From: owner-scribes@castle.org (scribes digest) To: scribes-digest@castle.org Subject: scribes digest V2 #2 Reply-To: Sender: owner-scribes@castle.org Errors-To: owner-scribes@castle.org Precedence: bulk scribes digest Thursday, May 14 1998 Volume 02 : Number 002 In this issue: RE: [scribes]: Burnishing rips gold Re: [scribes]: Burnishing rips gold Re: [scribes]: Teaching Calligraphy ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 07:48:42 -0400 From: Knott Deanna Subject: RE: [scribes]: Burnishing rips gold >>What gilding recipe are you using? There is a wonder ful woman here in the East named Mistress Caitlin = FitzHenry. She teaches gold leaf classes all over the place. I made a = gesso from one of her recipes. It involves satured sugar syrup, acrylic = medium, and red gesso. I used the off the shelf Liquitex *stuff* for the = last two. >>1) Ingredients not ground all the way smooth, Ground? ;-) not an issue in this case >>and 2) the gold was burnished before it dried. In this second one, the = gesso can be soft because there is too much sweetener (preventing it from drying), = or because the moistening of brushed on water made it really wet (you should moisten by breath), or because the gesso just didn't set drying for long enough(rainy days?). I have not yet ever moistened my gesso with a wet brush. I always = breathe on it. Rainy days? I was actually wondering about that. I was = going to ask the other Eastern scribes in this area if they were having = problems too. No kidding, it rained for 11 days straight here. (Average = rainfall for the month of May: 1.5" Total to date:6") I laid the gesso = on day 8 or 9 of the rain and applied the gold a couple of days later. Thank you everybody for all your input. (keep it coming) Avelina ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 07:50:26 EDT From: RenScribe Subject: Re: [scribes]: Burnishing rips gold In a message dated 5/13/98 10:19:36 PM, randyaf@provide.net wrote: >What gilding recipe are you using? The two frequent reasons for tearing >through the gold are: 1) Ingredients not ground all the way smooth, and 2) >the gold was burnished before it dried. In this second one, the gesso can >be soft because there is too much sweetener (preventing it from drying), or >because the moistening of brushed on water made it really wet (you should >moisten by breath), or because the gesso just didn't set drying for long >enough(rainy days?). > >Ranthulfr In my case at least, it's not the gesso, it's most definitely the burnisher. Sometimes a particular burnisher works, sometimes it doesn't. It's not so much that the gold comes off .... it just won't get the mirror shiny surface I want with a burnisher that I *know* works fine because I used it on the same piece just the night before. I have tempermental burnishers... lucky me ;-) BTW... another thing that causes gold to pull off is not enough moisture in the first place. I have to really watch for this when the humidity is low. The outer edges of the gesso will hold the gold down nicely, and it looks great. When I go to burnish, the middle of the gold will flake off. I've learned to recognize a lot of the mistakes just by how the gold looks. I find this really helpful because most of the problems can be overcome if I can just pinpoint the cause. When I'm teaching a class on gold leaf I like to take along my first piece. It has a lot of the common mistakes. I can point out which mistake was caused by which problem, and tell the class how to correct or avoid it in the first place. When it comes to laying gold, like most scribal skills, practice is what allows us to do a technique with a moderate amount of proficiency. Eibhlin ni Chaoimh AEthelmearc ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 06:40:23 +0000 From: David or Corinne Kohrn Subject: Re: [scribes]: Teaching Calligraphy I first learned calligraphy at a formal one semester class. (Professor Palladino, Reed College, Portland Oregon). We were given paper with sets of guide lines (5 pen widths high) to put under our writing paper (which was see through enough). We started with Cartridge pens, but quickly progressed to dip pens. We started with Italic. Specifically with the letter i and n. Spent a few days working on consistency (of pen angle, spacing, and letter formation). We looked at an example and wrote line after line of the same letter (in small groupings, to resemble words). I think we worked on Italic for a couple months. We then went more quickly through other alphabets (a week or two per). For each he gave us at least a one page exemplar. He stressed proper pen angle and letter height (in pen widths). We didn't move on to brush work until the very end. Calote dragonfly@w-link.net ------------------------------ End of scribes digest V2 #2 ***************************