How to Gold Leaf Your Paintings

Hello everyone! Today I want to show you how I apply gold leaf on my oil paintings. For this you will need a gold leaf sheet or gold flakes depending on the effect you want to create, an adhesive that is made for gilding techniques and some soft brushes. I made this oil painting long time ago so it's already dry and varnished. I'm taping the painting on my table before putting the glue on it. The glue that I'm using is especially made for gilding techniques like this. Before this I tried several cheaper water-based glues but none of them worked well. So I recommend getting a glue that is especially made for gold leaf application. This one has a milky color when you first apply and then it gets transparent. I start applying the adhesive from the edges of my painting. I'm especially using a detail brush for that and I'm being really careful with my edges. Depending on the instructions on your adhesive you should wait at least for 20 minutes before you apply your gold leaf. You should be very slow and careful with the gold leaf because even your breath can fly it away. I will use a soft brush on my surface because hard bristle brushes can scratch the gold leaf so easily. If any place is left open you can easily patch it up. Just make it sure that the sheets are overlapping. Then I'm using a soft cloth pressing the gold leaf on my surface without any pressure. When I'm finally brushing the surface I'm being gentle not to create any scratches on the surface with my brush. And that's how I use gold leaf on my paintings. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Bye!