Date: January 17-24-31 & February 7

Time: 8PM Hanoi time GMT+7

Online class via Zoom, recordings will be provided.

Registration opens from December 8 to January 10. Zoom class link and handouts will be sent by email on December 11.

This workshop is open to all level artists and calligraphers.

Illumination is the art of decorating manuscripts through the application of gold and silver. Technically illumination is to attach precious metal leaf or powder onto the design using natural ingredient mixed adhesives, then burnished to gloriously shine. However, it can be different from nation to nation due to weather condition, surface materials and so on.

In this workshop, we will explore a modern approach to illumination using modern ingredients - Kolner Instacoll, a revolutionary water-based gilding system that allows artists to achieve high-gloss, mirror-like gold and silver finishes on various surfaces without the traditional labor-intensive burnishing process. It is also convenient and less sensitive to weather, compared to traditional methods such as gesso or gelatin, etc.

Materials
This workshop does not include materials, please prepare by yourself as following list

• Instacoll High Gloss Base CLEAR (for genuine gold leaf)
  (optional: YELLOW base is also usable but CLEAR base is more versatile to mix other colors)

• Miniatum Ink or Ormoline Gilding Medium

• Instacoll HA (High Active) (for heavy leaves such as silver, brass, copper, platinum…)

• Instacoll Tissue (alternatives: pure cotton/Chamois leather/glasses cloth) to burnish gold

• Watercolor brush 00 and 01

• Transfer gold leaf 23K

• Some watercolor sheets, both cold press and hot press

• Some gouaches

• Gold powder or alternative gold pigments

* If you want to learn how to use loose gold leaf, I will also demonstrate in the class and provide proper tool list. However, it can be quite difficult to get all required tools so please decide to buy or not after the course.

All supplies are available at https://www.goldleafsupplies.co.uk

Cirriculum

Week 1: Introduction to Instacoll

• Introduce different kinds of Instacoll

• How to mount and flatten paper or vellum

• How to apply Instacoll for illumination: the base, flat & raised built-up layers

• Making gilding chart

Week 2: Leaf application

• How to activate Instacoll for gilding

• How to gild gold or other kinds of metal leaves on Instacoll

• How to burnish

Week 3: Gilding dots and lines

• How to apply Instacoll in precise shapes

• How to gild small details

• How to clean gilding edges

• How to gild silver on top of the gold

Week 4: Coloring for illumination art

• Painting or writing on top of the gold surface

• Painting techniques with gouache for illumination

• How to use shell gold or alternative gold pigments