Yawn.
So. Next step when gilding something is to apply a ground of a suitable color, so that if any leaf should happen to rub off, it won't look too awful (gold leaf is three-millionths of an inch thick). So I used a mix of Robert Doak's blue ochre and indanthrone blue for the areas that would be leafed in white gold, and I forget what yellow for those that would be leafed in 23.75KT rose noble. Later on I also painted the supraorbital ridge and eyelids yellow.
Then I proceeded to oil gild all but the beak, cere and the scoop in white gold.
I purchased the leaf from the long gone Baggot Leaf Co on Greene St in SoHo, NYC. While there, Grace Baggot suggested a little book, published a long time ago, called Practical Gilding. This is a Brit book and like most Brit books on trades, excellent. I forget the name of the author. In it I found the cure for the sticky overlay problem. Here's how you do it--
Once the initial coat of leaf is dry, mix up some glair-- egg white in water beaten to a froth and the liquid strained out. Glair was used as a medium in Medieval illuminated manuscripts, and as a sealer for lute tops. Apply to the object being gilded. Let dry. Then mix up some oil size with a little oil color so you can see where you're putting it-- yellow ochre in this case. The glair will serve as a resist and prevent any gold from sticking to places where there is no size. Apply the contrasting gold, wait for the size to tack up (I used three hour size), then apply your leaf, and voila.
Here I have gilded the cere, gape and eyelids with rose noble. The striping was yet to come.
Here is the potential for screwing up-- you have a limited amount of time to get the egg white off with warm water. If it sets hard, it becomes impermeable and will never come off. Hence I didn't do all the rose noble in one go. However, if you take it off too soon after applying the leaf, the leaf may go with it. Kinda dicey.
