The Night Mail

W.H. Auden's The Night Mail written & illustrated by Gordon Gordenho

Coit pens or poster pens

Coit pens are American and are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain, there is a British version which is the Automatic pen.  These pens are used for poster work and for writing big letters.

Using oil pastel as a resist

White candle wax as a resist

Two colours of oil pastel

Oil pastel top and candle wax bottom

This Coit pen produces two lines, it's often called a scroll pen

Lines of text could be written in the gap using a conventional nib

It's possible to use the very corner of the nib to write small letters

Diamond Jubilee 2012

For the past year the group has been working on a book to give to the Queen to commemorate her Diamond Jubilee with class members past and present designing & producing individual pages. These are the pages before they have been bound into book form.   The pages have been guilded using a variety of techniques employing shell gold, gold leaf, gold gouache and gold ink. The silk for the cover has been machine embroidered and beaded by a class member. Annie is going to make a padded cover using the embroidered silk and she will bind the book. Another member of the class will make a box to keep the book in.    These photographs represent hundreds of hours of work.

Silk cover

The inspiration for this page came from the flowers embroidered on the coronation gown.

This was sung at the coronation.

The edges of the page have been slit and ribbon threaded through.

A bit of bling!

The Yale of Beaufort - one of the Queen's Beasts.

Made in Japan.

Illuminated page by Annie Moring

This unfinished illuminated page by Annie Moring shows the use of shell gold, flat gold leaf and raised gold leaf.   

The crest at the top of the page is painted with shell gold, the gold letters are raised gold leaf and the gold in the border is flat gold leaf.  The border design is painted in Designer's Gouache.

There is a video on our YouTube channel of a demonstration in class of how to use gold leaf  - the link to YouTube is to the right of this post.

(Click on the picture to see a larger version)

How to use Chinese stick ink

This is how to re-constitute Japanese or Chinese stick ink using an ink stone.    There is a video on our YouTube channel of a demonstration in class of how to make up Chinese stick ink - the link to YouTube is to the right of this post.

You will need a stick of solid ink and an inkstone, these are usually made of slate, it is possible to use an unglazed porcelain saucer instead of an inkstone.

Add as much warm water to the stone as you need to make the quantity of ink you want.  Remember the more water you add the longer you will need to grind the ink stick to get the desired blackness.  Warm water works more quickly than cold.

Grind the stick in the water until you achieve the colour of ink you desire.

You can see the depth of colour change as the stick is ground longer. 

It is possible to achieve very fine lines with this ink.

It is important to dry the stick when you have finished making up your ink to prevent it cracking and crumbling.  If you have ground more ink than you need it will keep in a screwtop container.