Gold is a pretty intense color for a basecoat. It looks cool — but it tends to shout out everything else, and limits you palette for creating contrast. Doable? Yes. Nice? Also, yes. However, you want to be sure it’s what you want.

Use Black, Get Away with Anything

Here is an Adeptus Custodes 40k painting service commission we just finished. Please note, we did NOT come up with this palette. However, we can tell you why it’s great:

1 - Black is neutral so it works with anything

2 - By being the dominant color, the black allows the gold to do what it does best - draw attention to the trim and flair

3 - The darkness contrasts well with the gold’s brightness (what painters call ‘value’)

Black works with pretty much any scheme, but I feel in terms of theme and having ‘posh’ looking figures, it works particularly well with Custodes.

Paintedfigs is a miniature painting service. You can send us your figurines to paint, and we also have painted miniatures for sale. We paint mainly Games Workshop (Warhammer 40k, Warhammer Fantasy, Age of Sigmar, Necromunda, Space Hulk, Bloodbowl, and so on), Star Wars, Warmachine and Hordes, and pretty much every Kickstarter and board game under the sun.

And we do so at the lowest rates on Earth (we’ve checked).