Re-establishing my scribal kit after the fire is going to take time, but I've been doing it in stages, bit by bit, over the past several weeks. Some of the parts I've replaced have been my gilding supplies. I've always enjoyed gilding, as I know you've read if you follow this blog at all, but most of the materials I've used have been fairly modern. I have had varying degrees of luck using anything period, but I think I may have finally hit the jackpot on a material that's as close to period as I want to get.
This stuff is a recipe for gilding gesso (not the same thing as painter's gesso) made by Jerry Tresser and available either at his website or through John Neal, Bookseller. It is based off the period recipe in Cennini's "Il Libro dell' Arte", but replaces the highly toxic white lead of that recipe with non-toxic titanium white. It goes on nice and thick and dries raised, as it is supposed to. However, in the teardrop above (less so in the leaf below), if you look at the center you can see a bit of a dimple where it shrank somewhat as it dried. Sigh. With a lot of gilding materials, this is a flaw in the material itself, but I will confess that it's also a flaw in my own technique. I tend to "glop first" and put all the gesso down at once, and hope for the best. This is not the best. Still pretty good though! Apart from the dimple, this gesso did dry smooth and not wrinkly like you might recall the miniatum does that I used in my last big raised-gilding project. Gold leaf is thin enough that it will show every flaw and texture in the surface below it, which can be fun when you're flat gilding on paper and the grain shows through, but less so on raised gilding where you're hoping for a mirror-like finish.
Even so, I do like how I'm able to tease the gesso into corners and sharp points, as on the leaf above.
Here's a picture of the teardop and a dot after gilding; the flaw in my technique meant that I didn't wait long enough for the gesso to dry, and had to burnish very gently and carefully. The edges of the gesso were dryer than the center, and would not take the gold as well. Another probable cause of the problem was my refusal to paint a thin layer down first, allow that to dry a bit, then paint the thick layer over it. Again, this is more of a flaw in my technique than with the material.
Even with those flaws, the gold is still smooth and shiny, where it did stick.
So above, here's the same card a day later. I wrote dates next to each of the samples, and made a second attempt at gilding the older ones, labeled 4-28. Taking more time to allow the gesso to dry completely, burnishing a little harder, and taking a little more care gave me good results! There are still dimples, but with this particular gesso I likely would have been able to smooth them out with a scalpel if I had tried it. For the 4-29 samples, however, I painted a thin layer of gesso, let it dry for an hour (it darkens somewhat as it dries and goes matte instead of shiny), then went ahead and painted the thicker layer over the top. This is probably still a little impatient on my part, because the advice I've heard is to allow many thin layers to build up, rather than glop it all on as I prefer... but darn it, the technique this time worked beautifully. No dimples, although for some reason my second dot dried less as a rounded dome and more as a disk with raised edges. I'm still happy with it. The teardrop was great and the leaf made me happy as well.
Now for the magic part of this material:
You can burnish the gesso. Look at the teardrop above, which I burnished, compared to the dot and leaf which I didn't. Just look at how shiny that thing is! Can you guess how amazing that finish is going to look with gold on it? I got very very excited, and had to show the picture to everyone on Facebook, and the card to everyone in the house, here in quarantine lockdown.
Gilding all three new areas turned out to work better than the first attempts, too. I let them all sit overnight to dry, at least twelve hours I think, but less than twenty-four, and had zero problems with the gold not sticking to the edges. Whether that's because it was a rainy day, because I had painted a thin layer down first, or because I was able to press the gold down a little harder, I'm not sure.
I still want to obtain a hollow reed "breathing tube" so I don't risk dripping saliva on the page or touching my lips (and their greasy lip balm) to the artwork. But that's for later.
And now for the comparison. Look at the drop on the left, which was burnished, and contrast it with the one on the right, which was not. They're both shiny and satisfying, I'm not at all unhappy with either of them! But the one on the right has an ever-so-slight grainy look to it, a bit like velvet almost, while the one on the left is extremely smooth. That's the difference that burnishing makes. Ideally, you should be able to see your reflection (albeit distorted) in a finished piece of gilding. You're also supposed to be able to burnish the gold directly rather than through glassine paper, to achieve the highest polish possible.
I've never achieved either of those until the day I did these. I could literally see my face in the upper leaf on the left. Of course, something like that doesn't photograph well, so you'll just have to take my word for it, but it was amazing and I was thrilled.
Finally, I had one last experiment I wanted to try. I've done tooled gilding before, but that was over miniatum. That medium dries sort of soft, and was relatively easy to poke dimples into with a stylus. I wanted to see if it would be possible to tool gesso that had dried for two days and was hard, or if I would need to work it while it was still soft (and then have to figure out when was the right level of softness so as not to ruin it). I haven't replaced my styluses yet, but I did have a mechanical pencil that I decided to use to test the effect. The drop on the right got a row of dots courtesy of the end of the pencil (no lead), and they took surprisingly well. The gesso seems to require harder pressure to get the dots to go, which was about what I expected, but it did not crack or flake off the page as I feared it might.
All in all, this entire experiment was a success at every step. I learned a lot about how the gesso behaves, and got better results with it than I have with any modern recipe raised gilding medium, ever. I did also buy some of Mr. Tresser's flat gilding size, but I haven't tested it yet. I look forward to seeing how it behaves! In the meantime, it's been a week and I'm still glowing with how well this all turned out.
I hope you're all enjoying your quarantine, or the relaxing of restrictions depending where you live. Be safe, and be creative!
No comments:
Post a Comment