I got caught up last night and forgot to write my blog. I was gold leafing an icon that I intend to give to the brothers at New Skete as a gift. It’s of a pregnant Mary, in most such paintings she doesn’t have a large belly, but rather a golden sphere is projected over her stomach with a child-Christ within it, surrounded by golden rays and holding a scroll or a book some such.

That was the sort of Mary I had laser engraved into an old piece of maple I had. I rushed a little icon engraving for Abby and my Chrismation, just did one simple pass of a png I had lightly edited, it turned out OK after I painted the halos white. I didn’t have any gold leaf to make them fancier than that.

This one is a massive improvement as, with the help of my brother, I’ve split the images into low, mid, and dark tones, treating each one as a pass of the laser, adding depth and complexity to the thing. I then gold-leaf the places which aren’t burned away.

Gold leafing is non trivial. I used to be pretty good at it in college, but it’s been a long time since then. Even working on a clean, even surface I’m left with many patches of bare wood, which makes the whole thing look much, much older than it is. And while that’s kind of cool, I wish it were a choice and not just the best I could do.

Though as I consider that, I think if I could do perfect gold leafing but chose not to, and rather weathered it to look “old”, that would be something I would hate. That sort of stuff is contrived and weird whereas my fool-hearted attempts at “good” gold leaf falling short are kind of charming, I like how they look anyways.

But that’s not an excuse to not try to get better.