Part of my ongoing art practice is the continued study of traditional art techniques and with this in mind I booked a week-long course at the King's Foundation School of Traditional Arts to learn how to paint Persian mythical creatures with shell gold.
Persian Mythical Creatures: Azhdaha
We learned how to make shell gold by grinding down gold leaf to powder and mixing it with a binder to make gold paint. It's called shell gold as in medieval times shells were traditionally used as small palettes. We applied the paint with miniature brushes, the work you can see here is created with a tiny 000 brush. It's exacting work, which is hard on the eyes and takes practice to achieve the hand control necessary.
Persian Mythical Creatures: Simurgh
Persian Mythical Creatures:Qilin
I worked on indigo hemp paper, which is a smooth enough surface for the detailed work but can also be made smoother by burnishing. In class we used large cowrie shells to burnish the paper but in my studio I use a large flat agate burnisher, which I prefer.
Persian Mythical Creatures: Flying Leopard
Once the painting is finished the gold can also be burnished with a small agate stone or burnisher to bring up its lustre. As the shell gold is applied much like watercolour, it would be hard to get the high shine of burnished gold leaf but I found the heavier layers of gold did polish up to a lovely reflective shimmer.
Shell Gold Paintings: Birds
Shell Gold Paintings: Crane
I enjoyed learning how to make and paint with shell gold, as with many traditional techniques it's slow and challenging but not without its rewards. With practice, I hope to use it in combination with my gold leaf gilding.
If you'd like to see some of my leaf gilding combined with variety of mixed media, take a look at my Decorative Capital Letters series, created for a workshop at the British Library or for a video of the leaf gilding process, see my Vasilisa's Skull-Lantern piece in the Gilding folder.
