How to paint cold gold NMM

In the latest lesson, I’m painting a large gold skull using a cold NMM gold.

It’s a fairly classic approach, but there are two things worth paying attention to early on.

The first is how bright the initial highlights are.

At the start, the jump from the base coat to the first layer is quite strong. That stage is all about understanding the shape. By pushing the brightness early, it becomes much easier to see how light moves across the surface before worrying about midtones.

There’s also a practical benefit. When the midtones go down later, they’re placed on top of something bright rather than directly over the dark base coat. That helps the color stay vibrant instead of turning dull.

The second thing is saturation.

In gold NMM, a lot of the midtone ends up partially covered by brighter highlights. If those midtones start out too weak, the gold can end up looking pale once everything is in place. By keeping the greenish midtones fairly saturated early on, the surface retains depth and color contrast in the finished result.

Aside from that, this lesson is a straightforward cold gold NMM walkthrough. Paying attention to these early stages can make the whole process easier to control.

The full tutorial is now live on Patreon.

Happy painting,
Malte