the "J" looking serif at the bottom of the letter as I was using that stroke for the letter, "R". I didn't want the letter to look to similar.

Back to the drawing board.