Gold Braid Poll

[Plynkes]

Hiya. When I get home from work tonight I shall be painting gold braid on some French officers' hats.

Like what this fellow has:


Still mulling over whether to use metallic gold or just ordinary yellow. We haven't had a poll for a bit so I thought I'd ask the audience, and find out what you good folks do. And polls are fun, democracy in action and all that. So, metallic or plain yellow?

If you have pics of your own examples to help me make up my mind they would be very welcome. I'm leaning towards the metallic right now, but am open to persuasion.

[Ray Earle]

I'd use some snakebite leather (GW) and then highlight by adding white to the mix. It gives quite a good impression of gold braid, I've used it a couple of times myself.  

[Lowtardog]

Has to be gold, the French are very fashionable

[Westfalia Chris]

Mainly because I´m a crappy painter who can´t paint decent NMM, I support "trve metal". And none of that modern poppycock NMM stuff. However, I suggest using a brownish basecoat, then work up using brass and gold for the ultimate higlights. Finally, a coat of gloss varnish, thinly applied.

EDIT: Yes, it´s evil empire, but here´s a model whose metal effect I really liked, both while panting and afterwards.

[Operator5]

I find gold to be too brown for most braids (because they're so fine). If you look at the picture Polynikes started with, it looks yellow, not gold.

[Plynkes]

Ooh, Telly Savalas is wearing one of those hats right now on the telly in some Foreign Legion film.

What a coincidence! I'll ask him what he did with his.

Thanks for the responses so far, by the way. As the painting will be as thin a brush stroke as I can make, I'm not sure there's much point starting with one colour and highlighting with another, as it will just cover it up. There probably won't be any highlights, just one colour. Hmmm.


Edit: Looks like it's "Beau Geste." Never seen this version before.

[Grimm]

Make it oldschool  Metallic Gold  I hate these Non-Metallic shit !!!!

(maby because I can do it  :mrgreen: )

[poulppy]

the best way is gold.
you put a snakebite brown and after the gold.

[vikotnik]

I would give it a copper base first, then wash with sepia and do the highlights with gold.

Or do it any other way You normally paint gold.

But after You have finished it, I would glaze it over with some transparent yellow to get the best of both worlds.

Btw: Yesterday, waaaaaay before this poll started, I found a Lukas brand acrylic colour in my workshop: Gelb Perlmetallic ('yellow pearlescent metal' if I am not mistaken.). Never tried it. Could be the perfect solution...

[Neldoreth]

I think you should decide this depending on whether you are going to use metallics on the rest of the figs? If you are going to use metallics on belt buckles, rifles, and various other metal bits, then definitely go with the metallics.

If you are going to do everything NMM, then the braid should be as well

 

n.

[Plynkes]

I wasn't planning on doing NMM. I have no idea how one does it, and don't particularly like it much anyway.

I was just going to paint them yellow. I've done that before with the braidy stuff on bugles and sword hilts, and it looked okay, but not amazing. I hesitated with the metallic gold because gold braid isn't actually metal, is it, it's some kind of cloth, no? I wasn't sure I wanted it looking the same as the real metal things like the buttons.

But looking at that picture, it does kind of look the same as the buttons on his coat. I've already painted them gold, so perhaps I might do the same with the stuff on his hat.

[Mike D. Mc Brice]

Standard colour is usually better suited to small details like this than metallics since they cover better. You won't recognise the difference after painting anyways. The mentioned example Snakebite Leather and a highlight with adding white should work quite well.

[revford]

I usually go with yellow for gold coloured things, saving gold paint for things actually made of gold.

However I'm not a great painter so may not be giving great advice.  

Either way can look nice, as long as you pick one and stick with it though the whole army, could look odd otherwise.

[Plynkes]

Well it's done. Metallic Gold was winning the poll when I started painting so I went with that.

Looks okay so far. Need to highlight the red on the hat to see if the whole thing hangs together. Not brilliant but passable, that's more due to my lack of painting skill rather than the colour choice though.

I'm pretty happy with it. I think.

Thanks, everybody.

[Howard Whitehouse]

Yeah, go with the gold. On principle.

It's not that a few people don't do fine work with NMM techniques, and it certainly works well for photography. It's just that most of the talk about it is pretentious wank, and we don't need to encourage any more of that.