Mesmerizing Metallics: Modern Gold Leafing Techniques with Acrylic Paint

1. Welcome!: Hi there. My name is Jessi Raulet, and welcome to Mesmerizing Metallics. In this class, we're going to explore three techniques for creating uplifting trend forward artwork using imitation gold leaf. Simply put, gold leaf helps your art pop. Because of this, I've been incorporating gilding techniques into my paintings for the past decade. A little bit about me, I'm an American artist living in France, and I love all things color, shimmer, and design. I'm also the creator of the colorful brand EttaVee. Incorporating gold leaf into my artwork has been great for my art career, as it has helped my artwork standout. I use gold leaf so much that it's become a signature part of my brand and it has also just been so amazing to see my original artwork that features gold leaf later translated into shimmery products featured in stores such as Target, Kirkland, and Pottery Barn Kids, just to name a few. I'm very excited to share my tips and tricks with you. In this class, we'll explore how to decide where to harmoniously add gold leaf on your pieces, techniques for applying adhesive to paper. How to make our hand lettering shine like the sun, applying gold leaf to a textured surface, giving your projects extra depth. My hope is that this class inspires you to be bold, be seen, and to take these techniques and infuse them into your future projects. Be sure to follow me on Skillshare to get notified the moment I post a new class and to access additional freebies. You can follow me on Instagram @ettavee for colorful inspiration. Are you ready? Let's get started. 2. Art Supplies: Let's chat the materials that we're going to be using in our projects. We'll start with the star of the show our imitation gold leaf. I'm going to be using the Mona Lisa metal leaf by Speedball. There are 25 sheets in the pack and they are separated by a protective wax paper. Mona Lisa has three different products when it comes to the gold leaf and their Mona Lisa series. The first is genuine metal leaf. This is made of 24 karat gold, sterling silver, and genuine copper. The next is composition metal leaf, which is not genuine gold, but it will give you the same effect as real gold, and this is the one that I'll be using. Lastly, there is simple leaf. In this case, the leafing is bonded to the wax paper, and so it just helps for a more simple application of the gold leaf and there's less waste and clean up to do. Now a little history on gilding with gold leaf. The practice dates back to ancient Egypt. Here they would hammer the gold into thin sheets and use it to decorate jewelry, tombs, masks, and all other types of objects. What is imitation gold leaf exactly? Imitation gold leaf can also be referred to as composition gold leaf or Dutch metal. It is made from a combination of copper, zinc, and brass. The reason why we're using imitation gold leaf instead of real gold leaf is because it's found at a better price point, which of course makes it perfect for learning. Imitation gold leaf can be found at your local art store or online. Also, please be sure to hold on to a piece of the protective paper found in-between the sheets. We're going to be using this for our projects. Next step, I'd love to talk about the adhesive and sealer that we're going to be using for our pieces. Here, I have the metal leaf adhesive and the metal leaf sealer, both by Speedball for the Mona Lisa series. The same exact same series as my imitation gold leaf and the adhesive, pretty much what it is, it's a glue. It is what's going to allow us to adhere our gold to our paper. Now, here's a product that I will not be using in the class, but I did want to let you guys know that it exists. Speedball also makes an adhesive pin which makes lettering with your adhesive super easy, just like writing with a pen. I did want to let you know that it exists. However, in this class we will be using a paintbrush to letter our pieces. But if you would like to pick one up, feel free to grab one. Then here I have a sealer and the sealer is amazing. Pretty much it is going to allow us to protect our pieces when we're finished. Think of it as a varnish, if you will and what it's going to do, it's going to seal our piece. So once we brushing on, we let it dry, it's going to create a protective coating over our gold. What's wonderful is that the sealer will keep our piece looking better, longer, as well as protected from tarnishing from UV rays. Now let's talk brushes. I will be using three brushes for this project. The first one is a mop brush. The mop brush, it's what's going to allow for me to remove all of the excess gold that is going to be on my piece. It's a nice, lovely, bushy brush that really just softly brushes all of the gold away. I really love this brush so much. Also what's great about it is since it's a mop brush, it can actually mop. I have found that it's great for picking up any excess gold that may also fall on the table. Next step, I have my short flat brush. It is a system $3 round brush, it is half inch in size. I'll be using this for applying adhesive. I also have a round brush size four. This is the brush that I will be using a lot when it comes to making detail and lettering. I also have a dish and it's a beautiful dish because it is full of excess gold. Go ahead and grab a dish that you have on hand that is clean and dry and it can be a place where you can catch all of the extra gold that we brushed away and what's wonderful about this is that you can use them on future projects. Here's the paper that I'm going to be using for my project. I'm going to be using Canson's acrylic paper, which is a beautiful toothy paper. It's 118 pound paper, 400 grams. As you can see, it's very thick. What's so wonderful is that it is nice, sturdy, strong paper and perfect for painting on with acrylic. It's made worker like so. I really love this paper and for the project I'm going to go ahead and cut it down into smaller, maybe let's say six by eight size pieces of paper. This will allow for me to be able to paint in the perfect size for video. I also have a container that I'm going to be using to pour my adhesive into. It is an old phone case box. Just find something that you have lying around that you can pour adhesive into just to make things a little easier. I also have a pencil. I have an eraser as well as computer paper that I'm going to be using to sketch my ideas on. I highly recommend grabbing a hairdryer, it will allow us to dry our projects much quicker. I've also gathered a shopping list to make it easier for you to gather all of your supplies. This PDF can be downloaded directly at the projects and resources tab. I really appreciate you taking this class and as a thank you, I have designed six bonus gold friendly color palettes for you to use in this project or any of your future projects. It is not necessary for this class, it's just an extra bonus as a thank you. To access these color palettes, you will be signed up for my artful action newsletter, which is a weekly newsletter that I send out to share creativity and give ideas on ways that we can live a more creative life. Feel free to unsubscribe it anytime. You can, of course, still keep the color palettes. As for the acrylic paint, I will be using a hodgepodge of brands and pretty much I'm going to be using five colors and we'll be mixing a few colors on top of these. I have fluorescent pink, ultramarine blue, titanium white, turquoise blue, and cadmium yellow, medium hue. A little bit about acrylic paint for those who may be new to painting with acrylic. Acrylic is a great paint for beginners, it has really easy clean up. It is water-soluble, which means that you can use water to dilute it or also let say you get some paint on the table, it cleans up pretty easily also with water, and it is a fast drying. If you would like to learn more about acrylic painting techniques or even just color mixing. You can check out my other Skillshare class at Joyful Abstracts with Acrylic Painting. That's it. Those are the materials that we're going to be using for our project. I will see you over in the next video where we're going to do a little practice run and get acquainted with adding gold to paper. See you there. 3. Let's Practice: In this lesson, we are going to get acquainted with how to add gold leaf to paper. This is just for practice, so do not worry about perfection here. We're just doing this quick and easy exercise to really get comfortable with the medium and the technique of applying gold to paper. Let's get started. Here is a quick peek at what we're going to be creating. It's going to be an exploration of creating different shapes and forms with our gold. For this exercise, we are going to need a couple of sheets of imitation gold leaf, our lovely adhesive. For the brushes, I have my small round brush, I have a couple of those, as well as the short flat and the filbert. I also have my mop, which is what I use to remove the excess gold. If you don't have the exact same brushes that I'm using, that's okay, just grab your favorite brush. It will still work for the project. You may also grab a paint palette. In this case, I'm using the lid of an old box. Pretty much, I just need to be able to contain the adhesive once I pour it out so it doesn't go everywhere. Then I also have a cup of water, paper towel, a pencil, an eraser, as well as my sheet of acrylic paper. You may also use mixed media paper if that's what you have. Lastly, and probably most importantly, I have my lovely dish of excess gold that I'm going to use as we brush the gold the way I'll be able to put it in there. Also, just a quick tip. You're going to want to make sure your hands are clean. Any type of oils or grease left on your hands especially from lotions, can tarnish the imitation gold leaf? You're going to want to make sure that you have nice clean hands for the projects. We are going to start by sketching our practice guide. I'm going to start off by taking my pencil and I'm going to lightly sketch a horizontal rectangle on the top third of the page. As I mentioned, this is just for practice, so I'm just doing this quickly and not worrying about making it the perfect shape. I'm now going to draw three lines below horizontal lines, and I'm going to make the last one dashed. I'm going to just trace over it because I know that since I'm on camera, it might not show up. So I'm going to press a little bit more firmly than I usually would, just to make sure that way you guys can see what I'm doing. Well up my dashed lines. Next, let's add some vertical lines just like that. We're going to follow this up by adding in a circle, a heart. Then for the third, go ahead and do something of your choice. In this case, I'm going to do a swirl. Last, we're going to follow this up by putting in a wiggly line at the bottom. Now that we have the sketch for our guide, let's go ahead and add the adhesive. Normally when using adhesive, I like to dip my brush directly into the bottle, but because in this case, I want to make sure you guys can see everything that I'm doing. I'm going to pour it onto my palette right here. Give it a nice little shake and carefully open your adhesive. Sometimes it can be quite liquidy. I'm just going to pour a little bit like that onto my palette. What I'm going to be doing now is that I'm going to pretty much use my short flat brush because it has nice coverage, and I'm going to fill in this first top rectangle that we have here. Now, you're going to want to make sure that when you apply the adhesive, that it's nice and thin coat, you don't want too much buildup. As we go for this exercise is we just want it to dry evenly. You'll notice that the adhesive is like a milky color, but when it dries, it's going to dry transparent. I'm just filling this in, smoothing it out. Once the rectangle is completely filled, I'm going to move on to my lines below. For my first line, I'm going to still be using my short flat, but I'm going to make sure that I get a nice thick line. I'm going to dip my brush in the adhesive and paint on top of my line. Then I go over on it. I'm really just doing a really nice light touch. For my next line, I'm going to use the edge of my brush. So instead of painting flat, I'm going to paint along the edge so I can get a thinner line just so that we can experiment with different widths of the adhesive. For the dashes, I'm going to just use the corner of my short flat, just a little corner. For the following elements, I'm going to be using my round brush. I'm going to go ahead and take my short flat and pop it in to my water, and pretty much what you're going to want to do is after this exercise, just give your brushes a nice little wash with soap and water, since they have essentially glue on them. Now before we move forward, I just want to briefly cover how we know when it's time to put the gold on it. You can already start to touch maybe with your pinky, just start to touch the top rectangle and you'll feel that it's drying, but that it's a little tacky and this tacky is what we're going for. You don't want to apply the gold too soon because then the gold leaf can tear. You really want that tacky feeling to grab onto your gold. That can hold it onto the page, and if you wait too long, then your gold just won't really stick that well. To get the best coverage, you want this nice techie feelings. Depending on how much that you apply and the environment that you're in, that can determine how long it takes for your glue to dry. In my case, I tend to find that it dries within 5-10 minutes with that square. Like for me the sweet spot as of when I can start to add the gold on. Some people wake up 10-30 minutes. But for me personally, I have a very dry environment and my apartment, and so it dries quite quickly and it's already feeling quite tacky. I'm going to wait maybe a couple of more minutes before I apply it. I'm going to go ahead and tackle this next row. I'm going to dip my brush and feel free to play around with applying different widths and amounts of adhesive. Now I'm going to fill in this circle. I'm going to go ahead and paint on the circle so that my gold covers the pencil. Next, I'm going to go ahead and just knock out this last little snaky wave. Any of the areas where I feel like there's too much buildup, I just go back over it and smooth it out. Looking pretty good. Now that I'm complete, I'm going to go ahead and put my brush in the water. I'm going to go back up to the rectangle at the top and just give it a little check with my pinky and honestly it's perfect. It's dry but also tacky. This is great. I think that we can go ahead and start applying some gold. Now, when it comes to applying gold, it's very finicky. The sheets are very light and wispy and can almost blow away. Please expect for it to go all over the place if this is your first time handling gold leaf. What I'm pretty much going to do is I'm going to handle it very gently. I am going to place it ever so lightly on top of, maybe not even just my top rectangle but my bottom ones as well as I can see, it's a pretty nice big size. I'm going to go ahead and drop it on. As you can see, I actually covered some of this. That's okay because where it falls is where it falls. What I like to do is usually I'll give it a nice blow, I'll blow on it. But if I do that right now, this will go everywhere so I'm not going to do that. What I'm going to do is with my fingers, I'm just going to smooth it down. Just a little bit, little taps pushing outward. Since I'm focusing right now on this rectangle, I am pushing outward. Something I like to do is taking a sheet of paper that you find inside the pack. As you can see, there's two sides. There's one side that's waxier than the other. What I like to do is place that on top and really smooth it out and be like press firmer. This will allow you to press firmer. It's looking pretty good. Now as you can see, I haven't fully filled up my rectangle. What I'm going to do, since I have a little bit of excess already hanging off the side, I'm going to take that and I'm going to lay it on top, hope it uses some more, on top. Just pretty much filling in all the spaces. Now I'm also going to focus on this next line below. Press, always pushing in one direction. I'm going to go ahead and cover all of the rest of the elements that I have on this page. Now that all of my penciled elements are completely covered, I am going to let this dry and we'll check back in about five minutes where we will brush away all of the excess gold using our dry clean mop brush. Some time has passed and it is now time to remove all of our excess leaf. I'm going to take my mop brush, which is clean and pretty much I am going to just start to brush away all of the extra leafing on the outside. I'll start with the top rectangle and then anything that has extra, I'm just going to drop it in to my dish here to use for another day. As you can start to see, as I brush it away, everything that did not have adhesive simply rushes off. It was to go in the direction in which goes against the leaf. It's brushes off easier. You can use your mop brush to pick up, mop up, if you will, the gold that is on your surface and tap it, just flick it off, tap it into the dish. I'm not pressing too hard, being gentle. This is my horizontal lines. Now let's work on our shapes here, we have our circle, our lovely hearts, and the spiral. I'll show you how to go over and fix any details that might be missed. As you can see, the spiral, I can still see some of the pencil. It looks like some of them leafing didn't stick. That means that I just need to go back over it to perfect it, if you will. It looks more like a spiral. That's what's great, is that if you're finding that there are any areas that are missing, that have gaps in the gold, I will show you how to fill those spaces. As you can see, all of the shapes that we painted on, the gold adhered to it. I still have some extra little pieces that need to come off so I'm going to give it a little bit of a tougher scrub all over. That way, I'll really have a better idea of what needs to be adjusted. Look at that. It's really cleaned it up already. This gets all of those teeny tiny pieces that are holding on and removes them. As you can see, looking pretty good. Let's see. It looks like I missed a couple of areas on the horizontal lines, maybe a little bit in the swirl. Head on over to the next video where I will be showing you a demo on how to patch up any areas where the gold did not stick. 4. Filling in Gaps: Now I'm going to show you how to fix any little gaps that you may have in your piece. Maybe there was an area that didn't have enough adhesive. I'm going to show you how to go about filling in those empty spots. What I'm doing is I'm just going to take my dry round brush, dip it in the adhesive and apply. I'm just going to go over the areas that are missing gold. Now, I am going to slightly overlap with the areas that have the gold, because whenever I add the gold back on, I'll be able to lay it on top and then it'll overlap and then it'll just look seamless. That's the secret there. You want to just slightly overlap. The gold will be covering it anyways. Then I'm just going to fill in some of these holes over here on my rectangle. Now I'm going to wait for that to dry, [NOISE] and once it's taky will go back in and patch up the holes, if you will. Pretty much I'll just be using some of this excess gold to patch the holes up. Now that I've let the adhesive dry for about 3-5 minutes, I am now going back in and using the little extra pieces of gold from my dish. I am just going to be placing them in all of the places where I had put the new adhesive. I'm making sure that I'm overlapping with the existing gold and then I'm covering all the adhesive and pressing it down to make sure it sticks this time around. Look how beautiful. Love it so much, look at that swirl, it's really nice, really happy. I hope that this helps you understand how to apply your gold leaf. I will be showing you how to seal this at the end of the class when we seal all of our pieces at one time, but you can go ahead and give yourself a nice pat on the back. We have a nice practice guide that actually can be a work of art itself. Next up, we are going to get started on our first project, which is the radiating sunshine piece. 5. Painting the Sun: Now that we've learned how to apply gold leaf to paper, let's get started on our first project which is creating this beautiful radiating sunshine piece. For this project, we are going to be needing a piece of acrylic paper or mixed media paper or even watercolor paper if you wish. I have my acrylic paper here. We're also going to be needing a couple of sheets of metal leaf as our adhesive, a place to pour your adhesive. I also have my glass of water, paper towel, I have my brushes, as well as everything else I'm going to be needing for gilding. I have my mop brush as well as my gold catching dish. I also have acrylic paint. For this go around, we're going to be needing fluorescent pink, titanium white, turquoise blue, and cadmium yellow medium hue. Now, I'm just using all kinds of different acrylic brands. It does not have to be the fanciest of acrylic paint. These are really just like student learning paints. We are also going to be needing a paint palette. Just because we're going to be mixing a few colors. Not too many. To get started on our piece, we're going to start by observing and then sketch what we see. This is the piece that we're going to be creating today. As you can see, there's a beautiful radiating sunshine. The reason why I picked this design is because I was trying to think of where you would see gold or what gold leaf would lend itself well to, and came up with this sunshine piece because sunshine, golden, lumination, shimmer. I just thought it was the perfect piece for this project. As you can see, the center has gold leafing as well as the rays going out to the side. What I was thinking for this was that we'll start off by sketching the composition first onto our paper. As we've observed, we have a circle, the sun at the center, and we have rays going out to the side. That's what we're pretty much going to sketch, is a quick little guide for ourselves. I'm going to start by taking my pencil, all we're needing for this first part is a pencil, paper, and an eraser. I'm just going to start by lightly sketching the circle of my sun. Now I'm going to press a little bit harder than I usually would just so that you all can see it on the screen. But just feel free to lightly sketch the circle as our sun. Then before I start on the rays, as you can see, I left a little bit of white space around the sun. I'm going to make sure that whenever I start to draw my rays that I don't get too close to the sun. I leave some of that white space open. The last thing I'd like for you to take notice of is how the rays widen as we bring them to the edge of the page, they get wider as they get to the edge. That's just something to keep in mind as you are sketching in your rays. Also, please do note that I did draw the circle at the top left of the page. I just thought that composition was cool, how it could really give it even more so of an effect of light raining down. I'm going to just start them this corner. I'm not going to draw every single ray. It's really just about creating a guide for ourselves. If you need to turn your page to make sure that your lines are straight, they are not going to be the straightest of lines. But if you want to turn your page feel free, it's quite helpful when it comes to just seeing how your rays are looking. I'm not going to do all the rays as I said, just want to give myself a general guide. Voila Looks pretty good to me. Now that I have my general sketch, I am going to start painting. What I'm going to need for that. I'm going to go ahead and put my pencil and eraser away and I'm just going to pull my palette over. I'm first going to start by applying some of my cadmium yellow to the palette, and I'm going to just do two little drops of paint. I'll show you why in just one second. There are two and not one. What we're going to be doing is creating a wash. To create a wash is pretty much we're going to take some of this water, just a little bit of the water, and I'm going to be mixing it in to the paint to make it transparent. Like washy. It'll give it a little bit of a watercolor feel. This thins up the paint, makes it more transparent. You'll see that as we paint it, we'll kind of get a nice pale yellow effect. We're going to go ahead and add some water. Just on the little edge of the paint. I'm just going to just continue to mix it in until it gets really nice and watery. Looks pretty good. Now I am going to start adding it in just randomly where we have the rays. Now I don't want to cover everything in yellow because I want to leave some space for the other colors that we're going to add in. As you can see, it's a nice washy yellow. I'm just going to add that in a few more places. I think I'm going to start with the largest sections first. As you can see, this really glides on there. Looking good. Going to go off onto little areas and add some other little hints of yellow. I think I really like how that's coming along. Maybe just another little area right up here. But other than that, I think it's good for now. I'm going to go ahead and let that dry. If you want to dry quicker, you can always use a hairdryer that will help dry your pieces much more quickly. While I wait for that to dry, I'm going to go ahead and add some yellow into the center of my sun. I'm going to go just outside of my circle. As you know, I had to draw my circle just a little bit darker. Then I just have the yellow bleed just outside of the sun so that whenever I add the gold, I can cover the yellow. But I would like to have just a little bit of yellow pink through just like in the example right here. For this next part, I have this whole section down here. I have actually different sections that are drier than others. I want to just go ahead since I still have yellow on my brush, I'm going to go ahead and add in some of the yellow that is straight out of the tube without any water mixed in. What this is going to do, it's going to give us a nice deeper, richer yellow. With this one I'm going to keep it a little bit thicker, lay it on a little thick. I can get that nice texture in there. See how that looks. I don't want to cover up all of our beautiful washy work. I'm just adding it in random areas just to add some layering. I think it's really nice having the pale yellow next to the rich medium hue yellow. For this one, I'm just going to maybe drag two rays on the side. I just paint those on there. I like how that looks. For now, I think I'm going to add one more in there, and then I'm going to go ahead and wash my brush. Next, we are going to mix an orange. I'm going to take the fluorescent pink, pop it on to my palette. I'm probably going to put maybe, let's do three to mix an orange. I'm going to do this by taking some of this existing yellow and adding just a little bit of this fluorescent pink to mix. Now, go ahead and make sure you're adding the pink little by little because what this is going to do is it's always better to just add in little by little than adding in too much and then having to not start over but it's always easier to just do it this way little by little until you get the desired orange that you like. Here is how my orange is looking. Looking good. I do want to make it a little washy, so I'm going to dip my brush in my water and just thin that orange out a little bit. Now, I'm going to take my brush and fill in a couple more areas. As you can see, I'm alternating between using water with the color already mixed or just simply dipping my brush that already has some of that paint on there and adding it to the piece. I like how that's looking. Then I go ahead and wash my brush. Next up, I'm going to add just a little bit of the titanium white to a pellet right here next to my pink color. What I'm going to do is I'm going to mix pale pink. To mix the pale pink, I'm just going to pull out some of that white onto the side, dip the corner of my brush into pink and mix, adding it little by little as I go until I'm happy with the outcome. So how that's looking? It's like pink. I'm going to add just a slight bit of water to that as well to make it nice and washy. I'm going to go into my piece and just paint it on. How cute is this shaping up to be? I really like it. Then I think that I'll add just a little bit of pink up here, and I am now going to wash this brush. I am going to be switching over to my round brush now. Since I have a lot of these larger areas already filled in, I don't really need this large brush anymore. Also, hello, check out this beautiful color. I always love seeing how paint water changes as I go. Next step, we are going to paint in some of this nice, fluorescent pink just as it is straight out of the tube. Let's see. Put it in just some areas just to get that nice pop pink. Let's see. Start to go in-between and on top of some of the areas here. It starts to break it up a bit. I really like how that's looking. I am going to switch it up with a different color now. I'm going to bring in my turquoise blue, which is going to add some really nice contrast to the piece. Bring my brush. For this blue, like we did with the other ones, I'm going to just give it a little, thin it out a bit, get it a little washy. Then I'm just going to fill in all of the rest of the areas that are still open. The reason why I'm using the round brush is that I just have a little bit more control since I'm getting into the smaller spaces in-between the colors. That's why I'm using this smaller brush. I'm also taking this opportunity to overlap a little bit with its surrounding colors. What you'll see that this does is that the colors blend, and so you get a nice blend. As you can see right here, we have a nice green because the turquoise blue is mixing with the yellow. Then over here we have a nice purple starting to form because the turquoise blue is mixing over the pink. I am going to turn my page over so slightly just so I have a little bit more control. Love it. Look at all that great contrast that the turquoise blue has added. I am going to maybe pull that down into this area right here. Really nice. What I'm doing right now is I'm just taking the rest of what I have left over from this blue. I'm just going over the already dry areas so it can add some layering and build-up a color. I really like how that's looking. Looking at this now, I think that it could use just a little bit more of that gorgeous fluorescent pink. I'm going to clean my brush, dry it off, and go back over to the fluorescent pink and just layer it. Hey, that's how the piece is looking. I do just want to make this orange a little bit richer. It looks a little faded for me, so I'm just going to mix slightly deeper orange, paint that in just so I can get a better, richer color. Oh, yeah, that's much better. Looking good. Now, I'm going to let this dry and as this dries, I am going to now gather all of my supplies so we can get to yielding in the next video. See you over there. 6. Radiating Sun: Adding Gold: Now we're ready to add gold leaf to our beautiful radiating sun. Let's go. Now that we have the painting on paper, I am going to pull in my gold leaf as well as my excess gold leaf and my lovely little dish that I'm going to use to pour all of my adhesive. We can go ahead and get started now that we have everything. Pretty much, we are going to be adding some leafing in the center of the sunshine as well as the radiating rays going all the way around. Now, if you look at the example, you can see that I've alternated some of the raysim of them. You have just nice thin lines. This one is a little bit wider, fitting into the shape of this big pink ray. I have some nice polka dots as well as some shorter dashes. Feel free to play around and make this your own. If you want to add squiggles or any markings that speak to you, go for it, but I will just be showing you this example right here. I am going to be using my round brush for this project since I have the most control with it and I'm going to start with the center. I'm going to go ahead and take my adhesive, give it a nice good shake. Carefully pour it. It's quite messy, quite liquidity. I'm going to take my round brush, dip it in the adhesive, and go ahead and fill in the center of the sun. As I mentioned before, I'm going to go over the pencil because I want to cover the pencil with the gold. I don't want any of that pencil showing through, so I'm going to go ahead and just cover it all with the adhesive. Now that the center is filled, I'm going to go ahead and tackle the rays. Let's see. I think it'd be nice to have some gold break up that pink and yellow and really just added in areas where maybe on your piece you see that it could add some interest to have some goals. Maybe it's too much yellow somewhere. The gold really looks really nice next to the blue, it has a nice pop. Also, play around with using different widths and thicknesses of your adhesive lines. You can see I made this one quite wider than the rest. Also remember you can totally play around with adding some dash marks, polka dots, stars, hearts, anything you want. I'm going to do some dots down here. I'm just lightly tapping. Whenever you do dots, you really want to let this dry because you have more control over the gold when it's drier. Whereas let's say if you were to put the gold on the dots before they were dry, they might get smeared, so a delicate touch is always best. This is what I have for my adhesive. I'm going to let that sit there and dry for, let's say, probably 10 minutes because these were placed on a little bit heavier than what we did in our practice. Since there's a lot of relief happening here, I am going to go ahead and use my hairdryer to help speed along the drying process. Once it starts to feel tacky but dry, then it will be time to add our gold. I just used the hairdryer to dry my piece. It's looking pretty good. Now I'm ready to go ahead and start applying some of that gold. What I'm going to do is I am going to take my first piece of gold leaf and I'm going to place it slightly hanging off the top and using clean hands, just going to tap it down and spread it out. You can already start to see it's tearing away in areas where there's no glue. Since I have some excess, I'm going to go ahead and tear a little bit of that off and add it in areas that just need a little hit of gold. What I'm doing is I'm just feeling around. You can tilt your piece to see where all you added the adhesive. I can see this orange section. I always try to use as much of the leafing as possible as to not waste. Let's see. I think there's another little area right here. Just removing areas where I know I don't have any adhesive and taking that, adding it. It's all about feeling. You can tilt your piece to see where the glue is or you can just touch and you can see that it's still tacky. This area have a lot of little dots, so I'm going to be just covering all the dots as much as I can. Also, if you prefer to just use another sheet, you totally can. I'm probably just going to tear a piece off. Just about gotten all of my areas covered. Just getting all of these last-minute pieces handled. It's looking good. I'm just going to grab the paper that is found in between the sheets and I'm going to use the waxy side. Press it down, smooth it out. Do the same thing down here. Press it, smooth it out. Same thing over here. Now, I'm going to brush away all the excess. This is the fun part. Let's go. Check her out. You have a beautiful radiating sunshine with gorgeous details. I just love it so much. Take a look at yours. Look at anywhere where you see anything extra that might need to be brushed off. This is so pretty. Really makes me happy. I think I'm going to hang it in my daughter's room. But yeah, take a look at your piece if you see any areas where you think maybe you might need to add some more gold or any patches you need to fill up. But I'm pretty happy with how mine turned out. I might even go in with a metallic gold pen and just add some little dots later on. But this is the piece. This is our very first project completed. I cannot wait to see what you guys made. Please post it in the class gallery so I can see what you guys created, how your piece turned out. Now we are ready to move on to our second project. See you over there. 7. Golden Lettering: In this lesson, we are going to explore gold leaf hand lettering. For this exercise, you are going to need your acrylic paper or mixed media paper or watercolor paper, whatever you have on hand, pencil, eraser, I have my water here with a paper towel. I have my short flat brush as well as my round brush. I also have a filbert, but I'm not sure I'm going to use it, but nice to have it on hand. I have my adhesive as well as a dish to pour into. I also have my gold leaf, as well as some acrylic paint, I chose to go with turquoise and of course, my excess dish to catch any and all leftover gold leaf as well as a palette. You can also go ahead and grab a piece of paper as well. As you can see with my example piece, I'm going to be creating a piece using the word relax. I figured that it goes pretty well with my sunshine, the idea of being outside sunshine, relaxing in the sunshine. I'm going to do the word relax and as you can see, it is surrounded by beautiful relaxing swirls, and even the way that the word is written, you feel like it's evoking the word relax. What I would love for you to do is I would love to encourage you to come up with the word of your very own, you do not have to do the same word as me. Try to just think of a word that has meaning for you, or even a word that you can hang in your office, something that you can see every day to encourage yourself or you could even do the name of your child, the name of your spouse, anything you want. If you're having trouble coming up with the word, you can make a word list. I have my piece of computer paper right here and what I'm going to do is just make a quick list of words that I could use. Let's think. Let's see, we have relax, which is the word I'm going to use. We have bold, calm, love, glow, peace, joy, and happy. Just think of words and just think of a word that means something to you that you would like to use. Once you've selected your word, go ahead and start sketching out ideas of how you would like to write your word. In another area of your paper like, I think I'm going to go with let's say the word, let's do glow. I like the word glow. I'm just going to practice writing the word glow. What's cool about this word is that its meaning pairs really nicely with all things shimmery and shiny. I'm just taking a look, like how can I write this in a way that makes it fun and interesting. That can be pretty and glow would have some little rays glowing off of it, that could be cute. Let's see. As you know, I am going to go with the word relax so I'm going to go ahead and write that out like that. Go ahead and play with the word love. Just take some time and play around with the words that you already have on your list and just see which words speaks to you, which one that you're able to maybe add some nice movement too. I have my word options. As you know, I'm already assigned. I'm going to do relax anyways. I am going to take my paper instead of off to the side so that I can use it as a reference to look at. I'm ready to get started on painting the background of my piece. As you can see from the example image, the background is kind of a wash, similar to what we did in our previous projects, so all I need is one color and lots of water. I'm going to take my paint palette and I'm just going to put a little bit of that turquoise blue onto the palette. I'm going to take my short flat brush, I'm going to just dip my brush in the water and just add it a little bit, pull that out a little bit, and now I'm simply going to just brush it around my page. As I do this, I am alternating by just taking my brush as is and dipping it directly into the water just to get some more water onto the page and it really adds some really nice variation in depth and deepness of colors, so I'm able to really get that washy since the more water that I add. But of course, alternating with my wash that I've created. I'm not being too precious about it, all I'm going for is that my main goal is that I wanted to have a nice variation of light and dark. I'm liking how this is looking, it's looking nice. Just going to go in and add some extra water drops in some areas and I'm going to go ahead and let this dry. If you'd like to speed up the drying process, you can always use a hairdryer to dry your piece quicker and I think I'm going to go ahead and do that right now. This is how it is looking once dry, that hairdryer really just helped speed everything along. I'm very happy with how it looks. That's some really great washy areas and I just really like how it turned out. I'm going to now take my pencil and sketch out my word. So remember, I am going with the word relax and also just the heads up this is just for practice, so if you draw it, you don't like how it looks, you can always erase, just make sure you go with a light touch so that when it comes time to erase, you're able to do so, but I am just going to go in and however it turns out is how it turns out, so I'm not going to put too much pressure on myself. As I said, I'm going to do the word relax, I'm going to use this as a reference, just going to lightly sketch. I'll try pressing a little harder so you guys can see. I would say a tip that I have is to really make sure you have spacing between your letters as this is what's going to allow us to really see the nice contrast between the gold and around the letters. You want to make sure that you have enough space, like for example with the L, this loop in the L. I might even erase that and just space it out a little bit more because I know that once I add my gold, I don't want the adhesive for some reason get too close to each other, and then I'm not able to see that loop. I'm going to go ahead and erase that and I'm just going to redraw that L right back in there. Perfect. Next, I'm just going to go in and add little areas to see where I can zhuzh it up a bit, add a little flares. This is how it turned out. I'm going to go ahead and add my adhesive. For the adhesive, I have my round brush right here and I'm going to go ahead give my adhesive a little shake and pour it into the dish just a little bit, not too much. I'm going to use my round brush since I'm quite comfortable with using it and I'm able to get a lot of control. I'm simply going to trace over my word. Now I'm really going in with a very light touch to where the adhesive is just sitting on top of the paper. I'm not pressing too hard because if I press harder, my brush will fan out and I will cover more space than I want to. For this exercise, I'm really just trying to achieve a fine line using a light touch. I'm just going to hold this up so you can see how this is looking so far. If you would like for your piece to have a thicker stroke, meaning instead of being a fine line, it's just a little bit wider then you can go ahead and press just a little bit harder so that your brush gets more coverage. For the bottom of this x, I went ahead and press because I think that'll look nice for this element here. I am going to go ahead for the R as well, press just a little bit so that I get a little bit of a wider line. There we go. I'm loving how this is turning out, I think I'm also going to go ahead and add in a few little dots. 8. Creating Texture: Welcome to the third and final project for this gold leafing class. In this lesson, we are going to be exploring how to add gold leaf to a textured surface. We are going to be needing a sheet of acrylic paper, a pencil, and eraser. I have my gold leaf here along with my dish to catch the extra gold leaf. As you can see, it's nice and full after all of our projects. My mop brush. I also have my water paper towel, as well as my brushes. For this lesson, I'm going to be using my short flat as well as my round brush. I have my adhesive here along with the dish that I use to pour my adhesive into. I also have a hairdryer on hand, which is going to be very handy since we are going to be building up texture for this project, so that's going to allow me to dry quite quickly. Then I also have a few acrylic paint colors on hand, such as titanium white, cadmium yellow, medium hue, turquoise blue, fluorescent pink, and ultramarine blue. As you can see in this project, we are going for a geometric tribal feel. Pay attention to the direction in which the lines move on this piece. We're going to be doing a quick sketch underneath using pencil so that we have a guide of where we're going to be etching in our texture. I'm going to get started by taking my pencil, eraser, and my acrylic paper and I'm going to just simply sketch a general guide that I will be using to guide me along my way on our piece. Pretty much if we take a look at the example, we see that there's essentially an X shape happening here. Triangles radiating outwards in all four sides and so I'm just steadying to make sure that I get that idea. Also, please do take note is that on my piece, I did leave some areas, these small little corner triangles, smooth versus textured because it only helps enhance the texture better. Gives it some contrast. I'm going to start with my pencil and I'm going to draw an X. Corner to corner, an X. As you can see, I now have four quadrants and these are going to be the four areas in which I'm going to place my arrows. I'm going to start with this one. I'm just going to draw my first arrow, 1, 2, and 3. Now, this is going to be the area that I plan to keep smooth, so I'm just going to put s there, just to remind myself this is going to be smooth and this is going to be textured. I'm now going to start on the side. Smooth. Same with the bottom. S for smooth, as well as my final side over here, s for smooth. Now I'm going to go back in and erase this X that I had created in the center and I do think I might try attempt, we'll see, [LAUGHTER] to make that smooth. I am going to just go give myself a little bit of a border. I'm just going to erase any of the pencil marks that are touching the edge. It's a nice little loose, natural border of my piece. Great. Next. Pretty much what we're going to be doing is covering the entire surface with our yellow paint and what this does is that it builds up the surface to give us a nice Canvas in which we are going to be etching in our texture. For this, it's super simple. Honestly, I think I'm just going to go ahead and put it right directly on the page. The goal is to really build up that texture. Here I am going to paint on this yellow paint. The goal is just to make sure it's nice and thick like I said so that we can etch in our design. As you can see, because it's yellow, it's still quite translucent and I can just barely make out my pencil marks in the sketch below through the yellow, and pretty much I'm just going to paint over it, really getting good coverage best as I can. Now, if you happen to have any type of acrylic paint medium such as gel medium or molding paste, you can mix it in to your paint directly off to the side on the palette and add it to your piece and what that's going to do is it's going to thicken your paint and give it a more dramatic effect. But today I'm just going to keep things simple and I'm just going to be using acrylic paint. This is built up quite nicely. I think I'm going to add just a little bit more. I want it really thick. Hey. Now I'm just going to go and smooth it out. Now that that's on there, we're going to just put the yellow on the palette so I can use it later if need be and I'm going to go ahead and wash my brush. Now that I have this lovely texture built up and it's still wet paint, I'm now going to start etching in my design. I'm going to be taking the blunt end of my brush, the little pointy end of my brush and I'm going to be using this as a tool to etch into the paint. Now, I know that I have a general idea of the shapes of the design sketched below, and I can still see my lines through the yellow and even poking out, so that's going to help me. As I etch it away, I'll be able to actually see the lines that I drew on there, so that's going to be helpful as well to keep me in line. Also remember I'm going to be keeping some areas smooth. I'm going to go ahead and get started on this top section. Where I've landed, I can quite see perfectly my little pencil mark. If yours is not perfect the first time, that is no problem. This is all about just creating a texture, so give ourselves some grace. Just go for it. I really like that. I think I have one more line here. I'm going to get started on the lines on the side and I'm just wiping the end off all the excess paint onto my paper towel over here. Now, you don't have to fit the guides exactly, really give yourself permission to let the painting be what it is. It's all about just having fun exploring. Now that I have my general shape, I'm going to go ahead and set down my brush. I'm just going to take my smaller round brush and since it has a smaller point and it makes more of details, I'm just going to go ahead and etch in some more texture. I have a lot of paint here. I can really just save that, put it over here, make something else with it. If you have enough paint that you can save, no problem at all, go for it. I'm liking that. Now I'm going to take my hairdryer and get it dry quickly. I'm going to move the gold off to the side because I don't want to blow it everywhere. Real quickly I just want to show you how this is looking. Beautiful. All that good texture in there reminds me of tree bark a little bit or wood. Now I'm going to take my hairdryer and dry it off. Now my piece is nice and dry. I probably blow-dried it for about five minutes or so and now I'm ready to go ahead and add on my adhesive. I'm thinking about strategically adding the gold. In the example of a whole thing is gold, but I'm thinking maybe it could be interesting to leave a couple of areas where the paint is showing through. Let's see. I think that I'll cover everything in gold, but just leave maybe this band in yellow along with maybe this band up here. That could be interesting. We'll give it a try. I'm going to start by taking my short flat brush and I'm going to dip it and my adhesive, I've already placed adhesive in this tray. I'm just going to dip the brush in the tray and I'm going to cover all of the areas where I want the gold to cover. In your piece, if you want the gold to cover the whole thing, just make sure that you get all of the adhesive and all of the peaks and valleys of your texture. I'm going to be leaving too little spots open, but everything else is going to be gold. I'm just going to paint on my adhesive, making sure that it's touching the paper below in areas that have valleys. As you can see, for this area that's going to be smooth, I'm just painting on top of the smooth area, but not on top of this little part with the paint because I think it has a nice buildup and I don't want it to be covered with gold, I want it to be paint. As I go around I'm just going to turn my piece and paint that way. I'm just painting along the shape of the texture, so if the texture is at an angle, I'm going down that angle, if it's smooth, I'm just going to go smooth across. Just want to really make sure those brush bristles get in-between that texture. Now remember, I'm going to be leaving this little part untouched by the adhesives. All the rest is fair game. Now, to dry this, I'm also going to be using my hairdryer just to speed the process along, just making sure everything's covered, and then I just hit that center X one more time. That's looking pretty good. Everything looks pretty well covered. Now I'm going to pop my brush into the water and I'm going to bring my hairdryer back out and just give this a nice heat. The goal is for it to be dry but still tacky to the touch. Just going to take my finger, give it a little touch, check it out. Still feeling a little wet so I'm going to keep going. I went through right it, it feels nice and tacky and mostly dry, so I think we are ready to add our gold. Now, I'm going to go ahead and start adding my gold on, going to make sure my hands are nice and clean, clear of any extra adhesive on them, and that's going so nicely, take a whole sheet and just drop it on. Now I'm going to pat it down, and as you can see, I'm going in the direction of my arrows. I'm just making sure I'm getting in between all of those little crevices. If you have a sponge brush on hand, it could be helpful to just help press the gold in to those little areas. I like to use my hands. I'm just going to hold it up so you can see. But what I love, it's so cool to see the texture, start to show through. Now, going to reach into my extra gold leaf. It takes some of those bigger pieces and get those used up. Feel like this area right here lends itself to a nice big sheet. You drop it on there, smooth it down. Now what's great is that once we brush it away, whenever we have all the extra off, we'll be able to go in and see areas that we might need to touch up. Looking pretty good. I'm going to go ahead and tear off some of my paper, and waxy side down. It's going to give it a further firmer press. Now I'm ready to remove my paper and I'm going to take my mop brush and get to brushing. I like how that's looking. There was also one up here. Just give that a nice scrub. If it's not coming off easily, you just have to scrub a little harder. I'm also going to just go in and smooth it down. I'm loving how this is looking. There's something really cool happening here. I need to check out the way that the gold has clung on to just the top layer of this arrow. That looks so cool. Just going to mop up all my extra gold, put it in my container. I'm going to give it a look. I'm really happy with my first go-around. I feel like in general, I got a lot of really nice coverage, especially the areas where I used a big sheet versus the pieces, so that's something to keep in mind. I can still see there are areas where the yellow is showing through on the bottom. But I quite like how that looks. I think I'm now going to go in and add some paint. I'll see you over in the next video. 9. Geometric: Adding Gold: Just to show you how the paint looks on our example piece. I just strategically added it in areas that match the other side. As you can see, we have the ultramarine blue on the bottom. We have turquoise on the side, a pale turquoise over here, and then a light blue violet on this side, all with lovely hot pink accent. I'm going to try to go and replicate that on this piece. For this part, I'm going to be using my palette and my round brush. I'm going to go ahead and start with my ultramarine blue. With a dry brush, I'm going to take some of that blue, get a healthy amount, and I'm going to find an area to paint it on the bottom. I'm looking at this nice last ridge. I think that'll be a nice place to put the blue to section off this whole bottom part, and I'm simply going to paint it on. Just outline this bottom with smooth triangle. You don't have to place your lines in the same place where I do, just wherever feels right for your piece. While that dries, I'm going to turn it and I'm going to add some turquoise blue to my palette. I find a nice place to put it. I'm thinking for this piece, maybe in this little crevice right here. For the second one, I'm just going to go ahead and also outlined my smooth area. That's how that's looking. That's some nice contrast to it. Now, for this next section, I'm going to take some titanium white and mix it in with my turquoise blue to make a pale turquoise. Just going to mix that off to the side. I think this time around since I found it was quite easy to paint them the ridges, I'm going to paint this one in the ridge. Same thing for this section right here. I'm going to go ahead and outline my smooth area by going in this ridge right above. Area, like that. What's so cool about adding in these colors is it really starts to define our piece. For this last color, I'm going to just add some of this, I think titanium white to the ultramarine blue. It makes this nice pale blue violet color, which is one of my favorite colors that I'll buy often already in the tube. But I learned that if you just mix white and ultramarine, you get the same blue. Now, so for this section, I'm going to go ahead and paint it in to this top ridge, as well as on my smooth area. That's how that's looking. I think while this dries, I'm going to go ahead and add some of that fluorescent pink. Clean my brush. I'm going to make sure my brush is nice and dry. Now, I'm going to start back at the bottom. I think when I just add this inside the ridge, one of my ridges over here is going to be this one right here. On the side, I'm just going to place it. Depending on how translucent your fluorescent pink is, you might have to go over it a couple times to really get a nice deep pop. Paint a little triangle into that corner to match the other side. Now, while the pink dries, because I probably I'm going to go over it again, I'm just going to go in and touch up any of the blue areas, give them an extra coat, little extra love. I find that the second coat really has added a really nice pop and it's giving me that good contrast that I've been looking for. Now I'm not the biggest fan of this dark blue line that I created. I wish that I had put it inside the ridge. So I might even go ahead and bring that out into the ridge. I might make that line a little bit thicker, but I think that's okay. Sometimes things just bother you [LAUGHTER] as an artist. That's some golden my blue. Sometimes things just bother you as an artist and it's going to bother me so I just have to go ahead and paint in the ridge. Much better. I'm just going to go over any of these areas where I still have gold sticking out. I think that this piece is going to look really cute once. It'll look really nice framed, maybe hung on a gallery wall. They'll really stand out nicely. Oh, I love that. I'm really happy I went into that ridge, just helped me better control that line. Just going to now go over the pink areas. I think I'll be done. The second coat is working wonders. Check it out. Here is the finished piece. I love how it turned out. I think it has really great contrast, it really pops, the texture is there. The colors just scream summer and happy. It's vibrant. It's the perfect pop of joy that I was looking for. I'm really happy with how this turned out. I cannot wait to get this framed and on the wall. I have just really looking forward to seeing all of your guises creations. Please be sure to share your pieces in the class gallery. 10. Sealing our Artwork: Now that I have my three completed projects, 1, 2, and 3, I am now going to seal them. Pretty much what ceiling does, it's putting a protective coating on top of the imitation gold leaf, and what that does is it prevents it from tarnishing. It will protect it from dust and UV light. But yes, most important, it will keep your gold looking nice and fresh. Pretty much, what I'm going to be using for this is the Speedball metallic leaf sealer. It is a part of the same line as the leaf that I purchased. But pretty much you can use it on any imitation gold leaf, no problem. I'm going to give it a nice little shake. As you can see that, the sealer is this milky, gluey-looking substance. What I'm simply going to do is take my short flat brush. It's nice and clean and dry. I'm going to, one-by-one, go over my pieces. First up, I'm going to be adding a layer to my sun. Just going to dip that directly in there and paint a layer on top of any place where I see the gold leaf. I'm going to show you how that looks up-close. Pretty much it's going to look like, you can see that there's a layer and it's going to make your gold look a little foggy, but I promise you it dries transparent. I'm simply just going to go over all of the areas on my piece where I have the gold leaf. Just one layer will do the trick. Not too much, I'm just putting enough on to where I can see some coverage that I know it's on there. But I'm making sure to go through and smooth it out as well. That's how that's looking. Looking good. I am going to next go ahead and do my third piece sense for the lettering piece, I'm going to be using my round brush, but since I already have some sealer on my short flat, I'm going to go ahead and just use that. I'm going to dip it and apply it in any area where I have gold. Now I do have gold on some of the areas over here, so I am going to go over those a little bit. It's okay if you get these sealer on the paint on painted areas, that is okay. What you might want to do for the painted areas in general, just you might want to hit them with some varnish. You apply the varnish the same way that I'm applying this. I do have a video about varnishing that can be found in my other Skillshare class, all about acrylic painting. If you want to know how to varnish your acrylic paint. But for this project, we're just needing to make sure that that gold is nice and sealed. I've gone over all of the gold areas on my piece and sealed it right up. Looking pretty good. You can just see there's a slight little film on there, but that's going to dry transparent. Going to finish by sealing my last piece, I'm going to go ahead and put that brush in the water, take my round brush, and dip it into the sealer, and then simply trace over all of the areas that are gold. Voila, it is sealed. That's it. The paintings are all sealed. Nice and easy. 11. You Did It!: Congratulations on the completion of this class. I cannot wait to see all of the beautiful mesmerizing pieces that you guys created. Please be sure to upload your artwork to the class gallery so that we can all admire your beautiful work and give feedback. If you have Instagram, please do not hesitate to share your work there as well, and tag me at Ettavee, that is, E-T-T-A-V-E-E, and I would love to share your work with my followers. By sharing our work, we inspire others to create. Thank you so much for joining me on this golden adventure and I hope to see you in the next class.