Well, I just had to. I couldn't resist going to a workshop where everyone was splashing around gold leaf! It's been years since I've had gold fingers.
The Fairbank Calligraphy Society had a weekend workshop on gilding taught by
Georgia Angelopoulos. What a blast! Everyone did something very cool - you didn't need to be a calligrapher to make something that you would have been proud of! Georgia did a wonderful job of showing what could be done and how to get there. She's done lots of research and experimenting. If you get a chance to take a course with her, run, don't walk to register!
The letterforms for this class were borrowed from a manuscript - the Stockholm Codex Aureus. I thought the letters in the manuscript were nasty - I wouldn't have been happy if I'd done them! Maybe my aesthetic intelligence needs enlightening.....
What did I do in class? As usual, I bit off more than I could chew! With the Teller quotation from the last blog entry fresh in my mind, it became a pretty interesing choice with words that were easily chosen to highlight in gold. This piece is far from finished (guess you figured that if you've read the Teller quote) and the rest of the quote will be added in a cursive hand. I figure I'll be able to ruin this piece in about half a second. I tortured myself trying to decide if I should add the cursive lettering at the workshop where I would get all kinds of encouraging sympathy from my fellow calligraphers or ruin it in the privacy of my own home.... I guess I chose the latter!
The other piece I worked on was on black - metals just !pop! on black. It was an experiment and it worked quite successfully. To get the effect of the metal fading towards the light, I sprayed the leaf still adhered to the transfer paper prior to applying it to the black paper. I borrowed the words from the Teller quote
Materials used for this piece
Drawn letters on
Arches Black Cover
Gold Size
24.5 Carat Gold Transfer Leaf
Spray adhesive
Do you want to see how the other metals (copper and silver) looked in the hands of a pro? Click here!!
Happy creating! Suzanne
Here is my contribution! 
