Springtime in My Soul

My initial goal for this text was a playful, modern feel but it was not working so I looked to historical styles and chose Italian white vine from the 15th century. I departed from the traditional color palette to reflect the springtime colors I was seeing out my window. I included the tulips, redbud tree, plum tree and dogwood tree in my yard since I was working on this piece while they were in bloom. Sometimes I like to spend more time on the decorative parts of a piece than on the lettering and that was certainly the case here. To achieve the rich, detailed look of this border, I sketched and refined the design on gridded paper, transferred the design in pencil to a piece of handmade paper using a light table, traced over all the pencil with India ink in a technical pen, laid the gold leaf, painted in each colored section with gouache, shaded the white vines with a hard lead colored pencil, added the white and gold dots over each colored field with a stylus, and then went over all the outlines again with the technical pen. Lots of steps mean lots of time but I enjoy getting lost in the execution of a piece like this once I have done the design/layout work.