Learning to Gold Leaf

I took a very old painting to experiment with. This apple was part of a larger painting that I cut up. I decided I would remove all but the apple by covering everything else with gold leaf. I followed the instructions and found that the edges were very crummy. (pic 2)
Here's what it looks like now. I planned to come in with some acrylic to glaze over the gold leaf to put the dimension and form back into the fabrics. Probably not worth it with the messy edges but well worth the experimentation.

I then prepared the following painting for gold leaf by painting the background cadmium red medium as an undercolor for the gold. I really liked the red and thought about stopping, but no.... my intent was gold leaf so gold leaf it is.
I used a friend's method of putting down a mask with contact paper but did use adhesive. I really am happy with how it turned out but you will have to wait to see it since I haven't photographed it. Here it is in the pre-goldleaf stage.
I did go ahead and leaf the lillies, just 'cause. (I know... you can't guild the lilly!) The comments on New Year's eve were that the gold didn't work all that well on this particular piece. The execution was fine but the contrast was difficult. I think it's neat, though. and I'm glad I did it. The next challenge to to learn how to photograph gold leaf. I did these fast just to get them up on the blog.



Here's the lillies with the gold leaf. I think it is very rich and elegant. I burnished it a lot but not so much that I flattened out the rough texture that is in the paper. it accomodates the leaf nicely.



This is an etching I did a while back. The mask kind of wanted to pull up the etching paper but by carefully lifting it, all was well. The gold isn't as garish as it looks here, actually it is quite nice. Lee Weiss was quite taken by it on New Years. Liked it better that the lillies, above.




So here's another experiment with a 20+ year old painting. I tried silver leaf which is thinner than gold. You breathe... it moves. The medium that Judy recommended dried faster than I expected. Mostly because I forgot to cut it with water... my fault.
So the silver stuck in some places and not in the other. interesting but I'd never show it. then i came into the upper right hand corner to see the difference between actual leaf and acrylic metallic silver paint. Wow, what a difference. The paint is dead and totally unbelievable next to the real leaf.
Did you know that you can double click on the pictures for bigger versions? Give it a try.


Finally, here's a picture of my studio wall as I displayed it with recent and not so recent works to show folks who visited on New Year's eve.

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