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I've never used gold before, but I have used several other metallics, from various companies, all without trouble. I'm currently trying to paint gold trim and accents on some samurai armor with GW Auric Armour Gold. It wasn't the freshest pot, so I did shake quite vigorously. I base coated the areas in black, and painted away. Seems very thin, I have to really slather it on or it just pushes the metallic flakes around, with no real coverage. After about four heaping coats, I get decent coverage from a distance, but a bit thin in some places, and of course being unable to thin it, it's not the smoothest coat.

I've never had an issue like this with any paint, especially metallics. I know many people use a brown base under their gold, could that be part of it? Perhaps I've got a bad pot? I believe I've mixed it quite well, and continued to re-mix as I went, but possibly stirring will help. Or is this just simply the natural behavior of the paint? Any help will be greatly appreciated. Trying to paint the small details as I've been doing is ridiculous.

Gold needs a base color under it. Brown is usually the answer. If you want a bright gold go with a lighter brown, darker or older go with a darker brown.

Gold is much more troublesome than other metallics. Why exactly that is I don't know, but if you search "painting gold" on this forum you'll find a long list of hits with an almost equally long list of favored solutions.

IMO the best solution is to invest in a gold from Vallejo's alcohol-based Liquid Metal line. I use Old Gold, which seems to be the crowd favorite. I resisted this for a while due to cost and fuss. But after trying it there's just no going back. It covers better, goes on smoother, and is more metallic than the VGC gold, which is supposedly one of the better acrylic golds out there. It's absolutely night-and-day better. The downsides are that it costs money and requires special processes - the Liquid Metals go for about $6/jar, plus you'll want either Vallejo's alcohol brush cleaner or 95% isopropyl as well as a brush or two that you'll only use with those paints (the paints will rust in the jar if contaminated with water). So you'll probably drop about $20 on the first jar plus the other stuff. And the paint behaves a bit differently than acrylics, so it will require a little practice. But it's so, so worth it.

If you don't want to go the alcohol-based route (and sometimes I don't, as it can be overkill for large areas), I'd suggest using a good basecoat and some Glaze Medium. If I'm speed-painting, I find painting directly on black primer is good enough. But over colored areas or for better effects, I like a basecoat of GW's Balthazar Gold (a sort of metallic red/brown) from their Base line of paints. It goes on smooth with excellent coverage and provides some metallic shine in case your gold layer is thin in places. You'll also see lots of people basecoat in brown or a brown-gold mix, which accomplishes much the same thing. I find the GW stuff is good enough and very convenient, even if a bit too red for my liking.

The Glaze Medium is added to the acrylic gold and helps prevent that "pushing around the metallic flakes" problem you mentioned. Over a Balthazar basecoat, I find 3:1 paint:medium is very smooth and covers well enough. Over black, I use 4:1 for better coverage at the cost of slightly rougher texture.

Between the basecoat and the Glaze Medium, I'm pretty happy with how the VGC gold turns out. I may still have to touch up one or two spots, but it's mostly a two-layer (Balthazar + VGC) job, and way less frustrating than using straight VGC gold on black.

There's also the whole question of how you shade and highlight your gold once you've got a good primary coat. There are a bunch of solutions there too, but I think that depends a lot more on what overall effect you're aiming for.

Thanks for the advice. I really like Vallejo's Liquid Gold, I just got a good deal on this and didn't want to wait for shipping. Honestly though, I should have just got it as by now it'd have been here and been FAR less trouble. I'll try re-base coating with Snakebite and see how that goes.

I have never really liked any company's acrylic gold, or other acrylic metallics.

My method is to either use a NMM technique, or use enamels metallics (Testors or Model Master). I also really like printers inks for metallics, if you can get them.

Don

I've moved over to the tamiya golds. They are alcohol based so you have to use a different brush, but they are amazing.

You have to pick a good basecoat, water the gold down, and then apply several layers. It won't look good at first but after a few thin layers it should look nice. Also by the way, I don't know if you use non gw brand paints, but if you do, the vallejo and army painter gold colors have worked wonders for me. Way better coverage than gw.

Just my two cents
Color Sgt Kell

VMA gold has good coverage with little thinning, I find the VGC metallics to be some of the worst. I also found a pot of Golden Liquid Color Ancient Gold at michael's that has superior coverage. Vallejo Liquid Gold Old Gold has really excellent coverage as well.

I have both of P3's gold and I don't care for them. I had reaper gold but they didn't cover well at all and they dried to a very dull finish with little coherency in the gold triad.

So thats my golden journey.

I'll use any paint that has the properties and color I want. I use regular craft paints for much of my work with great results.

VMA Gold looks really good, like it would be a decent substitute for the Liquid Gold. It is available locally for me as well, unlike the LIquid Gold.

I have several Tamiya paints that have been used on my scale models. I do use them at times for my minis, but haven't had as good luck there for some reason. I am using Tamiya flat aluminum for the katana on this model. It's a great bright metal. Other than small details though, I've had mixed luck brushing on Tamiya, great results out of an airbrush though.

I think there's 2 main ways to paint gold. Start with a brown base and work up to your gold, or use a gold that has good coverage and shade down (and maybe rehighlight up at the end). The latter tends to be faster, but I think the former gives better results (though that's debatable).

GW's Balthasar Gold has actually impressed me, as it has good coverage and works well if you do Balthasar Gold -> wash dark brown or black -> highlight Balthasar Gold -> edge highlight a brighter gold. This gives a good "dirty" gold look.

But there's lots of methods using other golds. I just found Balthasar has a good dark tone that works well for a base gold, I find many other golds are very bright and you need to put more effort in to shading them, but you might be able to get nicer effect from them depending on what you want.

I still haven't found any acrylic metallics that I like enough to use on a regular basis.

For gold...especially shiney gold...I decant Krylon Premium Metallic Gold Foil Paint and then apply it with an airbrush or regular brush for small details like buttons and jewelry.

Slightly duller is the 18k Gold in the same line (looks a bit like gold leaf as opposed to solid gold). There are several excellent golds in the Model Master Metallizer line as well.

Apply over gloss black for the highest shine...flat black for some what duller shines. Other color bases can shift the tone and warmth of the metal.

They are all enamels though...so turps and ventilation and all that.