The Framers Forum

I've been trawling through the topics and found a problem I sorted out for myself.

The problem was gold pens and/or paint 'blobbing' Try this.....

Buy a jar of acrylic gloss medium, water it down until you get a consistency that flows and can be used in a draughtmans pen such as ecobra, add a drop of red watercolour, just so you can see it when it's dry. A bit of trial and error making it diluted enough to flow but not too diluted to lose adhesion.

Draw your lines as normal. Leave to dry and apply gold foil or even real gold leaf, brush off excess and burnish

Others sizes (glues) can be used but most cannot be burnished. Good source for these sizes - calligraphers supplies - good ones - not your average art shop.

Down side - can stick to glass, but acrylic gloss medium dries hard and is fine.

Thanks Roboframer I shall try this out - nothing looks quite as good as the gold lines on old mounts and I suspect that the better ones were achieved using a similar technique - I have yet to use a gold medium that doesnt let you down - normally at a critical point. Have you tried the gold foil that comes in long rolls.

Yes, I use the gold foil reels from Lion, much more economical than sheets.

If using real gold leaf, use transfer leaf, not loose. I always draw each line of medium twice too. real silver leaf tarnishes, use white gold, or, if you are really feeling flush - platinum leaf.

I mainly use a gold line to finish off washlines - i.e. where the last (outer) line is gold, but washlines seem to be going out of fashion.

I would add that once you have the consistency right, this method is very good, I can actually WRITE with this medium and then adhere gold, this is how I adapted the method.