New project for 2018. Inverted photographs, gold on black, purple on white, just bizarre colours, with details gilt with gold and silver leaf. Gilding is hard!
Gold leaf layed down on painted adhesive spots. 1 chance to get it down, so extra large pieces of gold leaf are applied.
Really large pieces of gold leaf. Shame it’s going to waste so much gold.
Gold leafed image set aside for proper adhesion. Now the silver leaf print…
The image print was prepared with knock-out areas. Bright white, hot press water colour paper. The gilding glue was painted on to the clear areas in the print: eyeliner, lips, fingernails, shoes.
Extra large pieces of silver leaf layed down on painted glue areas. It’s actually aluminium! Silver doesn’t have sufficient malleability to be pounded to “leaf”, and it quickly tarnishes. Oh well, aluminium was a precious metal in the 19th century.
Both the silver and gold leaf prints are left for 30 ~ 60 minutes for proper adhesion of the metal to the paper.
Excess gold leaf is removed. I used a shortened medium-fine sable watercolour brush and lots of little strokes to break away the gold leaf, and then burnish the edges smooth. Because the sable brush, although shortened bristles, is still very soft it took a lot of strokes to remove all excess gold and get a smooth burnished surface. I did not want to damage the surrounding print area.
Chop sticks, fine point Japanese style. To pick up pieces of gold and silver leaf.
Sable water colour brushes. Static charge picks up pieces of metal leaf, does not damage the print.
Flat ruler and Xacto knife. The gold and silver leaf can be cut to size, carefully.
Silicone basting brush. “Sticky” surface is excellent for brushing off excess gold leaf and holding on to the waste.
Completed silver leaf on a new for 2018 High Multiples image in the reversal series. Bizarre colour schemes and ghost-icon style image.
Gold and silver leafed images complete. These two are probably the most unusual High Multiples composite images I’ve made, exceeding the Hyper Dreams flower series and even the Colour Block series. Mounted and shown for the first time at The Artist Project.