Workshop: Working with ink and gold

Gina Nelson reveals some of the steps she uses when creating illustrations in ink and gold, along with a couple of useful tricks she’s learnt through trial and error

Discover the techniques Gina Nelson uses to bring a metallic sheen to her compositions.

Gina’s a self-taught artist who works as a lead artist in the video games industry. Explore more of her art by visiting www.ginanelsonart.com.

Mixing humans with nature and the idea of nature taking over is a subject that truly fascinates me. For this workshop I wanted to create a piece that showed a figure who had embraced nature and ascended to something like a forest spirit, shedding her humanity and transforming into a new being.

Most of my ideas for finished artworks come to me while I’m on the train. Commuting and being surrounded by people often has me longing for nature, I suppose that in a sense the figure in this piece embodies that longing.

I knew from the start that I wanted to add gold to this piece, even though all the intricate shapes would make it tricky to work with. I felt it was important as the gold would bring a sort of “holiness” to the figure.

Once I had finished the ink work I had to work quickly to paint glue onto the areas I wanted to add gold to. The glue dries in about 15 minutes so it was vital to lay the gold down in sections, but also important to get it right as there are little to no opportunities to touch up gold. It’s an intense process that requires a lot of focus, but it’s absolutely worth it.