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Wanted to get away from the darker black night gobbo, and try out Sebastian Archer's method of painting metal:

looks great. what is archer's method for painting metal? looks great for the gobbo.

A run down on how it was painted please

I believe the method was in WD 320, but I sadly do not have a copy here to reference. My understanding is that you paint a bright metal color, then dirty it up with glazes, or something to that effect.
Something to add to the FLGS shopping list!

I like the bright cloaks on the gobbo. Combined with the green skin, that really makes for a sharp contrast (as opposed to the black, which makes the colors fall into it).

Yes, I saw that WD article - the scary thing is it seemed to involve about 25 coats of thinned down paint - who has that much time and patience?. Great results (for him and Mr Gonads) though...

Non-black robes for Night Goblins? Shock horror! Visually I agree it looks better than boring black (which is also difficult to paint properly), but is it fluffy?

The article was in Australian WD 320 and covered how to paint metal using glazes (as described by razormage) and ork skin, and checks. IMHO the best painting article I've ever seen in a WD and has immediately improved my painting by a long margin. I'm sure someone reported that the article had been put on one of the GW websites but I've just tried searching and couln't find it.

Note: Apart from the sprayed undercoat, and the base the entire model was painted with a 20/0 brush. Stupid and small but I've been doing it for a year now and the extra control and fine detailing make it worth it.

The metal was done after all but the rope at the top of the spear shaft, and the shield front
The metal was done by:
Mithril over the black undercoat 2 layers.
Each glaze is done leaving a little of the last layer exposed...
9 layers of superthinned snakebite leather and minute chaos black (it was then that I realised it was WAY to thin and thickend it up) then 2 layers of the thicker stuff.
5 layers bestial brown and minute chaos black
5 layers dark flesh and minute chaos black
5 layers scorched brown and minute chaos black.
5 layers of 1:1 scorched brown and chaos black in the deepest recesses.

I've since had a reply from Sebastian on another forum and he said that small models like this can easily be done with only 2 layers per colour to save time for a similar effect. I also need to buy a fan to set on low speed to help drying. But even as it is, the glazes are so small that they are ready for the next layer withing 1-2 minutes.... so will be perfect for converyer belt painting.


The flesh is from the same painting article in WD320 - just started at a lighter tone.


Snot green and snakebite leather base.
Watered bestial brown and miniscule black to shade in recesses.
1st layer repeated to clean it up (IIRC)
Goblin green snakebite leather
Goblin green and a skerick of snakebite leather.
Then added bleached bone to this mix.

I never used a staright green as advised by the article and its way better than my previous attempts at greenskins.

I was going to progress to dwarf flesh for the final highlights but chickened out as I couldn't work out how to blend it on such small features, but am still happy with the result I got.

The cloth was painted first and all the mopdel was sprayed black for the undercoat.
3 layers of thinned graveyard earth.
Bestial brown wash (I'll be using scorched brown next time for more contrast)
Graveyard earth over all but deepest recesses.
Progressively add commado khaki over 6 or 7 layers (I use a pallete- another Idea I got from Sebastian at this year's DOGCON, so the paint remains viable and by the time I do a layer its ready to start the next) to pure commando khaki.
Then a couple of layers off added bleach bone on the real highlighted parts.

Then sprayed with Wattyl estapol matt varnish which has a slight brown tinge, which tone down OTT highlights and blends all the colours for me.

Even with all the layers- The first 3 took about half an hour including drying time. I did the wash and left it for an hour. Then ALL the rest of the layering took less than 15 minutes.
Total actual painting time was less than 20 minutes for the cloth.

The quartering on the shield was last minute. I desperately needed something to make the model 'jump out' so after trying black, and blood red I went with the quartering. The idea is that every model will have a different pattern with the same 2 colours (as per the orc boar boy unit in the 6th ed O&G book)

Again nice work. I'm not sure I have the discipline to paint an entire army in this fashion though lmao

My gobbo came with a flat nose.

I was gutted

So did mine, I had to greenstuff a new one.

You know, I saw that gobbo with the white dwarf and hated it with a passion of a thousand white hot burning suns... but now that I see it well painted I have to say it's actually not all that bad of a model... now as for the dwarf....