Shell-gold and Mica and how you can use them in your paintings
My painting speciality is illumination, which literally means the use of gold and other sparkly reflective surfaces in the painting. It is one of my favourite techniques and I fell in love with it while exploring Islamic art and patterns and that lead me to Islamic illumination. Therefore, I have a few things to tell you about gold and mica shimmers and how you can use them in your paintings.
Gold on Parchment in a Quran produced in 900 in Iran, source
The importance of gold and shimmers
Gold is a favourable material in religious text and it always depicts something of importance that is worthy of the most precious material, which is gold. In Islamic scared manuscripts, gold was used to physically illuminate the word of God and you will see it appear as a heading, marker between verse, markers on the margins, in frontispieces and carpet pages. Illumination and the use of gold was also used in other Eastern religions and Western/Christian manuscripts, however, the technique is not always the same in all of them. The Eastern and Islamic manuscript artists preferred (and still prefer) shell gold.
Gold on Parchment in a Quran produced in 911 in Damascus, Source
Shell Gold
Genuine gold is true gold in its purest forms and comes as 23-24k. Sometimes gold is mixed with other materials to create white and green gold. Gold comes as 25 sheets in a booklet and that is most popular form, but it also comes as powder or a paste. The traditional way is to buy the booklet of gold and mix each sheet with gum Arabic and rubbing it in a glass or ceramic container to make shell gold. Here’s an old video of me showing you this exact method, however there are many recipes to make shell gold and each culture seems to have a different variation on how this is made. Shell gold is the type of gold use in Islamic manuscripts secular and sacred. It is a beautiful and smooth gold that you paint with. It is most used in Turkish, Iranian, Indian and Japanese cultures until this day. Travelling to these countries can enable you to buy genuine gold if you want to start painting
Painting with Shell Gold
Painting with shell gold is very different than painting with your usual watercolours, the consistency is not creamy or light, it is more watered down and it feels like moving very fine particles around with water. It tends to dry very quickly, so it is handy to have a dropper or a pipet with you. Depending on the used recipe, you can either add just water (drop by drop) or it might need a drop of glycerin or gum Arabic into your water. Most commercial shell golds including the one I make myself and the beautiful handmade Japanese shell-gold that I sell on this website only need few drops of water to activate and to paint with.
When you paint with genuine gold, you need to burnish it with a fancy tool called agate burnisher, but honestly you can use any smooth surface. Polished gem stones tend to work very well for this. You can burnish directly on the gold, or if you are worried abut scratching the gold, you can place baking paper or tracing paper and burnish on top of that. The video below shows you how I usually do it. Although, I no longer do the gelatine part that I started with in the video.
Mica, Lustre, pearlescent or shimmers
All of these names are used interchangeably to describe the same thing, which is imitation sparkle made of mica flakes that are usually laminated with titanium dioxide and tin oxide. According to Britannica, Mica is made of any of a group of hydrous potassium, aluminum silicate minerals and it is a type of phyllosilicate. One of the most important minerals in the Mica family is Muscovite as stated in Geology.com.
Mica is divided to two types:
Natural Mica that involves mining the metals, which can lead to ethical issues, so the mica/lustre pigments on the website here are from a UK ethical supplier that forbids child-labour, but it can be a shady business when you do not know the supplier, so make sure you do your research.
Synthetic mica, made in a lab, so at least the mining option is out of the equation, but the quality can be different.
All of these are wonderful alternative to the expensive genuine gold and it is a good way to start illuminating your paintings.
Painting with mica
You can treat mica as you would watercolours since the consistency is similar, but it might need a couple/few minutes to be activated with water, so I suggest adding water with a dropper and waiting for a minute or two then mixing it very well with a mixing brush (an additional cheap brush that you only use for mixing, so you don’t ruin the tip of your nice brushes). Mica paints do not need to be burnished as they sparkle off the bat!
What is the difference between genuine gold and mica?
The main difference is the ingredients and the components that make them. The genuine gold uses the actual real genuine gold, where the mica either uses a mix of metals if it is natural or a mix of other ingredient if synthetic. The second difference is the shine. The genuine gold is very subtle and only shines when the light hits it in a particular way, where the mica is ALWAYS shiny. The image of the little golden flower I painted shows you the levels of sparkle. The loud sparkle is the gold lustre and the subtle one is genuine gold. I really love both and my choice is usually based on the client and the type of work I am producing.
Further reading:
Shell Gold – Production, Usage, and Handling of a Historical Artisanal Technique by Materialized Identities Blog.
The Truth About Mica by Athar Beauty.
Note on Credit:
If you use this blog post, please credit Dr.Esra Alhamal, Feb 2022.
