A little sparkle and shine can be a great addition to the normally dry and flat finished look of your watercolors. There are several techniques that create or at least imitate a shine. From varnished and waxed topcoats to tricking the eye to actually using watercolors that have a glitter effect, these all can showcase a wet surface or a shine on bird feathers or damp foliage...the possibilities are endless. And here are a few:
Water surface: using the movement of water by value change can give an appearance of shine and highlight.
Reflection on metal
...and Glass
All of these "tricks" work but actually adding an inheritantly shiny item to your image steals the show. What we are going to focus on in this blog is using sheets of gold foil glued into your watercolor in a purposeful way. Much in the style of illuminated manuscripts from centuries ago, we will try to enhance with gold foil.I am following this YouTube artist , Theodora Gould, who shares her techniques and sells her products online:
I will use an already created alphabet to do our initials... just for fun at first. I do realize that this method requires patience and preparation...not necessarily my usual practice.😇 But I want to learn the process and use it in future works. I also want to share it with students.
I began with an already painted floral and added the initial "C".
Mistake #1:This is not smooth paper,
I usually prefer rough texture so gold foil is not going to lie flat
Mistake #2: I used Mod Podge as my glue/ just don't
Mistake #3: I did not wait for the glue to get to a certain point before applying the very thin gold sheet
But, I actually like this look of old, bumpy illumination. I filled in the openings with watercolor pigment
Stay tuned for more of this fascinating process.
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