Nevelon wrote:
I have some limited experience with them. I used the gloss blue over black for a chitin look on my zoat. Specifically on this gun/gear. Basically if you want to use a glaze + gloss coat, they are that in one paint. Need to be thinned out a bit IMHO.



YMMV. hopefully someone with more skill and more sober will chime in with some relevant advice.

Sauragnmon wrote:
Here's a couple of pics of one of my Knights I did some work on the shoulders. The flames are white with Pearl white accents, then light bluegrey with runefang highlights. The pad is a very dark grey, and then I hit the whole thing with Green Gemstone paint. Came out tinting the flames green and giving the whole pad a lacquered look on the dark grey.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Gem paints, like all clears, are much harder to get right on large surfaces (unless you have an airbrush handy). I haven't spent a lot of time with GW gems because I prefer Tamiya's clears, but the basic behaviour is the same, the only one that's a bit different is if you use enamel clears because they have a much slower drying time so they don't have the same problems acrylic clears do.

On small surfaces it's much easier to get a smooth coat and any inconsistencies don't stand out. On big surfaces it's much trickier.

My advice is use a nice large brush with soft bristles, as wide as you can go, try and load it with enough paint to do one whole panel in one hit to avoid having to go back and forth from your palette (any time the paint sits on the surface it's drying and partially dried paint is the enemy). Of course if you go too far and overload the brush that can also be hard to fix, so don't go too overboard.

Think less about "brushing" the paint on and more about "mopping" it on.

If it's really large you might consider doing 1 panel at a time. This is to avoid accidentally going over partially dried areas which will create tide marks.

Another approach is almost the polar opposite, try and build it up gradually and hope the inconsistencies get hidden by the layers. Personally I haven't had much luck with this approach, but maybe someone who uses that method can chime in.

If you do have an airbrush it's much easier, just build it up gradually and you should be fine. It's best to airbrush clears over a preshaded part.