OP

Quoted from Tbgolfen:

Good question. Terry preferred this time to do a little more than just a rough outline of the crown and jewelry to work out the spacing and concept. So the artwork is buried under the gold and silver leaf. Artwork will be applied over the gold leaf. Because masking on top of gold leaf is really tricky and can cause delamination, I will put 2 coats of clear on next to lock everything down. Then he will come back and do shading and detail work on top of the gold/silver leaf (actually on the clear coat) much like what you saw. Any mistakes or corrections to the artwork can be sanded off without impacting the leaf. Although time and expense are the cost of intermediate clear coats, I believe in the end you arrive at a finished product quicker because of the potential damage (chips, scratches, delamination, etc) that can occur with so many layers of material. Those accidents can often mean redoing an entire section of art to make it look right.