Gold NMM, made easy
I’m speed painting a Rune Priest up for a competition and I figured I may as well snap some pics and put out another tutorial for you guys.
First, your palette: Khemri Brown (foundation paint henceforth known as KB)
Snakebite Leather (Snakebite)
Bubonic Brown (Bubonic)
Bleached Bone (Bleached)
Skull White (Skull)
Dark Flesh (Dark)
Devlan Mud (Devlan)
Copious amounts of water to keep your paints thinned down to facilitate blending (feathering and glazing are best to use here, but simple layering can work in a pinch also)
Step 1: Over an undercoat (I used white, but it honestly doesn’t matter *that* much for gold and silver; you’ll be darkening shadows and lightening highlights enough to get a damn near identical result either way) paint a 1-1 mix of KB to snakebite in a couple of thin coats, keeping an even coverage and not letting the paint pool.
Step 2: Now, mix up a 1-1-1 mix of KB to snakebite to bubonic and apply this *away* from the place where light will directly fall upon the metal. Basically, for NMM (the vast majority of them, anyway), you’ll want to basically reverse the direction and placement of highlights on areas. In this way, the highest points are darkest (with a white dot at the top, to be shown later) and the lowest points highlighted to near white. Keeping this in mind, feather a couple of thin coats from this step in such a way, followed by a further coat of 2-3-3-1 KB to snakebite to bubonic to bleached to achieve this look:
Step 3: For this mix, use 1-2-2-2 KB to snakebite to bubonic to bleached, making sure to blend your layers, followed by 1-1-1 snakebite to bubonic to bleached. At this last layer, you should be within the bottom quarter of the space you’re painting. Also, in this stage, you’ll want to *thinly* glaze dark flesh over the whole surface, making very sure none of it pools anywhere; simply rub off the excess liquid on a towel and brush the rest onto the surface. Also, glaze some devlan onto the darkest point (closest to the light source) to add to contrast.
Step 4: Mix up 1-1-4 snakebite to bubonic to bleached, followed by pure bleached, and followed by a final edge highlight of sorts of 1-1 bleached to skull. It should look something like this:
Step 5: For this final stage, you may want to add one more glaze of dark flesh and also darken the upper most parts further with devlan, but that is to personal taste. Add a *small* dot of pure white at the very tips closest to the light source in the darkest part of the gold to represent the reflection of the light source itself. It will look like this when you’re finished:
If you have any questions or comments, please let me know, as usual. I’ll write up one for silver at some point, when I can. It’s pretty much the same, but with greys and possibly even reddish browns if you like. Good luck, happy painting fellas.