[Karin Wells]

Oh Boy! In my former life (some time prior to portraiture) I was a signpainter and did lots and lots of gold leaf lettering. It really isn't very hard. 24K Gold leaf will stick to nearly anything....most especially oil paint that is tacky....

The usual way that gold is made deep and rich looking is to paint the area underneath it a "fire engine red." To make it shiny, you adhere the leaf to a smooth surface.

Gold leaf comes in many forms - leafs separated by tissue paper and these are picked up with a gilder's brush. Sometimes it comes adhered to a "wax" paper so it can be cut and handled more easily. Any gold leaf in sheets may have "hairline cracks" after application if the surface is not as smooth as glass.

To avoid this I think the easiest way to apply gold leaf for a beginner would be to use a clean dry brush and 24K gold leaf in powdered form.

Here's the hard part...you must protect any part of the surface that you do not want gold leaf to adhere to. It can/will stick to most everything it touches and is a bear to remove! I don't know what areas you are trying to cover, but if it is a small definite area in a painting, try cutting a mask in order to control the leaf from "polutting" the surrounding areas.

Varnish will nicely seal gold leaf. It is an inert metal and you can even paint over it without any problems.

If you're thinking about adding gold leaf to a picture frame, ignore the above...there is another way to do that and many good books describe how that is done.