The continued light pressure of the brush is essential to a good effect. The gold is pressed into perfect contact with the size, the skewings attach themselves to any tiny open spots, and the whitish look of the freshly gilded moldings give way to an agreeable polish. The outside flat surface of a thick frame is usually better painted than gilded. This may range from a slight modification of the color, to bring the frame into harmony with the painting, to the most dire imitations of the disasters of centuries of wear. In either case, leaving out of account methods of deliberate fraud, the system is the same.
Color is applied with size.
Those who care to do so may rub a little of the gold off the tops and corners of a water gilded frame, to suggest wear, and to let the red bole show through. The water gilded surface, or the oil gilded surface covered with a protective coating of size, should next be given two or more coats of very thin shellac. Some color may be added to the shellac if desired, to alter or deepen the color of the gold. Alcoholic solutions of gamboge and dragonsblood are usually used for this purpose, but Bismarck brown and other dyes may be employed. When the shellac is dry, colors are mixed with size exactly as for tinted papers, and painted over the surface with a bristle brush.