Gold and Black

I decided not to gild the gold – but to use gold gouache instead. I thought it’d fit better with the watercolour, which is fairly light in density.

I’m doing the black in gouache. I don’t know what that is on the black on the right – something to do with the camera?

Colours

I first did a trial on a photocopy, to work out the placement of the colours.

The plain yellow is where the gold is going to go.
And then I did it for real :

You can’t see it, but I’ve drawn a 1.5mm margin around the letters that sit inside the rectangle.
All the background within the rectangle will be painted black, to make the colours really ‘pop’. Hence the margin - otherwise I’d loose those curved lines with circles at the end into the background.
I’ve made one mistake – on the K – on the left where it’s red/yellow, it should be red/yellow extending into the blue/purple for the rest of that scrolly bit, not blue/purple.
I’ve tried my trusty elastic rubber, and lifting with clean water, but it’s not budging. I reckon the watercolour pencils have staining qualities on the paper. Better not to fuss and leave it as it is.

Design

Her’s where I take a break from the sampler to do a long overdue birthday present. (It’s gotten embarassing)
It’s for my friend Nick.
I did an “N” for him at http://elmsleyrose.blogspot.com/search/label/Illuminated%20N%20for%20Nick
and so the joke is that I could really just do I, C,K, and he’d have his complete name.
But I’m not going to do that to him, but I am calling it the “ICK Project”.
It’s based on Jan Pickett’s Decorated Initials - http://www.janpickett.com/decorated_initials.htm
such as the S, the two K’s and the V shown.
This is my design “

The I, C and K are copied from Jan's work. The N is too, but I modified it a bit because it was from a different 'set'.

The idea is to use watercolour pencils. You choose two sets of 2. With each two, you blend them together in the different sections of each letter. (It’s easier to see than explain). The second K (in greens and blues) on Jan Pickett’s page shows what I’m talking about.
I’ll also be popping some gilding on some letter “sections”
I’ve never used watercolour pencils before, so it should be fun!