I love to embellish my giclee prints, it breathes a life into them, makes each one unique and hand touched again. Adding precious materials also changes the prints in a curious way. They have layers to them. One of us might have created the original image, another digitally cleaned it up, and a third embellished the print. The original might have been created under terrible stress, or in an altered state, in the back of my van in a storm down the beach or at 3am while my baby slept. But the print would be embellished during the day, under good lights, and with attentive care and precision. There’s depth and interesting collaborations and juxtapositions.

I’ve worked a lot on perfecting my gilded prints and I’m thrilled with how they have been received. I’ve been exploring a few other techniques for embellishments and I’m pretty excited about them too. 

Here’s one of my gilded prints with 24 karat gold on a rounded German size. It’s called Tangled in Dreams, and I sold this one a few days ago. 

This next style I’m really taken with. It’s very new and I haven’t offered it for sale yet. It’s impossible to show the lovely sparkle in a photograph, just as the real gold doesn’t show its shine. But it’s actually genuine, very finely ground amethyst.

Lastly today I wanted to explore using an interference pigment on a black ground. I created my own watercolour paint using pigment and gum arabic.

Again, the sheen is difficult to capture in a photo, but film shows it a little better. 

It’s rather like moonstone, appearing milky white from one angle and flashing intense blue from another. Against a white background it’s almost invisible until it flashes blue, which reminds me of the artworks I’ve created with invisible UV reactive ink. It may even work as a way to embellish prints made from originals with UV inks, I’ll have to trial it and see.

My work now is to keep exploring grounds and varnishes so I understand what works best in creating and protecting these artworks. I expect there will be another exhibition of embellished prints coming up.