How to do gold leaf gilding digitally

To do gold leaf gilding digitally, use the gilding tools in Easel by Zaweba: paint on size, the adhesive, then lay metal leaf over it, just as a gilder does. If you'd rather start quickly, the built-in gold leaf preset gets you most of the way there. Either way the metal sits only where the size went down, which is what makes real gilding look so precise.

Gilding is one of those crafts that is expensive and nerve-racking to learn in real life. Leaf is thin, costly and blows away if you breathe on it. Practising on screen lets you learn the order of work and the design thinking without any of that.

How real gilding works

A traditional gilder paints a thin layer of size onto the areas that should be gold. Size is a glue that is left to go tacky. Then sheets of metal leaf, which may be real gold or a cheaper metal, are laid over the top and pressed down. Leaf sticks only where there is size. The rest is brushed away, leaving the gold in exactly the shape that was painted.

That is why gilded halos, borders and lettering have such crisp edges. The shape is drawn in glue, not in metal.

Sizing and laying leaf in Easel

Choose your surface first. Wood panel, gessoed panel, parchment or a dark paper all suit gilding, depending on whether you're aiming for an icon, a manuscript page or a decorative card.

Paint the rest of the picture, or at least the main colours, before you gild. Traditional manuscripts and icons were often gilded early, but on screen it is easiest to see how the gold sits once the colours around it are in.

Paint size onto the areas you want gold. Take your time, because the shape you paint is the shape you'll get. Use a small round brush for lettering and a larger one for backgrounds. Masking tape and stencils help for clean, straight borders: lay the tape, paint the size, then peel the tape off.

Lay metal leaf over the sized area. It will take where there is size and not elsewhere.

If you'd rather skip the setup, choose the gold leaf preset, one of Easel's 28 built-in presets. Presets give you a ready-made starting point for a particular look, and you can add your own.

Making the gold look real

Gold is all about light. Easel lights thick paint with a light you can move, so try moving it to see how the gilded areas change. Turn on the flat light, with L by default, when you want to judge colour without highlights, and switch back to see the shine.

Contrast helps. Gold looks brightest against deep reds, blues and black, which is why so many icons and manuscripts use them.

Easel also has metallic, interference, iridescent and fluorescent paints. Metallic paint is useful for small touches where leaf would be too fiddly, such as fine lines on a robe, and mixing leaf and metallic paint in one picture is a very traditional approach.

Ideas to try

An illuminated initial is a lovely first project: a single capital letter in gold, with a border of coloured paint around it. A small icon-style panel on wood with a gilded halo is another. Decorative cards and certificates benefit from a gilded border too.

Keeping the shine when you export

When you export as PNG, JPEG or TIFF, you can choose whether to include the impasto lighting. For gilding, export with it on, so the gold keeps its shine. If you'd like to carry on in an image editor, Edit in Paint by Zaweba sends a PNG over.

Gilding in Easel by Zaweba won't replace the feel of real leaf, but it is a very good way to learn how a gilded design works before you buy the gold.