My new toy, Metal Leaf as in gold and silver

MY NEXT PAINTING REFERENCE MATERIALS

 1 - Maymont 2010 - Untouched photo

FIRST A LITTLE FUN IN PHOTOSHOP

2 - Increased saturation

3 - Desaturated to black & white

4 - Subtle colour but too much surface noise (debris)

5 - Reduced surface debris

6 - Detail

The white debris on this marbleized water surface detail is what has my attention. I want it to be gold leaf perhaps over a heavy palette knife texture or in the moment and added like paint with my brush as in #907

SESSION ONE #908

All the references had potential. The black and white one, #3, was especially tasty but I'm not ready for that yet so I'm going to run with #5 and detail #6.  Since this is about R&D (research and development) I'll use a smaller 46x54 canvas.

  908-1 Progress 46x54 oil on linen (6-25-14)

Red-line

"Looking contrived" will be the major pitfall and avoiding it will be a challenge using conventional tools.....with that in mind my first session moved very quickly.

I used my whole tool box on this thing.... brushes, palette knife (a lot), all my mediums including mineral spirits to break it down even more, then working that with a palette knife. I also had some gold powder, so a dip here and there....mostly at the bottom center.

At the end of the day I had one area (circled in red) that still needed attention; plus at this point I didn't add any gold leaf details, only a bit of gold powder when I ran out of steam....

SECOND SESSION

I started my second session fresh and started with the red-line area - since the painting was dry I had to re-wet certain spots before adding the gold in the best way I could.

BEFORE - Red line detail

AFTER- Red line modifications + gold leaf detail

COMPLETED PAINTING

908 Winter Koi 46x54 Oil on linen (6-26-14)

SOME DETAILS

Love this new alkyd white;  impasto dries overnight, easy to build on and looks good. The gold works surprisingly well with all my materials....not so sure about the gold powder tho. I'm pretty happy with the overall results......Next time more gold - no holding back!

Later...