This week, since getting back from our camping holiday, I have mainly been painting A&A Miniatures' Praetorians for my third century AD Roman army. Nice models of nasty men - though it could be argued, in the case of some emperors they did the empire a service by murdering them. Photos to follow when I've finished them!
The real purpose of this post though, is to talk about 'copper alloy' (or simply gold) paint. Regular followers of this irregular blog may be aware of my dilemma… When I started painting Romans with the 'Dip' I was using a pot of Wargames Foundry 'Gold' (36B). On running out, I bought another pot… Not only did it not cover very well (unlike the original pot), it was a completely different shade - a brownish gold instead of a slightly greenish shade.
So I tried a variety of others - Citadel (nice paint, but completely the wrong shade), Vallejo (looked as though it should be good, but took three coats to cover white primer). I finished up using Vallejo's 'Liquid Gold' spirit-based paint, which covered reasonably well (though not as well as the original), but was a pain because of the need for cleaning the brushes in alcohol and because it dried too fast - hesitate between pot and figure and the brush was hard. All told, not a happy bunny. And I think that was a major contributor to my 'mojo' going walkabout earlier in the year.
Coming back to the hobby a few weeks ago, the problem wasn't really any better, but at least I was approaching it with a fresh eye. Earlier today, on getting the base-coats nearly done on the Praetorians, I was at the stage of applying the copper alloy paint. The 'Liquid Gold' seemed at least as bad as it had before, if not worse. So I decided to take a wander to my local artists' supplier. In there I found a pot of Liquid Leaf metallic Paint and the associated thinner/brush cleaner. So, despite the cost (I'm a skinflint at times, but a desperate skinflint right now!), I bought both and hurried home. I'm pleased to report that it paints on very nicely, dries much more slowly than the Vallejo equivalent, and gives a lovely metallic finish. How it'll react to the 'Dip' remains to be seen, but I'm hopeful. The only drawback is that it contains Xylene, which isn't nice at all - but I'm using such tiny quantities, and in such a well-ventilated area (beside the open patio door this afternoon, with a decent breeze blowing.
So there we go, hopefully, that particular problem is solved.