The Image Flow is now offering an online photography course of our Photography Gilding Workshop. This 2-day online photography class has been re-designed for you to access from the comfort of your own home over Zoom!

Learn how to apply a contemporary variation of the ancient gilding technique to your photography work in this two-day metal gilding workshop. Use your own photographs and mixed media pieces and experiment with copper leafing possibilities.

Metal Leaf Gilding Artwork © Solange Roberdeau

Visual artist Solange Roberdeau will demonstrate contemporary gilding and explain the various metal leafing materials she uses during each Zoom session. Afterward, you can dive right in and experiment with the process. Solange will provide a material list of the materials necessary for copper gilding, which can be purchased online before the start of the workshop. Basic materials include: copper leaf, a bottle of gilding size, a bottle of fluid acrylic, a calligraphy brush, and some watercolor paper.

You’ll learn how to apply copper leaf and loose mica powder pigment to photographic as well as textural, mixed media surfaces. Additionally, you’ll learn tips for incorporating other materials such as thread, fabric, and organic material.

Metal Leaf Gilding Artwork © Solange Roberdeau

At the end of the online workshop, you’ll have made samples of your own for future use that show each step of the technique. And of course your own gilded pieces of artwork!

Metal Leaf Gilding Artwork © Solange Roberdeau

Please have your own photographs and/or artwork on any surface ready for gilding.

The Image Flow will offer a student discount of 50% for two (2) 11×14 or smaller prints (we suggest Epson Legacy Fibre or Baryta paper) for use in this workshop if desired.

Image files need to be sent to The Image Flow by October 28 to guarantee prints will be ready for the workshop.

Online Photography Class Schedule

Saturday, 11AM–1PM: Zoom! Introductions, immediately followed a demonstration of how to set-up and implement the gilding technique. Questions along the way encouraged! After Zoom session you can dive into the process on your own.

Sunday, 11AM–1PM: Zoom! Show work in progress, Q&A tips and tricks, followed by further demonstrations on oxidizing and other gilding techniques. After Zoom session you can dive into the process on your own.

Metal Leaf Gilding Artwork © Solange Roberdeau

About Zoom

Zoom is video conferencing software that allows us to video chat and share our screens all using our computer’s built-in video camera and microphone.

Setting up a Zoom account is easy and free. Just got to the Zoom website to create a username and download the software onto your computer (not your phone). 

Never used Zoom? Check out their support page for How to Join a Zoom Meeting.

Workshop presented by The Image Flow Photography Center, providing photography classes, custom printing services, and studio rentals.

Instructor Bio

Solange Roberdeau is a visual artist and art educator whose own work explores perception and seeking out the creative potential in our immediate environments through materials, gesture and response to place. She works primarily in paper, sumi ink and with contemporary gilding in her own studio practice. She received a BFA in Printmaking from RISD and an MFA in Studio Art from MICA. From 2006 to 2012 Solange worked in the studio of the painter Robert Kushner where she specialized in his version of gilding. She has since gone on to give lessons in this technique at venues including Kala Art Institute, San Francisco Center for the Book, Concept Gallery, Santa Fe, NM. She has been the recipient of several artists grants including from the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Bethany CT and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Taos NM.