Color & Crafts
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• Mixed Media Art

Adding Gold Leaf to Your Colorful Paintings

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You can buy the most expensive tube of "Metallic Gold" acrylic paint in the art store, but when you paint it onto a canvas, it will never truly look like metal. It will look exactly like what it is: brown plastic paint packed with tiny, sparkly glitter dust.

If you want your painting to possess a blinding, mirror-like, hyper-reflective luxury finish that catches the light from across the room, you cannot use paint. You must use the technique pioneered centuries ago in Byzantine religious icons: Gilding.

Applying microscopic sheets of Imitation Gold Leaf directly over heavily textured, brightly colored abstract paintings instantly elevates the artwork into the luxury tier. However, gold leaf is notoriously chaotic, sticky, and frustrating to handle. It will float away if you breathe on it. Here is the fool-proof guide to laying down the gold.

1. The Adhesive (Gilding Size)

Gold leaf is so thin it is almost molecular. It does not have a sticker backing. To make it stick to your canvas, you must use a highly specialized, incredibly strange liquid glue called "Size" (or Metal Leaf Adhesive).

  1. The Application: You have a massive abstract painting filled with geometric blocks of Navy Blue and Bright Pink. You want a heavy gold vein running perfectly down the center.

  2. Take a cheap brush (it will likely get ruined) and paint the liquid "Size" glue exactly where you want the gold to stick.

  3. The Trap: Size does not dry like normal glue. If you place the gold leaf onto the glue immediately while it is wet, it will sink into the liquid and become a dull, muddy mess.

  4. The Secret Timing: You must paint the glue on, and then wait 15 to 30 minutes. The size must dry until it is perfectly clear and incredibly "tacky." If you lightly touch it with your knuckle, it should feel exactly like the sticky glue on the back of a Post-It note. It is dry, but aggressively sticky.

2. Taming the Flakes (The Application)

Imitation Gold Leaf comes in booklets of incredibly sheer 5x5 inch sheets.

Warning: Turn off the ceiling fan. Do not exhale heavily. A single sigh will blow forty dollars of gold leaf across the room.

  1. Using tweezers (never your bare, sweaty fingers!), carefully lift one singular, floating sheet of gold leaf.

  2. Gently drop the sheet directly over the tacky glue area on your canvas.

  3. The Burnish: Take an exceptionally soft, dry, large fluffy brush (like a massive makeup brush). Very gently tap and stroke the gold leaf, pressing it down onto the canvas.

  4. The gold will aggressively instantly fuse to exactly where you painted the sticky "Size" glue.

3. The Cleanup (The Dusting)

Right now, you have a massive, ugly sheet of gold covering a large section of your beautiful pink and blue painting.

  1. Wait a few minutes for the gold to bond.

  2. Take your large, dry fluffy brush and begin to aggressively scrub the edges of the gold sheet.

  3. The gold leaf is so fragile that the bristles of the brush will literally violently rip the gold apart.

  4. The gold will seamlessly flake away and turn to dust everywhere that there was no glue.

  5. The gold covering the sticky glue will remain perfectly intact. As you dust away the excess, a perfect, flawlessly sharp, mirror-finish gold vein emerges, slicing beautifully through the matte painted canvas underneath.

4. The Final Varnish (Preventing the Tarnish)

If you spent hundreds of dollars on 24-karat pure Gold Leaf, it will never tarnish. But since you likely used "Imitation Gold Leaf" (which is actually a brass/copper alloy), it will chemically react to the oxygen in the room. In three months, your beautiful bright gold vein will turn a sickly, oxidized green-brown.

The Sealant: You must legally seal imitation leaf.

  • You cannot use standard water-based acrylic varnish; the water component will instantly tarnish the metal!

  • You must use a specialized Solvent-Based Varnish (or a dedicated Metal Leaf Sealer) and paint it directly over the gold to lock out the oxygen forever.

Conclusion

Gold leaf is an aggressive, uncompromising material.

By mastering the exact tacky timing of the "Size" adhesive, holding your breath while applying the microscopic metal sheets, rigorously buffing away the excess flake, and chemically sealing the final product against oxidization, you can add staggering, high-end, architectural brilliance to flat paintings.

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