How to make gold color?

Church domes, old coins, jewelry - but you never know what can appear in the picture of a novice artist. All this should look as if made of pure gold. And if you decide to insert a mirror, for example, into a “golden” frame? Or to lay out the contours of a stained-glass window - they should not at all differ externally from those that are cast from real precious metal. How to make gold color? We will discuss this now.

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Painting, painting, computer programs

Gold paint may be needed by both the painter, the master of decorative and applied art, and the one who prefers to draw on the computer. The methods for obtaining the appropriate color will be different, and there is a very simple explanation for this.

Painting

The colors on the paintings are to some extent arbitrary. The number of colors in the box is limited, but a great variety of colors can be obtained. A true master of his craft takes into account not only the colors themselves, but also their combinations, and how the viewer perceives them.

Gold paint is in some sets of watercolors, as well as silver. Some artists use them. But in most cases, on the pictures you can see the “golden” objects, which are painted with paints that do not contain any additional metallic inclusions.

Carving and modeling

But the situation for the master of arts and crafts is completely different. If he needs to make a golden color on the surface, he gilds it with paints, in which special substances are added. The product and the texture is similar to metal.

Important! Most often, the master makes such paints with his own hands.

Photoshop and the rest

Gold color is also needed for those involved in prepress. For example, a gold font is often used:

• in congratulatory addresses;
• in certificates of honor;
• on business cards;
• for book design.

Of course, the designer has no brushes or paint boxes at hand. He gets the desired color using special functions that are equipped with, for example, Photoshop. And the principle of obtaining the desired shade will be very different from that followed by painters or applicants.

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Color in the picture

To draw any picture, the artist needs only a few colors, but in two different scales:

• achromatic;
• chromatic.

Achromatic colors include:

• the black;
• white.

Important! Mixing these two colors in different proportions, you will get all the shades of gray that are available in the world.

As for the chromatic scale, then you need only three colors:

• yellow;
• red;
• blue

Mix paint

Try to take three jars of gouache and get all the other colors that we see in the spectrum:

• red and yellow color give an orange color;
• the result of mixing yellow and blue will be green;
• combining red and blue, you get purple.

Important! In boxes of paints you can see “purple K” or “purple C”, which means that in one case the red pigment prevails, in the other - blue.

Add white

Paints can be:

1. transparent
2. opaque.

The most popular form of transparent paints is watercolor. Through each new layer, all the previous ones are looked through, so you can get, say, pink or blue in only one way - to dilute red or blue paint with water more thinly.

Opaque paints - oil and gouache.They can be applied in a continuous layer so that neither canvas nor paper, nor previous layers are visible. Gouache, of course, is also bred with water, like watercolor. But light tones are obtained in a completely different way. White is added to the palette. The more white you get, the brighter the tone.

Gold paint on the picture

Gold color is also obtained by mixing colors. It is close to yellow, but not quite. You cannot call it orange either. However, it is obtained by mixing precisely yellow and red. True, red is not suitable for everyone, but only royal or red-brown. And you need it very little, just a few drops on a standard jar of gouache.

So, how to make gold color from gouache:

1. If the gouache is dry, dilute it with water and stir until the consistency of thick sour cream.
2. Add a little carmine to the jar with yellow strontium and mix to get a homogeneous mass, without fractions.

With oil we do exactly the same, but with watercolors the situation is more interesting. Of course, you can mix paints on the palette, but nothing prevents you from doing this on the picture itself to make a golden color:

1. Apply a layer of bright yellow watercolor to the desired area.
2. Drop a couple of drops of red and wash, depending on the shape of the depicted object. For example, on domes, on the one hand, the color will be lighter than on the other - depending on where the light falls).

How to make gold color from gouache?

Sometimes gouache has to be used not only to create paintings, but also in order to cover some other decor items. For example, a bas-relief made of plasticine and primed with a water-based emulsion.

The traditional painting method is not suitable here. You need:

• yellow gouache;
• bronze powder.

The technology by which you can make a gold color is available to anyone:

1. Dilute the gouache to the desired consistency.
2. Add bronze to it.
3. Cover the desired terrain.
4. Top your entire creation with varnish.

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Gold items

And what if you need to cover jewelry, a figurine or furniture with gold paint? By mixing red and yellow you can’t get rid of it; you have to make gold paint.

To do this, you will need:

• bronze or gold powder;
• nitrol varnish or oil:
• glass jar;
• wooden stick.

Gold powder can be bought in stores that sell goods for artists. Of course, she will give the most natural color. But she has one significant drawback - it is quite expensive. Bronze can be much cheaper, but you can buy it at a hardware store. In color, they almost do not differ.

Important! For fine jewelry, gold powder is more suitable; for larger items, bronze can be used.

Staining methods

There are two ways to use bronze or gold powder:

• dilute in varnish;
• paint the product by dusting.

Make dye

To make a gold paint, in principle, any varnish is suitable, but most often they use oil or nitro. There is no big difference in price, but oil dries much more slowly.

To use such a tool:

1. Pour the varnish into a glass jar.
2. Slowly add bronze powder there, constantly mixing.
3. Stir the composition so that it is homogeneous, without accumulations of powder, and thick enough (it is desirable that there are no colorless gaps between the grains of bronze).
4. Paint the product with a brush or cotton swab (the first method is better).
5. Let things dry.
6. Adjust the coating so that the layer is flat everywhere.

Important! The advantage of this method is that the product does not require additional processing after it is gilded.

Spraying method

In this case, a layer of powder is applied on top of the varnish:

1. Pour the powder into a jar of such a volume that the product fits there.
2. Coat the item with oil or nitro-varnish.
3. Dip it in a jar of powder.

Important! The main disadvantage of this method is that after processing, the product fades for a rather long time.To prevent this from happening, it is covered with another layer of varnish on top. Moreover, if the first layer was oily, then nitrol varnish should be applied on top of the powder (and vice versa).

A bit about surfaces

Gold paint based on oil varnish can be used to cover any surface:

• a tree;
• metal;
• plastic.

As for nitro-lacquer, it is certainly suitable for metal and wooden products, but not always for plastic. If you need the gold-plated plastic hoop to dry quickly, first try applying a few drops of nitro-varnish to an inconspicuous place and see if it starts to dissolve the plastic or not.

Important! Silver paint is obtained in the same way, only powder is needed not bronze, but aluminum.

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We sit down at the computer

And what if you need to make a card and send it by e-mail? Nothing supernatural. Your equipment has such opportunities, if only Adobe Photoshop is on it

In this program you can get a gold color:

• for the image;
• for text.

Oddly enough, but in order to get any shade, a computer needs only three colors - just like an artist painting with paints. True, the set of colors is slightly different. It includes:

• red;
• green;
• blue.

The very process of obtaining the desired shades is to change the intensity and relative position in the structure of a particular picture. The gold color in this pattern is not at all strange.

Turn Lead into Gold

To feel like an alchemist, find any picture where there is something lead gray. For example, a car. Open the picture in Photoshop.

Important! For experiments, the GIF format is most suitable.

It’s best to take a picture where the background layer is transparent. In this case, the graphic editor can easily determine the contours of the main image. Why is this needed? Then, in order not to mess with the background, but to work only with the image.

The curves

A tool that lets you turn lead into gold is called Curves or Curves. You can find it in the top menu, in the “Image” tab - “Adjustments”.

Important! When you open the tab, a panel will appear in front of you, at the top of which there is a window. By default, there is RGB, but you can set the names of the primary colors.

Farther:

1. Darken the image by moving the curve a little back - you will see the result in the picture.
2. Move in turn the curves of red, green and blue.
3. Red curve - take it back, that is, to the top line.
4. Curves of blue and green - on the contrary, take to the bottom line.
5. Try different positions of the curves.

Important! Having got a color close to what you need, try experimenting with the effects - you will find the corresponding functions in the “Filters” tab.

Golden text

Open the image in Photoshop and put the text on it (for this, find the image with the letter T on the toolbar). It will be in letter format, but you need a graphic:

1. Select the Rectangular Marquee Tool.
2. Right click on the text.
3. Select Rasterize Layer.
4. And then - process the picture in the same way as in the previous case.

Important! Before rasterizing the text, check it carefully - after such processing, errors cannot be fixed.

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Stock footage

From this article, you learned how to make gold color. Now you can continue to create using the necessary colors, regardless of whether you decide to make a decorative and applied object, an element of architecture, a computer picture, or a real art masterpiece on canvas. Good luck!