I decided to use gold leaf to make the lightning in my drypoint print of King Lear.
I had to experiment a bit with this. When I added gold leaf to the Leonardo prints, I was working on paper that was not printed under the gilding. With this image I was gilding on top of paper that was underprinted and the oils in the ink made a difference to how the 'glair' took. I actually used PVA for glair (as I did with the gilding in my Leonardo book) as a medium for adhering the gold leaf, and transfer gold. You can add layers of gold to make it more solid. I burnished with a haematite burnisher and that makes the gold bright. (Poor photo - either I can get the gold to show up, or the colour of the image - seemingly not both!)
And now for an exhibition announcement. I just received an invitation to the opening reception of "Brush Up Your Shakespeare", an exhibition of Miniature Designer Bindings from the collection of Neale M Albert. 29 June - 27 July at the John Rylands Library in Manchester, England. Some of my Shakespeare books will be in this exhibit. Neale has built this collection over a number of years and there are some exquisite bindings by some of the world's most accomplished binders, and it will be well worth a visit. Unfortunately "Storming Shakespeare" is unlikely to be ready in time for this exhibition, as there is just too much remaining to be done.
