Art From London Markets, a-n feature

So the start of the new year is both a time for trying new things and looking back, so this week I have had a try for the first time at water gilding, which has been a challenge, and even though I made an attempt at limiting the areas with potential for mistakes by buying some ready made bits the challenge was big and the mistakes were many…. I chose some lovely figs in the mistaken impression that I might end up with a finished piece.

I applied the first layer of bol, completing the first layer of bol I wondered about the consistency I had used, as I have not been able to find definitive ratios for the mix.  Completing the second layer I was a bit concerned about how uneven it was, by the third and fourth layers it was decidedly lumpy.  My bol and glue mix…is the problem here or the brush or the person weilding them???  Waiting for the bol to dry, then burnshing the bol with a jade burnisher, it is possible to see the shiny burnished areas, but perhaps I should have atmpted to get a flatter finish in the first place: shiny=burnished, but alot more work and pressure may have avoided later problems. The gold leaf was applied in very small pieces as suggested every where I looked.  Brushing it down, all the areas where the gold had not stuck to the clay and where it suck where I did not want it are revealed, hmmmm, so getting control of the very runny liquid might need some little drains in the form of grooves in the surface….so I revisited and applied a different colour leaf so that the patching up would be revealed in the end.  The process of burnishing revealed new areas that were not fully stuck and where the patching had occured leakage of the liquid into other areas made for areas that would not come up shiny as they were water marked.

So I made a second attempt on a clay board, first applying leaf directly to the clay board, using the water/glue/vodka mix, the less absorbent nature of the surface mean that areas that actually took were  unpredictable however the finish once burnished was lovely and flat and mirror like.  I also experimented with using a thicker bol mix.

But watch out for those dangerous bumps and lumps

So that is the new thing I am trying to learn, and the review is the look back at the markets I visited last year and some thoughts about them: they can be seen at the artfromlondonmarkets.blogspot.com