DOMESTIKA COURSE – HEBREW CALLIGRAPHY – THE BORDER
Having completed the design, I wanted to add a little extra. I am not a fan of the proportions of the European paper sizes, and this piece was done on a sheet of A3 hot pressed watercolour paper (300 gsm).
The piece has a vintage look with the tea-dyed paper, and I wanted to make it look like old parchment, so I decided to trim it to an irregular shape.
Inspiration
Avraham Borshevsky is a Hebrew scribe and calligraphy artist living in Israel. As soon as I saw his beautiful work, I knew I had to do something similar with the border of my piece.
My interpretation
I drew an irregular shape around my calligraphy and cut it out with scissors. The paper is thick and very stiff, and I needed to sand the edge in places, after which I went round with a burnisher.
I drew a few lines coming in from the edges, and painted on some more tea to add shadows. Once this was dry, I inked around the edge with Tea Dye (appropriate!) Distress Ink using a blending brush to give an aged, distressed look. Then I painted a narrow gold border around the edge, and then painted some small tendrils, leaves and flowers. I added a dot border in gold, and some more shading, and the work was complete.
Some detail shots.
Plans for framing
I intend mounting it on a piece of dark brown mountboard and choosing a gold frame. I don’t think it will require an extra mount. I use EasyFrame for my picture framing, which is a great online site. You can upload a photo of your work and choose from a huge range of mounts and frames and put your virtual picture in, to see how it looks. They have a gallery where you can save your choices, and you can view them side by side, to make it easy to choose which one you prefer. They use clear plexiglass rather than glass, which is light and unbreakable, and I have found it very satisfactory. They also provide what you need to hang the picture. I’ve been very pleased with the results I’ve had from them so far.
I’ll post again once I’ve got the frame.
