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I've been painting a few Celestial Lions and will, like many people, be painting some custodes. I've gone through a few different gold paints to see what I like through my airbrush as 30 bucks a can for Retributor armor gold is a bit of a beating, not quite as much as the 3 to 4 thin layers to get a smooth coat, but still. I've always had to touch up the model afterwards, since with the rattle can, you can't really get 'everything' without blasting too much paint.

As for paint - I'm going to be using Vallejo METAL Color - Gold and Copper. The Metal color is an airbrush ready, water based acrylic that uses an aluminum flake. It's easy to deal with and just like the instructions on it say, it can be shot through a .21 brush at 15 PSI. (I did some models over the last weekend with it through my Badger Krome, works just as well through a Patriot 105 which is what I used on the below pictures, except for the blood crushers at the end... they were done with the Krome and then finished by brush).

Spoons to the rescue - I shot a few spoons with Chaos Black, and then yellow and red brown stynylez primers. I also used a clear spoon but didn't bother to photo that. I put all the pictures under spoiler tags to prevent a huge initial thread.



Last of the Chaos Black Spoons, Stynylrez (ST) Neutral Yellow, St Red Brown





Retributor Armor Spray over: Black - Yellow - Red Brown - Clear Plastic




Vallejo METAL Color Gold over: Black - Yellow - Red Brown - Clear Plastic

At this point - The base coat seems to have no visible difference (aka both the rattle can and airbrush covered fine) so rather than burn through my entire plastic spoon collection I sped up the process.

Mixing the Metal Color Gold with Metal Color Copper to get a warmer gold tone, since they're in droppers it's easy to ratio out:


Metal Color Gold / Copper mixes: Pure Gold - 3 Gold : 1 Copper - 3 Gold : 2 Copper - 1 Gold : 1 Copper

Due to me being stingy and not mixing up a large batch the last two are very very similar in photos. There's a bit of a difference in person and if you were to mix up 10ml or so rather than 3 drops of each you'd probably see it.


Comparison 1: Ret Gold - MC Gold - Ret Gold - 3:1


Comparison 2: Ret Gold - 3:2 - Ret Gold - 1:1

Quick notes - the flake on the Retributor Armor is larger. The VMC can be painted on with a brush, and covers well but is an airbrush paint (read, is thin and will not suffer a heavy brush hand, but goes where you put it and edges well too.)

I'm wholesale moving to the 3:2 mix as the base coat for Custodes and my remaining Lions.

As an aside - the straight VMC Gold with Agrax Earthshade is an EXCELLENT Khorneate bronze. And it's also a great base if you want candy-red color for your Blood Crushers, 30k Thousand Sons, Custodes, Khornate armor etc...

WIP of some Bloodcrushers I already posted and a follow up with them 'mounted'

In my world your timing is excellent. I am firing up my airbrush for the first time this weekend and while my modeling is specifically terrain I'll be using a lot of metallic colors, which I've heard are the most difficult to use because of the flakes. I'm going to stop by my FLGS for some Vallejo and I'll start with the settings you tried here (I too have a Badger and a Patriot).

I hope others find use in what you've posted here, but at very least know you've helped me.

 Skalk Bloodaxe wrote:
In my world your timing is excellent. I am firing up my airbrush for the first time this weekend and while my modeling is specifically terrain I'll be using a lot of metallic colors, which I've heard are the most difficult to use because of the flakes. I'm going to stop by my FLGS for some Vallejo and I'll start with the settings you tried here (I too have a Badger and a Patriot).

I hope others find use in what you've posted here, but at very least know you've helped me.

Glad it helped someone out! I figured there was a lot of spraying of gold in the near future, and after 3 or 4 'meh' results, finally got something I really liked.

Be aware I'm using the Vallejo METAL color, which is a newer line. It comes in 32ml bottles that are about 10 bucks a pop.

Here's the site, the PDF has the color selection

Great post! Working with my Knights of Gryphonne (metallic orange), I found that the basecoat color really matters for those crevices you can't spray easily. Choose one that matches your paint without the metallic elements, and you'll barely be able to notice if you miss a spot. And you can potentially put a lighter coat on, as even a thin coat of metallic over a matching tone of base coat is quite effective.

@John Prins

Those are both good points, the base coat matters a lot more when you're not painting big smooth surfaces. I was more concerned about getting nice smooth, complete coverage as that was an issue I had with other paints.

One thing I will likely try with my Custodes is after I paint the models, and do my Reikland gloss wash, I will hit the deepest recesses with the Reaper NMM Gold Shadow to completely kill any shine.

Smooth coverage shouldn't be a problem with the airbrush, aside from those hard to reach areas. I love how the metallic pigments sit differently on an airbrushed model than a brush painted model - much more even distribution with thinner coats.

Also, check Reaper's paints out for their metallics. If their gold range is as good as their gunmetals, it's worth looking at.

 John Prins wrote:
Also, check Reaper's paints out for their metallics. If their gold range is as good as their gunmetals, it's worth looking at.

I have, I really like their newer metallic paints for brush work (Dragon and Dwarf gold, along with Blade Steel, Filigree Silver and Shining Mithril).

Cool post! Good to see a nice in depth look at the paints.

Ulfhednar_42 wrote:
At this point - The base coat seems to have no visible difference (aka both the rattle can and airbrush covered fine) so rather than burn through my entire plastic spoon collection I sped up the process.

Have you tried painting over gloss base coats and only building up your layers gradually?

I haven't played around with any of the metal colour golds yet, but the metal colour silvers give some interesting depth if you spray them over gloss greys or gloss blacks and don't attempt to get full perfect coverage. Some of them are specifically designed to be built up gradually.

Also the sheen of the base coat can have as big if not bigger effect than the actual colour of it.

I remember back when metal colour first came out someone showed how you could get panel variation on aircraft models by using various undercoats, like gloss black, gloss grey, flat grey, gloss grey and then spraying the one metal colour over the top and it'd produce subtle variations from panel to panel.

Yeah, the smoother or more glossy your undercoat is, the more shine you will get out of the metallics.

 Maelstrom808 wrote:
Yeah, the smoother or more glossy your undercoat is, the more shine you will get out of the metallics.

I picked up the gloss black Stynylrez primer, but haven't given it a try, yet.

Looking at the four spoons I did with the metal color, the one unprimed, smooth spoon is shinier than the other three as it was a super smooth plastic surface, rather than primer. You can see the difference side by side, but not in the photos I shot.

It's a noticeable, but subtle difference.

I'm using the same line (Steel and Duraluminium) to go through and paint/repaint my Necrons. The Stynylrez primer works well enough for me. For the golds and coppers, I use the Liquid Metal series from Vallejo since I'm hand painting those (that stuff is amazing for gold tones).

Surface prep is everything. Any flaw like a little bit of super glue that smeared outside the joint, or a rough spot where a sprue connection wasn't cleaned up well enough become instantly visible. If you shoot the colored primers instead of the glossy black, I'd definitely consider putting down a gloss coat before your metallic coat.

 Maelstrom808 wrote:
Surface prep is everything. Any flaw like a little bit of super glue that smeared outside the joint, or a rough spot where a sprue connection wasn't cleaned up well enough become instantly visible. If you shoot the colored primers instead of the glossy black, I'd definitely consider putting down a gloss coat before your metallic coat.

Oh yeah... model prep is a whole new level with metallic paint... I had seams that you can 'see but not feel' that would disappear on any of my space wolf models still show up after a prime/base with gold.

I'll be shooting all my new models with the gloss black primer, I snagged a 4oz on a hunch it would work 'better' for the shiny boys.