Bronze Advice

[Darkmessiah]

Alrite guys, am after some advice, am just preparing to paint Yedharo\'s Spartan at War bust, and am just thinking about the colour scheme and colours ill be using. Unfortunaltly am little inexperienced with metallics and bronze imparticular, and iv been searchin the net, and this site, for advice/tips and picture references, (stuff like Goatman\'s Seleucid General, Prawn\'s Timurid Emir and Yedharo\'s original Paint Job)
So i was hoping some advice before i start, mostly about shading/highlighting colours, texture and damage.

Cheers guys

 

[Einion]

Bronze is a real nightmare to depict in miniatures if you want to do it polished. There seem to be virtually no bronze-coloured metallics (no good ones) out there, which is no surprise due to the low demand. So people generally resort to modifying one or other of the golds, either by mixing with something or glazing after the gold is down. What colouring to aim for is then partly up to taste/interpretation, but shy away from anything that makes it looks like brass - totally different colour usually.

More recently (possibly due mainly to the influence of films like Troy) there\'s been a mini-trend in historical modelling to do bronze as though it\'s heavily oxidised - even going so far as to do it practically solid black. I hate this personally and it\'s clear from the historical evidence we have that this is not how bronze armour looked at the time, but, what you\'re painting here is effectively a fantasy model so this is a viable option if you like the idea. If I went this route I\'d definitely go with metallic touches here and there, even if only on a few edges, a scratch or two.

Here\'s a good example of how pale polished bronze can be:
http://www.geocities.com/hepworth19031975/BH318.jpg

And some more bronze pieces showing various levels of patination:
http://www.paulaslater.com/Slater/Gallery/000000ridgiebronze30b.jpg
http://www.popmath.org.uk/sculpture/images/1adagio.jpg
http://www.sailorsams.com/images/140312.jpg
http://www.vmfa.museum/collections/2003_3.html
http://www.germes-online.com/direct/dbimage/50279298/Bronze_Figurine.jpg
http://www.artquid.com/images/hdef/167.jpg
over-long link

Einion

 

[Dragonsreach]

Originally posted by Einion
Here\'s a good example of how pale polished bronze can be:

Einion

Consider me well and truley Gobsmacked. I would never have considered Bronze to have been so pale. Thank you.

I suppose that my experience of seeing bronze is coloured (pun intended) by the examples of bronze seen in museums and on programs like Antiques Roadshow, where oxidization has occurred and high levels of polishing \"artwork\" is frowned upon.

 

[Einion]

Originally posted by Dragonsreach
Consider me well and truley Gobsmacked. I would never have considered Bronze to have been so pale. Thank you.

De nada. I was too, first time I saw it. It\'s generally a big surprise to people what colour bronze can actually be since we\'re all so used to patinas, not the natural metal colour.

That or the porthole ring (this one) are my favourite colours for bronze. Matching them with paint though, darned difficult.

Another \"Wha?\" thing is that, when freshly cast in particular, bronze can be quite pinkish although this pink tint tends to diminish over time I believe.

Einion

 

[generulpoleaxe]

yep, my old fireplace cover thingy attached to the chimney was bronze.

very pinky when polished and as time went on it would go a dull golden and then browny colour before being polished again.
also, ancient bronze had a slightly different mix than we use nowadays.

 

[demonherald]

interesting reference pics Einion..gotta admit I\'ve always been a patina heavy junky for bronze has always been my way of defining my bronzes from my olds...The polished up version have always sat in my mind as Brass so at least I leared somethi new today..

interestingly looki at the polished up versions I had a similar colour in my early NMM gold experiments and it was a little too pale for me...That was achieved by Usin Gw colours..snakebite leather with a touch of erracotta and Vermin Brown as a base highlighted with rotting flesh then bleached bone...

just going through a re experimentation with Metallics phase and this could e a challenge to play with..cheers

 

[Ogrebane]

Ive been using tin bitz from GW and mithril to highlight. Then using a chestnut wash. Its very hard to get a real bronze. This was as close as I could find using metals.

 

[kingsmotley]

In my experience (as an archaeologist) Bronze is a very pinky (slightly red/brown sometimes) colour when first cast - this is because it is a mix of copper (red/brown) and tin (silver/grey).

In the \'olden days\' say, the bronze age, it was possible, due to impurites to have bronze that looked more like gold or silver, depending on other chemicals present during the forging process (for example, using arsenical copper).

The Romans also had a way of silvering bronze so that they could, amongst other things, sell jewellery to look like silver.

Hope this helps a little bit?

I once painted a fire dragon exarch to look like copper and then simply higlighted by adding more more mithril silver to the mix!