Oils gold crowns ruby gemstones

[thrax]

painting a black prince in 90mm and am dealing with a gold crown with rubies. ok let me ask. whats your favorite method of dealing with ruby gems?
and second question handling gold? printers inks? acrylic golds? bronze powders? quick size and gold leaf? or flats painting style using no powders.
i'm very curious of personal preferences.

 

[Ron Tamburrini]

Hi Thrax

as for golds i prefer printers inks mixed with oils and spray varnish to finnish .
As for gem stones oils again with deep shading and also varnish to bring up the shine a bit.

Haven't done any flats for many many years but would go down the artists road there and use oils only for the effect of gold.

Ron

 

[Meehan34]

acrylics for me. The gem stones are easy with a normal base coat, shadow and ultra highlite covered in several layers of gloss varnish. same for gold just skipping the gloss varnish with the high points in printers inks. I would probably do the whole thing in printers inks mixed with acrylic gloss varnish if I had enough but I only have a small dab so I have to conserve. Flats probably should be done in NMM, using acrylics of course.

 

[housecarl]

Hace a peep here. http://www.necrotales.com/necroTutorials/tut_gemstonesf.php
Carl.

 

[Einion]

For round figures, especially at larger scales, I don't like NMM for shiny metals and any painted illusions of reflections. So metallic paint and glossy for me.

For gold/gilding I'd use gold printers' ink if I had it, but failing that the alcohol-based metallics from Vallejo would probably be my second choice. In water-borne paint, some of the metallics in the Model Air range are excellent and I hope to be trying them more this year. Whatever metallic paint type I went with it would be shaded and highlighted as necessary, to help prevent the crown looking a a bit flat.

For the rubies, it might depend a bit on how they're sculpted but I'd usually paint cabochons dark at top and lighter below (basically something like this, without the surface reflections) and then apply a gloss finish, e.g. Future or polyurethane varnish.

Einion

 

[jcichon]

For gems, the link housecarl posted works really well on mini's. I have never tried it on large scale figures but it should work

 

[thrax]

I have yet to find a nice smooth gold rich bright printers ink. red lancer chuck had some but hes out. I guess the shift to digital printing has made the inks impossible to find? Carl excellent link i'm trying it as we speak the mini method with a humbrol clear topcoat. scarlet red acrylic top. bottom alizarin crimson tiny catchlite and a clearcoat !!! its working.

 

[thrax]

alcohol based gold seems to dry before i can get the brush to the primer is there a trick using the alcohol based mettalics extender? retarder? it has a fine grain but too quick

 

[renarts]

I like to use those metallic gold leafing pens that calligraphers use. I press the tip and make a little puddle of the liquid and paint from that. It goes on smooth, looks like polished metal and cleans up with laquer thinner. You can find silver, gold and copper. The stuff drybrushes like a dream and its readily available from craft stores, office supply stores and art supply stores.

 

[RKapuaala]

]I prefer the painted method with acrylics for all metals. I'm still trying to perfect the method myself but I find that using flat paints with no glossy finishes even with my poor skills looks better than a metalic paint or even gold leave. The problem for me with both those methods is that real metal and metalic colors still have to conform to the physics of a full scale world around it while if you paint the metals you can pretend that the real world in the real scale doesn't exist and you can make the refractive and reflective qualities of metal do what you want them to do, not what the environment tells them to do.
Again, I haven't perfected it really well, but I have seen it done with amazing results.

This is my best attempt so far. I could never get real metal or metalic paint to show even close to the reflective properties of the 7.8ths scale buttons on his uniform.

 

[thrax]

RK yes i like the result very nice flats style . i understand your point. leafing pen brilliant.I have used them and forgot about them. very smooth fine grind

 

[Ron Tamburrini]

I have yet to find a nice smooth gold rich bright printers ink. red lancer chuck had some but hes out. I guess the shift to digital printing has made the inks impossible to find? Carl excellent link i'm trying it as we speak the mini method with a humbrol clear topcoat. scarlet red acrylic top. bottom alizarin crimson tiny catchlite and a clearcoat !!! its working.

I have the pre digital stuff and it is the smoothest and finest ever, after this thread I think I will lock it up somewhere rely safe.

Ron

 

[Einion]

I have yet to find a nice smooth gold rich bright printers ink. red lancer chuck had some but hes out. I guess the shift to digital printing has made the inks impossible to find?

They're still widely made but they've never been easy to get in the hobby. You can get metallic inks directly from printers' supply houses, but the smallest quantity would generally be a large amount (a tin about the diameter of your palm) and you need to be sure in advance that you're getting a good one, since they do vary.

Carl excellent link i'm trying it as we speak the mini method with a humbrol clear topcoat. scarlet red acrylic top. bottom alizarin crimson tiny catchlite and a clearcoat !!!

Other way around - dark at top, light below

alcohol based gold seems to dry before i can get the brush to the primer is there a trick using the alcohol based mettalics extender? retarder? it has a fine grain but too quick

Working really fast is about all I can recommend! Actually I did think of two other things while I was typing: use the largest brush you can for this, not a teeny one since the paint dries so quickly in small quantities; second thing is you need to have some alcohol right to hand to dip the brush into, in case that's not obvious.

These Vallejo paints (and the homemade equivalent) are a pain to use but the results can be worth it. Tricky to use on large areas though, no doubt about it.

Einion

 

[Paul Kernan]

Norm

Check out some of the mini sites (Games Workshop) and on YouTube. Lots of examples