Tag Archives: gold leaf

Mini Paintings for Sale

I’ve put all of the available mini swimmer paintings up for sale n my Etsy shop – this is my new shop for all swimming-related things: www.waterdrawnart.etsy.com

Three have gone to an exhibition, two have been sold, the rest are all there for you to browse should you wish. Here are a few I haven’t posted on this blog yet. Most of them are 4 inches square – a size that I found challenging before I painted all these: I’ve had a bit of practice now. The last ones three are about 5.5 inches square. And most of them have shimmery bits of metal leaf on them – gold, palladium or aluminium, which gives the ‘bubbles’ an extra dimension.

Mini Swimmer 5 in gouache and aluminium leaf

Mini Swimmer 25 in gouache

Mini Swimmer 22 in gouache

Mini Swimmer 17 in gouache and gold leaf

Mini Swimmer 16 in gouache and gold leaf

Mini Swimmer 9 in gouache and gold leaf

Mini Swimmer 27 in gouache and gold leaf

A painting commission

Tiny paintings and tinier gold flakes

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Watercolour and gold leaf on paper

Feeling that there were some interesting developments in the last lot, I am continuing with mini paintings of swimmers, mostly incorporating metal leaf (Gold / Palladium or Aluminium). Here’s a quick work in progress… first shred your gold leaf (I used a pointy steel tool to hold the gold leaf down with, and shredded it with the tip of a scalpel.). Next, apply, fragment by tiny fragment, to the painting. Fortunately I have the sort of patience for this kind of thing. This is not the normal way gilding is done… by trial and error I’ve found what works well is picking up a gold fragment on the tip of a damp paint, applying the tiniest dab of dilute Gum Arabic to the paper, and then laying the fragment on the paper and smoothing it down with the damp brush. I’ve also found the easiest way to do this is to work with a brush in each hand. This tends to minimise the number of times that I either loose track of where I have put the glue as I take my eyes off it, or pick up the gold leaf with the gluey brush, not the just damp one. It also speeds up the process quite a bit.

Gold leaf, fragment by fragment…

Shredded gold leaf!

More mini paintings

Mini Paintings

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Finished pics to come soon…

I have been working on A LOT some small paintings at once – for me – considering I usually have only one painting at a time on the go. This is partly because I am painting small scale for a particular exhibition, and partly because I thought it would be an opportunity to experiment a bit more – swimmers in actual paint is a new thing for me, and the addition of metal leaf is something I have been trying to find a place for in my recent paintings as well, so it was a chance to try out several variations and see where it went without being too intimidated by a massive investment of time if I messed it all up.

The size is about 4 inches square. The media are gouache, watercolour, metal leaf in gold, palladium and aluminium, and occasionally attacking the paintwork with a scalpel, which is always fun.

So here are a few work-in-progress photos. Better photos of each painting (or at least the ones I like best) to come later. This is a size that I find slightly challenging but I’ve had so much fun with this lot I may do another few. Perhaps some above water. And I think I probably learned some stuff. So, with few explanations, sorry, here are the photos: