Painted gold visor effect

I have a lot of sci-fi miniature infantry to paint and many of them have closed visors. Inspired by Halo's Master Chief, my initial idea was to paint the visor gold. With a few images in front of me I soon realised that needed more thought.

I stumbled across an easy method that I think works to produce an acceptable visor at a distance.

To be clear, I am sure there are more attractive solutions with layering and blending, but that is time consuming to do for a tabletop army.

Step 1 - base coat in black

Step 2 - brown dry brush

This looks best with a midtone or dark brown colour. It helps to give some depth and variation to the lens.

Step 3 - gold lines

To get an initial reflection effect, I paint two vertical metallic gold lines. They both have a gap between the peak and the start of the line and end before the lower edge of the visor. The first is about a third of the way round the visor facing the assumed light source. The second is shorter and between that line and the centre line.

Step 4 - gold dry brush

Next, I dry brush the same metallic gold very gently over the whole lens.

I have a narrow makeup brush that I use for this. It is small enough to restrict the area the dry brushing affects.

The effect usually looks acceptable at this stage. The next step is optional.

Step 5 - gloss clear coat

Adding a gloss clear coat is not essential. I usually clear matt coat the entire model to protect it for handling. The gloss clear coat is added only to the visor area, after the matt coat has dried.

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