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Step by Step photos

Showing you five photos of a work in progress.
This was a Wedding Guest book for a friend of mine,
married in February 2000... so this is one of my more recent works.
It contained a total of 16 pages, 14 of which were decorated as follows.

Step One-
The bare-bones design goes down. All gold leaf is applied to the page, and burnished with fine silk, or a semi-precious stone (burnisher).

Steps Two and Three-
The first and second colours are painted. As I was painting 14 pages at a time, I did all the red painting, then all the blue painting etc, to cut down on paint wastage ie, to avoid cleaning the brush of pigment for every page. As this is a French Gothic style, the leaves alternate between red and blue. In some examples they alternate red, blue and gold also.

Steps Four and Five-
adding the black lines for definition and filigree decoration.
Usually I begin with calligraphy before anything else, but in this case, it is a guest book and was signed at the wedding. I did however include the date and names of the happy couple, for their easy reference in the future, and care instructions on the inside back cover.
Lastly, I bound the lot in a nice red velvet cover.