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Live Your Life…
I have been an admirer of Gustav Klimt's work ever since I first saw it. And I was determined to make Instacoll work for me this month! So those two
things were my starting point for these pieces. The homework assignment was to use any variation of Romans, and when I looked through all of
Reggie's samples in the handouts, I saw the art nouveau letters and was reminded of Klimt. I went to my books about Klimt and found some of my
favorite things - the "Ver Sacrum" and "Nuda Veritas" series. I especially love the long, narrow designs of those pieces. I also looked at lots of
images of his Beethoven Frieze and other work, in which he uses a lot of gold, along with stylized shapes of flowers, geometric shapes, etc. It took
me about a week to settle on the words. I've always had an appreciation for Thoreau's ideas in "Walden" and they seemed to fit with what I was
picturing in my mind.
I drew the basic design and all the lettering in a grid pad, taking care to keep my proportions very close to Klimt's. Then I made several copies of
the design and changed the one word at the bottom by taping it onto the first one. Then I transferred the entire piece to 90# hot press paper using
the graphite Saral transfer paper. I then laid the Instacoll in the two panels where the gold would be. I finally remembered that Reggie said to water it
down, which I have done a bit in the past, but not successfully. This time I put about 7-8 drops of water in barely a half well of Instacoll, mixed it
thoroughly, and went to work. And it worked! It dried very fast and I had to work fairly fast to keep a "wet edge" as I laid it. In a few places I
accidentally let the Instacoll touch where the line of the letter was super thin. I used only one layer of Instacoll, and then I laid one layer of patent
gold onto it. I tried to lay a second layer of gold, but I couldn't get it to stick, even when I breathed on the first layer. It's been over 100 degrees here for
weeks now, and my air conditioner is running nonstop, so I think it may just be way too dry for things to stick right now. But the one layer looked good
to me, so I decided to remember the adage "better is the enemy of good" and didn't push my luck!
Then I painted in the letters, and I used Payne's gray watercolor for that. The gold repelled the paint here and there, but mostly it was fine. Where
the Instacoll had obliterated my very thin lines, I scratched through it a bit with my Nikko G nib, and it did fine. I painted the letters with a tiny brush
(Raphael 8404, #0,1, or 2), on one piece, the Nikko G on another, and the Brause EF66 on the third. They all worked fine.
I painted the middle panels last, using watercolor. And then I barely pencilled my design onto the watercolor, just a freehand idea of where I wanted things. Then I drew the design in with Kolner Miniatum Ink, using the Nikko G and/or the EF 66. And then I had the best surprise. I expected
the gold to stick to the paint when I laid it on the Miniatum ink and was fully prepared to scrape all night with my little scalpel. But nothing stuck except
where I wanted it! I guess watercolor has a lot less binder than gouache, and it was wonderful.
The last thing I did was to draw the dark outlines around the panels with the Payne's gray watercolor and my Nikko G nib. I used a cork backed metal
ruler and wiped the excess paint off the edge of the ruler after every single line. It worked very well.
So I'm very pleased to have gotten the Instacoll to work like I want it to, and very happy to have learned that gold doesn't really stick to watercolor. If I
were to do this again, I think I would use a much heavier hot press paper, since the watercolor did make the paper buckle some.
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