Howdy folks. Today you're getting a break from my ramblings, and you get to have the wonderful Rae's ramblings instead! What an utter treat for you all! If you don't know Rae, she is a miniature artist, pillar of support, and shining light in this hobby, always looking out for others ahead of herself.
After seeing some of her work with gold leaf, I knew I wanted her to talk about the process, so that you can gain some inspiration to try out some really outlandish techniques yourself. There's much more to miniature art than just paint, as you will soon find out. So without further delay, let's hand over to Rae.
Hi. Rae here. So how did I come up with the idea? I guess you can trace a lot of this back to my family’s history in furniture and antiques. My grandmother had an antique shop on Martha’s Vineyard and my grandfather built furniture. My father followed in their footsteps and I spent a lot of my youth at antique shops and auctions. However I didn’t take much interest at the time. Being around antiques at that age just meant keeping my little brother from breaking expensive stuff and watching antique roadshow with my mother at home. I think I did a decent job, my brother only put his foot through one original canvas painting.
Anyway, jump forward to 2010 when I graduated college with a bachelors in biology and no jobs on the market. I was working two jobs in retail to pay for student loans and a less than ideal apartment situation. I decided to delve into my father’s trade which had changed a little over the years from dealing antiques to repairing them. I learned a lot about restoration and repair of high end furniture and antiques. Although antiques are becoming less and less sought out by our generation, there are still some really nice pieces, often heirlooms, out there. I do anticipate their desirability will continue to decline though, pushed out by trendy IKEA particleboard that cannot be repaired. But I digress, back to the gold.
I never did a ton with gold leaf, but I was somewhat familiar with it. It wasn’t uncommon for nice paintings to come into the shop with lush gold leaf frames, carved with intricate decorative floral patterns. We kept the stuff in the shop for repairs. Again, not something I thought much about, but I did think it was cool.
A few years later I returned to seeking a job related to my degree, and ended up working in a pathology lab. Fast forward several more years to when I started mini painting. I didn’t grow up with Warhammer, although I had friends that were into it in high school and my father had Napoleonics. Miniatures weren’t foreign to me but my experience with them was limited. And I think not having that background meant I did a lot of things wrong. And a lot of things differently. I saw people pushing to perfect their NMM and I didn’t want to do that. But metallic paint didn’t feel right either. I remembered gold leaf, watched a single YouTube video of someone using it on a canvas and said yup, that’s what I’ll do.
I ordered gold leaf and diluted some mod podge that I had on hand with water. And I made a mess. If your glue isn’t thin and close to dry, it gets in your gilding brush and gunks up the rest of your leaf, making it kinda chunky and cloudy. I think I got gold in my eye, the stuff floats in the air it’s so thin. I was sloppy with the adhesive, which means more layers of leaf, causing undesirable textures from the all the extra glue. Oh and if your paint is even slightly wet, the gold leaf embeds itself in the paint and won’t come off. I streamlined it over time. And here are a few key things that made a huge difference. Take your time with the glue. Keep it as thin as possible but make sure you get everything covered the first time. Let it dry to the point of going clear, hold it to the light and look for areas that don’t have that glossy appearance. The gold will do the work for you if you get the glue right.
Keep your gilding/buffing brush free of glue and use a softer wider brush. Real gold is not magnetic. Fake/imitation gold can be. Real 24k is edible. Don’t eat the imitation stuff. Real gold also won’t oxidize. Sterling silver does, and some of my minis that have it have tarnished and it actually looks pretty sick. Gold leaf is not crazy money because the gold is so thin. It doesn’t feel like metal, more like a delicate layer of skin if anything. I have seen no reason to seal my gold, but it will rub off with handling. Keep that in mind if you plan to play
with these models. You will need WOODEN tweezers. Leaf will stick to metal.
Fun fact. Gold can’t be created on earth. It’s made in the stars. And boy does it shine. It’s almost mesmerizing. No wonder why dwarves and dragons love the stuff. Seemed appropriate for my Starblood Stalkers and my other beloved Lizardmen. Thanks for reading!! Message me if you want help with the technique. My knowledge is yours.
I'm sure you can all join me in clapping your metaphorical and digital hands together for Rae and her gold leaf technique. It's always so very interesting to see the little niche techniques that people use within this hobby, even more so when they're rooted in something as far away from miniatures, as antiques are. So now that you've learnt how to use gold leaf, what's your next move? Because if I don't start to see some more gold leaf being utilised in miniature painting, I'm gonna start launching tables. If you've got any super cool or weird techniques or skills that help you within the miniature hobby, please get in touch via plasticpreacher@gmail.com or @plasticpreacher on Instagram.
Once again, a massive thanks to Rae for her time and effort with this article. If you'd like to show her some support, of which she deserves more than most, go check out her page HERE to keep up with all her work, and riddle her with praise and questions.
And if there's one thing to take away from this article, it's this:
F**k NMM and TMM, the future is real 24ct gold leaf.
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