i love the way you render metals and golds, do you have any tips on like, how to think when drawing golden things? I feel like i always struggle with it myself
Oh hell yea! See, when we're noticing shine or sparkle on polished metals, it's mostly in stark contrast to dark shapes that get reflected on it's surface, but since that'd be a major pain in the ass to render, you can get a lot more done just applying a multiply layer and a small bit of darkened color before you go in with your shines. Like so:
See how the shine pops so much more when you have that border of darkened metal around it? Here I made the shine and multiply layers using the same base metal color at 100% opacity but you can naturally push the lights and darks as hard as you want to to make the metal seem even shinier or duller, whatever strikes yer fancy.
As some finishing touches, I usually pass over any etching details and the side of the lines closest to the lighting source with a clipping layer/mask at ~50% opacity using the darkened metal color to make the details appear more set into the surface of the metal, and if the light is harsh enough, or I want that extra bit of sparkle, a shine layer on top of them with some white can really sell the effect, usually around the darkened metal border. The final product and layer structure usually winds up lookin' somethin' like this:
Hope that helps!
