Step 8 - Rendering Secondary Copy
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I water gilded 18K gold and Paladium leaf, then back painted the copy. I took my original layout drawing and scanned the various text. I then ran the Corel Trace function on the bitmap image, giving me a vector file. After a bit of tweeking of the file, I output it to my plotter on pounce mode to create some fairly tight pounce patterns, which were used to transfer the copy onto the water gilded leaf. Back painting small letters like these via a pounce pattern is one of the more difficult, yet rewarding, procedures. "...though I reckon screen printing would be easier." Again, when cleaning off the excess gold, the letters are trimmed to clean them up.
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A view from the front.
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The sandcarved text was finished in mica powder, the same process as described in doing the mica powders in the scroll work. The word "Bonds" has acid etched centers and was gilded with 22K moon gold.
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A brown drop shadow was added to the water gilded text and a cream color drop shadow was added to other portions of the text. The portions of the text with the cream color drop shadow will get a secondary water gilded shadow. The cream color shade should drop out when the background is painted, just leaving a gap between the letter and the gilded shade, as seen on the original lithograph. I figured it would be easier to paint in this gap than to try to back paint the secondary shade while leaving the gap.
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This is how it ended up looking...
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...and here is the overall from the front.
Step 9 - Flourishes and Shade
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The flourishes around the lower copy were water gilded with 23K gold leaf. I also noticed I forgot to do the secondary drop shadow on the word Bonds, so I picked that up at the same time.
The next step was to CLEAN & INSPECT the glass. To me, this is one of the most important steps and can not be over emphasized. Nothing can ruin a nice gilded sign more than by having debris appear in your background, or having some gold going outside of it's desired area. I start by cleaning the front, then proceed to clean the back, continually inspecting it from the front. I spent about an hour cleaning it. I will now wear gloves when handling it.
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After the glass was thoroughly clean, I painted in the shades that appear on the original art. These were done with varnish tinted with asphaltum.
Step 10 - Painting the Background
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Okay, here's a good one, kinda pushin' the envelope a bit. I cut out, on my vinyl cutter, a block of .10 lines with .10 spaces inbetween. I then mounted this cut vinyl to a wood frame and peeled the carrier sheet off. I then pounced the adhesive side of the vinyl to get rid of any stickiness. I laid this mask down onto the glass, then masked off the areas that weren't going to have any of these lines, with paper cut out of my layout drawing, registered and weighted down with washers. Nothing was stuck down to the glass, only weighted. I then airbrushed the fading stripe pattern onto the glass with tinted shellac.
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I lifted the paper masks and the line stencil, then repositioned the paper masks and airbrushed the same tinted shellac into the required areas for a shade. This was all a bit experimental, but it worked out pretty darn nice.
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I proceeded to mix up a background color with japan paints and apply it with a brush over the background. I used my airbrush to create a fade around the area of the lower pictorial. There is also one more window left clear for another abalone strip that fades into the background.
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Here it is from the front. I comissioned the paintings from some folks I've done business with before over in the Ukrane. They did a fairly nice job from what I provided them to work from. I may tone them down a bit. But it's real close to sending this off to the framer!
This step-by-step is continued in Hamilton Bank Note reverse glass sign, Step-by-Step Part 5.
Denver Chapter of the Letterheads