FAQ: Painting Gold

[mario]

I am also collecting my own DIY chapter the Emperor's Lions they also have gold coloured armour with dark red shoulder pads and white robes.

Mario if it is not to much trouble could you please show an example of your technique with some photo's. Or if you don't have pre taken examples maybe just say what colours you would recommend. Thankyou

It doesn't depend on a specific paint. Use what you have/want. The "tip" part is that you paint it like any other paint and that you mix it with normal paint for the base-coat (at least). This gives you bigger spectrum to work with as you get a less sparkly paint to begin your work with. This is helpful and useful because there are not that many metallic paints.

 

In the end it should look like a nice gold. The technique is a kit-bash consisting mainly of Jakob Nielsen's metallic painting technique (that's what I used to as starting point) and a few other things found elsewhere or stuff I accidentally learned while trying some new things. Here is a link to his site. That should give you a rough guideline to how it could look.

 

You wrote that you have white robes. The main tip I would give you (regarding colour choice) is to use darker metallics as very bright metallics clash with the white too much. Everything ends up way too bright and you lose the form of the miniature.

 

For the non-metallic paint to mix in the gold: Just use anything that looks good in your opinion. This could be something that is very similar to the gold (just without the sparkle (read: a beige-brown hue)) or even purple or green hues. It depends on what you need/want. There is no "use this to create something great effect" in colour choice as the perception of all colours is dependent on its surrounding colours.

 

This means that any tips on colour choice (specific mixing formulas) that are not referencing your colour composition are (most probably) not a good choice for you.

[Marovingean]

I just use:

Gold Colour

Shade

Re-highlight (base-colour)

Wash with discord (purple, blue)

Re-highlight

50/50 Gold/light metal

Looks good, or check out www.jrn-works.dk and go on tutorials for a good gold technique :drool:

 

M

[Kaldoth]

Well, my sister graduated this year and will be off to college in the summer. I don't really have any money to buy her a graduation present, but something I do have plenty of is spare minis :P So, I thought I would do a Space Marine up in her college colors, black and gold (she's going to Appalachian State University in case you were wondering). Problem is, I generally try to stay away from metallic colors as I can't ever get them to work right. The only thing I have to thin them with is water, and that seperates the paint up into that blue swirly stuff. I don't know how to darken/lighten the paint by mixing, so I can't really highlight/shade unless I go out and buy paint that's a shade ligher/darker. Generally, I'm a mess when it comes to metallics :rolleyes: So, if any of you have tips or tricks as to painting with metallics, I would really appreciate any help you can give me. The marine will (hopefully) end up looking like this:

 

 

He will be equipped with a bolt pistol, CCW, and he's going to have a banner with the letters "ASU" in white, outlined in gold, against a black background.

 

 

Cheers,

 

-Kal

[LunchBox]

First off...that's a pretty cool color scheme anyway...but to the question: after you spray your base coat, go over it with snakebite leather. Then, apply the gold paint. When that dries, add a thinned flesh wash to it. Then highlight up with the gold, then 1/2 gold, 1/2 chainmail...then finish it off with a bit of thinned mithril silver.

[Divergent Reality]

search is your friend brother.

[Feor]

I've been doing Grey Knights lately, and I've found that a basecoat of black (shouldn't be a problem for you) then a coat of Boltgun metal, then shining gold looks pretty good.

[Desikratis]

Another way of painting Gold that looks a bit....... beaten is:

Basecoat (of course), then Brassen Brass with a lair of Shining gold (not to thick). After that use a mix of (1:1) Mithril Silver and Shining Gold (change this mix however you like) for highlight, and to give it a good "beaten" look use Chesnut Ink.

 

This is not the best way of painting gold, some people probably think its not good at all, but i hope i've helped anyway.

Cheers, and Good Luck!

 

-Desikratis

[Metsuri]

I'm using this method borrowed from JRN:

Base with earth

couple of coats of shining gold thinned with water to achieve solid coverage

wash with brown ink thinned with water 1:1

recoat with gold, but leave recesses to show brown ink in shadows

highlight with gold:mithril silver 1:1 thinned with water

extreme highlights with pure thinned mithril

glaze with brown/ orange/ chestnut inks thinned very thin, just enough colour left in the glaze to slightly tint the color.

 

Gives you really nice gold, but reguires some effort so pull off.

[-Devil-]

you could also paint a white basecoat, then put some bright yellow on it ... then use a black ink wash that is a little thick (an extra drop or two of ink in it) ... which will darken the yellow down a lot .. and give a decent non metallic gold color...

[battle captain corpus]

Shining gold with 50/50 highlights of chainmail and then highlight just edges with mithril.

[Divergent Reality]

I'm using this method borrowed from JRN:

Base with earth

couple of coats of shining gold thinned with water to achieve solid coverage

wash with brown ink thinned with water 1:1

recoat with gold, but leave recesses to show brown ink in shadows

highlight with gold:mithril silver 1:1 thinned with water

extreme highlights with pure thinned mithril

glaze with brown/ orange/ chestnut inks thinned very thin, just enough colour left in the glaze to slightly tint the color.

 

Gives you really nice gold, but reguires some effort so pull off.

 

do you have a pic to see the final product?

[bob123]

What I always do:

 

Black undercoat

 

Basecoat brazen brass

 

Slightly thinned layer of shining gold

 

Again slightly thinned a layer of burnished gold

 

Thin wash of purple ink ( experiment with different ratios of purple ink to water)

[Tomevans]

Step 1: Undercoat Boltgun metal

 

Step 2: Basecoat Shining gold

 

Step 3: Glaze Flesh wash

 

Step 4: Highlight Bunished gold

 

Step 5: Extreme highlight Mithril Silver

 

Hope that helps you.

[Marovingean]

Whatever you do, wash with purple, or the purists will kill you :teehee:

 

M

[feuer_faust]

My way to do gold/bronze/whatever...

 

Solid coat of the color, ie: gold.

Thinnish wash with some flesh wash or chestnut ink.

 

Done. :(

[Kaldoth]

Thanks for all the recipes guys! This should help quite a bit ^_^ Though, I really really need more on thinning metallic paints than anything. I just can't seem to thin it without it going all blue and swirly on me.

 

Any tips? :confused:

 

Cheers,

 

-Kal

[-Devil-]

thats the joy of metallics ... i try to avoid using them mostly because of that.

[Metsuri]

do you have a pic to see the final product?

 

Here is an example of the gold painted in the way I described earlier. The gold is glazed with chestnut in this case. The pic is awful, but I hope you get the idea of the gold.

 

http://lh4.google.com/juhanmts/RpY--Byd5mI/AAAAAAAAAwI/48bj3vr3ZKE/s400/Neophyte_1.jpg

 

 

@Kaldoth:

 

You probably thin the metal a bit too much, just add enough water/ medium to get the paint flowing nicely. About 1:2 to 1:1 ratio of water to paint is required. Just dab some metallic paint on a palette (I use old piece of cardboard) and and little water at a time using brush. When the paint is following the brush movements you have the right consistency.

[GKTELIAS]

For me I use a basecoat of brazen brass over chaos black then shade with a mixture of 3 parts water and 1 part brown ink and a highlight of shining gold.

[Lord Janos]

Ive been trying to paint gold on some of my blood angels and nothing i do seems to turn out how I want it to :blink:

Just wondering if anyone has any methods which work well

[crossatron]

I have literally just finished painting the chest eagles on some of my Ultramarines gold. And the method I find works best is a base coat of shining gold, followed by a brown ink wash and then a highlight of burnished gold.. and if you fancy a really high shine, I use a shining gold/mithril silver mix and lightly drybrush it on..

 

Hope that helps!:-)

[Jaspercation]

another way you can do it is the give it a coat of tin bitz and highlight it with burnished gold, (although to finish it off you really need chestnut ink :P ) that gives a really dark gold colour!

 

or i've just tried a combo today and looks pretty cool, basically the same as above, tin bitz base, but then give it a wash of leviathan purple and then highlight with burnished gold!!!

 

hope this helps!!

[Brother Adeon]

The way I paint gold is to first paint the area in Chainmail, then I use a combination of Chestnut Ink and Bronzed Flesh. This mixture makes the silver look very gold with a red tint to it. I use it on all my gold pieces. You need to experiment with the ratio of ink to paint. About 3 to 1 is about right so the paint is not overpowering, more of just a carrier for the ink. The glaze should still be pretty transparent when it goes on. You can't really tell from the picture, but he is very shiny.

 

http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc216/mikedunn19/DSCN0446.jpg

[RWJP]

I use a really simple method... Coat of Shining gold, followed by a wash of flesh wash, which gives it a glistening appearance... If it looks to dark, I drybrush with a 50:50 mix of Shining gold and Chainmail, if not, I leave it as is.

[Lord Janos]

thanks guys!, ive got a couple of spare marines ill try these out on and see which looks best!!!

Ave Imperator