First piece
I usually shy away from
very colorful backgrounds. Reggie successfully
challenged me to step out of my comfort zone.
I put a piece of Frankfurt
19” X 15” on the light box and directly applied gouache
to paint the background of letters. When dry, I sprayed
fixatives and wrote lettering with GOLDEN gesso twice.
Some colors, like red, came through the white gesso.
This ended up not being a problem after painting over
with Dr. Martin’s bleed proof white. All looked
perfectly white. I sprayed fixatives and tried to paint
over with gouache but it repelled a lot.
I applied white GOLDEN
gesso again, skipped the fixative and painted over with
gouache. Phew! It was not perfect but I was able to
cover most of the letters. When the paint was thinned
out, it repelled more so the gouache was pretty thick,
almost like directly out of a tube. |
I used a foam brush and stick sumi ink to draw the line.
When completely dry, I wrote the lettering with a
speedball C-2 nib. I like the contrast created by the
sumi line: colorful above and the last six lines below
darker and fading away.
For the heart with wings, white GOLDEN gesso and
instacol were used and 24K gold leaf and lemon gold leaf
were applied.
Second piece
I am more comfortable with black backgrounds. This idea
started forming while I was struggling with the first
piece. This was supposed to be my back-up plan.
The white lettering is written with Dr. Ph. Martin’s
Bleed Proof White and a speedball B-2 nib. The gold
lettering is written with gouache and a speedball C-2
nib. The heart with wings is made with the same
technique as the other piece, this time using 24K gold
leaf and sulfide silver leaf. |
