Surface Treatment Workshop - week 12

another week flies by and we are now on week 12 of the Surface Treatment Workshop

and this week we are using metal leaf in our art samples

Evelyn didn't enjoy using metal leaf at all ... but still produced lovely samples

I, however, loved it!

I have used metal leaf before and I also, quite regularly, use gilding flakes and foils

so my experiments today were more to do with how to adhere the leaf to my paintings

this one (below) was using glue stick  ...

it was truly messy and patchy and the foil didn't adhere at all neatly

so I can see it would have a very poor archival property

next I tried simply adhering the metal leaf directly in the wet paint (acrylics)

this was better but was still a little "hit and miss"

adhering in some places and not in others

and not the effect I was hoping for

next I tried using some Golden matt medium gel

(remembering, from recent weeks, that it was a good product for embedding)

I applied the matt medium gel through a lace paper doily

lifted off the doily and then placed the gold metal leaf on the wet glue pattern

after it had dried (less than an hour) I gently brushed off the excess metal leaf


I was pleased to see the lace pattern

so ... spurred on by this happy result ...

I tried using the Golden gel matt medium through an acetate stencil

I taped down the stencil with masking tape and

applied the Golden gel matt medium through the stencil

then carefully lifted off the stencil to reveal the sticky areas

and placed a sheet of gold metal leaf over the top and left for an hour

(note - wash your stencil asap after use)

then using a paintbrush I carefully brushed the excess leaf away

finding that the leaf only sticks to the areas that I had glued

I was left with these lace branching patterns which remind me a little of seaweed
and I was pleased with the colours behind

as I don't have any size which is usually recommended for applying metal leaf

I would definitely recommend using the Golden matt medium gel

and, actually, I'm looking forward to trying this on my fabric collages
and developing the technique in my paintings

I've admired the application of gold leaf in paintings by some of my favourite artists
in particular the late Matthew Lanyon, a St. Ives artist

"Three days Ride" - Matthew Lanyon - oil and gold leaf

I can see that the same technique would also work well with gilding flakes

and need not necessarily be applied in a sheet for this purpose

so I saved all the little bits of brushed off gold flakes to use again ...

I really enjoyed painting the bases for my samples this week

and there was one that I liked just as it was ... without the metal leaf

which I'm enjoying in my studio currently

"the colour of St. Ives"

next week brings a few samples with modelling and texture pastes

which I enjoy using already and hope to learn some new and inspiring applications

till then ... thanks and love ♥