Update: Black Coach Finished
I had a lot of fun painting this model, but also quite a bit of frustration. I have made no secret that I dislike finecast and unfortunately the black coach was a wreck of bubbles and contortions. Trying to assemble it was quite a challenge and a lot of green stuffing and bending was necessary for it to come together.But all in all I think it came out pretty nice.
What I learned!
1. Gold is quite possibly the most difficult color to get right. I started out with a brown base, and worked my way up using brown, mixing darker gold, brighter gold and finally silver for edge highlight. I still have a lot of improvement to do here but it look better than just trying to slab it on right from the pot.
2. Straight up black is not all that bad. I was thinking of highlighting the coach a bit using very dark grey, but found out it looked quite clean and mean without any highlighting except for natural light. I would probably not do this for many other models but in this case I think it was the right choice.
3. Nihilakh oxide wash is very good for a ethereal theme and makes a really profound impact if combined with dark objects.
4. A white base highlighted with runefang steel (mithrill silver or whatever) is very good to make silver details stand out.
In this picture you can see most of the coach. I have drilled the horses head and a steel wire/tree branch is sticking through it to help the pins in the back wheels with support. The other horse has the back thing on his head subtly glued to the branches.
Another close up. Notice the spikes on top of the coach. I don't think there where one that did not have bubbles in them.
A close up on the reaper and coach. Notice the bubbles both on the reaper hands and his scyth. Also the rose details on this side of the coach where difficult to paint as I had done extensive repairs on the cast to make it look a little bit prettier.