I was asked by Lizzie Pickering to produce some gilded glass to put up in her house. She asked me to produce a treble clef and a bass clef. This is something I have been doing in my spare time aside from my university studies. It is also something that I have found extremely challenging!
I felt as though blogging this for my PPP was suitable, as working for a client on something that I'm still very new to is definitely developing on my professional and personal skills!
My sketches of how the final designs could look:
I sent the sketches over to Lizzie who approved of the designs and said that they were more exciting than what she had expected!
I redrew the sketches in fine liner and scanned them into the computer, then printed them off on separate sheets so that they filled the size of the glass. The images were blown up to A2 size for me to trace over with my paintbrush on the glass to make life easier!
Then the madness begins with the painting...
The paint is finished...
Now for the gilding! (the hardest part as I've only done this twice before)
When it came to cleaning any excess gold and size off, I accidentally pulled enamel and some gold off the design, which was really frustrating as this hadn't happened to me before!
This was so annoying, as it meant I had to start all over again! So using white spirit I removed the entire design ready to start again.
This time I decided to give the bass clef a go, as I wanted to do the more simple design.
The second attempt came out so much better! I was getting used to pulling my new quill brush and the lines were so much neater.
Then the most annoying thing happened... I broke the glass!
I decided to carry on with the design for my own portfolio, as I could photoshop the crack out when I glue the glass back on.
But typically, once I finished guiding and the design was looking really great, the breakage decided to crack even more and broke across the entire glass. I glued it all back together, but it's a complete mess!!!
I was absolutely distraught by this happening, because the gilding had turned out really well and I was really happy with what I had managed to produce, despite the previous circumstances.
I have been in contact with Lizzie throughout everything and she has been very understanding. We have decided to wait until I've finished uni and am back at home in the summer time to work on this, as I will have all the time in the world by then and will be able to concentrate properly rather than worrying about my uni work in the back of my mind, which was probably why I made so many stupid mistakes!
I learnt a lot about myself during this and how I can cope under pressure. I also learnt how to just deal with it when 2 days of solid work can be ruined within a few minutes of carelessness. I think that in the future I am going to try and find some sort of easel to work on, as this will definitely help and prevent from leaning on the glass too much or hitting it on objects. I really wish both of the designs had worked out first time, but considering I've only ever produced two other gilded pieces, I didn't expect either of those two things to happen at all as I hadn't experienced those kind of mistakes before now!
