Below is the process for this special gold sign I created for my friends, Fred and Jodean. You’ll see behind-the-scenes photos of how it all came together, and the order in which I completed each step.
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Check out this quick overview of my process! Photos don’t always capture gold, but a video is the next-best thing to seeing it in person!
Sign Inspiration
Jodean is the calligrapher and engraver behind Desert Plume Calligraphy in Tempe, Arizona. I’ve been lucky enough to have become close with her over the past several years. I have learned so much from her and she has encouraged me beyond what I believed I could have done in the practice of calligraphy. She is why you see me at live engraving events. I have stayed with her and her husband, Fred, during several workshops with the Calligraphic Society of Arizona, worked with her at onsite events, and even helped her with her work now and again. We have a blast together, that’s for sure.
During the 2024 IAMPETH conference, Jodean and I spent time together learning, laughing, and planning to use our new skills afterward. Fred picked us up from the airport and i took a nap at their place before cruising back down to Tucson. (Read more about my first time at the calligraphy conference here).
I’d had the idea in mind for a while to make a lettering piece for them. Somewhere along the way, we started jokingly referring to their home as “The Cooper Inn”. I stay there so frequently and they take SUCH good care of me. Excited to use the new skills I learned at the conference, and grateful for their friendship and support, I dreamed up this fun sign.
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Designing the Lettering
Jodean does beautiful pointed pen calligraphy, but I wanted Fred to be able to enjoy the lettering too. I chose a variation of Roman capitals for all text. I wanted to use gold leaf for this sign, and I wanted the background to look like wood.
My intention with the gold sign was to look nice, but lived in, maybe even a little distressed. It should look legible for Fred, and sparkly for Jodean. I snuck a photo of one of Fred’s coasters to keep this in mind.
The lettering for their last name was in my mind for a few months before I put it to the page. To create interest, I made the name swoop up and to the right as it went across. This also left a nice space to nestle in the smaller text around it. The name, of course, is the most prominent information in the sign, so it is the largest. The other words, “the” and “inn” are still large enough to be relevant, but they don’t compete with the main text.
At IAMPETH, Skyler Chubak encouraged us to use drafting tools to get the shapes and angles of the letters consistent and correct. This saves lots of time and adds integrity to the letters.
My tools of choice:
- oval guide
- mechanical pencil
- monoline eraser
- circle guide
- ruler
- set square
The name features a lettering technique called “inlining”, a technique that Skyler demonstrated in class. Inlining adds a decorative line to the inside edge of a letter, creating a border around the letter. During the design phase, I also added a drop shadow below each letter of all text. There is also a slight shadow on the inside edge of each inline.
I knew that all the inlines would have gold leaf, so I added decorative circles and shapes within the letters of the name to also be gilded. This would make the name flashier and more celebratory, also enforcing its importance in the design. I didn’t finish the design at this stage, but I knew I was going to add some kind of decorative border and a logo!
Transferring the Design
After I finished writing the text, I used it to decide what size paper I needed for the final draft. Fortunately, I had just the right piece of hot-pressed watercolor paper in my studio. The texture of a page will always show through gold leaf. It isn’t necessarily a problem, but paper choice is another tool in your toolbox when putting together a calligraphy art piece.
I cleaned up my sketch and used a new tool. At the conference, Harvest Crittenden introduced me to Saral Paper. This is an erasable, non-greasy paper used for transferring a design to a surface. In the past, I’ve used carbon paper to transfer designs, but it isn’t erasable. At first, I tried using my light pad, but the hot-pressed watercolor paper is a little too thick to see all the detail from my lettering draft.
I placed the Saral paper between my draft and the final page. Using a hard colored pencil and a mini ruler (for the straight lines, a tip I picked up from chalkboard artist Cheryl McLean), I transferred my draft to the final page. Then, I used a thin Micron pen to go over the lines, making sure they stayed in place.
Gilding and Painting the Sign
I used gilding mediums Ormoline and Instacoll as sizes (adhesives) for the gold leaf. Each adhesive interacts with the gold differently, so I used them to create interest in the vertical bar of the C.
I think I used 3 layers of gold leaf on this gold sign, partly because I’m still new to gilding. The beautiful shine of the gold also made it hard to stop!
I chose to use gouache (an opaque watercolor) for this piece because I wanted to get familiar with it. I knew I wanted the gold sign to resemble a wooden sign that hangs over shops on an L-shaped bracket. Warm colors would be the best to emulate the feelings of home-away-from-home. With this in mind, I paged through the CMYK formulas from Harvest Crittenden’s 2024 IAMPETH. I chose and mixed warm browns, blues, yellows, and a red.
First, I filled in the large letters because I was so excited to get color around the gold leaf. Then, I filled in the blue words and painted the frame illustration around the text. I blended the yellow with a darker yellow to give the illusion of light around the frame.
Finishing Touches
There was an empty space at the bottom of the composition that I needed to fill. Since I was making a sign for a pretend business, I thought it would be fun to come up with a little logo featuring the couple’s initials. I gilded the large C enclosing the F and the J.
Read more about Layout and Design for calligraphy and lettering here.
Then, I mixed a whole bunch of brown gouache for the background, carefully painting around each letter and design element. I mixed a darker brown for the shadows cast by the lettering and frame.
The finishing touch in a work like this is to outline the letters and illustrations. This makes the letters crisp and allows you to clean up any edges that need attention.
After I outlined the letters, I used an Ames Lettering Guide, a ruler, and a Micron pen to add horizontal lines for the wood grain. Later on, I went back in with a Micron and added more lines between the first set.
Read more about basic tools for lettering and calligraphy here.
I used an embossing stylus to “tool” the gold. Impressing dimples and lines to the gold adds texture to the gold surface, allowing it to catch more light!
Gold Sign Challenges
I damaged the gold a bit as I was working on and around it. The damage isn’t easy to see under lamplight because the gold shines SO brightly. In daylight, however, the attention it needed showed. Fortunately, gold still stuck to the size and polished up nicely.
Though I tried, I did not mix enough paint for the background. I was extremely fortunate in being able to mix the next batch closely to the first one. It helps to have some variation in the background to create interest. Since I wanted the sign to look like natural wood, this worked out. Running low on paint, and time, was stressful, and I’ve gotten better about mixing more paint than I think I need. And then mixing a little bit more!
I also didn’t plan this gold sign with a standard framing size in mind like I normally do. I scoured craft shops for something analogous to the completed size of the work, but I used such an oddly sized piece of paper! Finding the right color of matboard was also challenging. I wanted the mat to look nice but not flashy, and some of the colors I found clashed with the colors in the artwork. I eventually settled on a dark brown, which elevates the piece but isn’t as serious as, say, a black matboard would have been.
Presenting the Gold Sign
Though I completed this piece in August of 2024, I didn’t give it to Jodean and Fred until February 2025 (you can read about my 2024 here). I stayed with them after I gave a Monogram presentation for the Calligraphic Society of Arizona’s monthly meeting. Jodean attended for the first part, where I shared some practice sketches for the sign and ideas for making their monogram. After the meeting I placed my sketches on top of the completed artwork inside of a large flat paper bag, concealing the gift inconspicuously.
Later that evening at the Cooper Inn, we were chatting about the day’s presentation. First, I brought out the monograms sketches from the meeting so Jodean could see them more closely and Fred could see them for the first time. After we looked them over, I pulled out the larger sketch of the lettering for The Cooper Inn. Jodean thought it was the coolest and we excitedly chatted about the sketch.
The Big Reveal!
I was SO excited to show them the completed piece. Containing myself, I slowly and coolly pulled it out of the paper bag and set it on the table for them to see. I don’t know who exclaimed more, them or me, but they were so thrilled with the artwork. The more Jodean looked at it, the more details she noticed and pointed out. Fred kept asking how long it took me to complete the piece.
Although my idea was to have Fred build a frame for this sign, they want to have it professionally framed. I wish I’d taken that on myself, but as we learn better, we do better. Looking forward to seeing this piece many more times in the years to come.
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