Musings: A moment to wax lyrical about.... wax?

Welcome to a new segment for this blog. There might be more of these, but this one was born from a question I got regarding the usage of gilding wax for my miniatures (this is a product I started to use with my 30k Iron Hands). There could just have been a short and quick answer to this but.. If something is worth doing, it's worth overdoing! Well, on to the main act of the evening, time to wax lyrical about.... wax (also there's a "treat" at the end).

Gilding wax is a product used for adding a metallic sheen to a surface and it can be polished when dry. I use it for miniatures like infantry and vehicles, but it can equally be used to enhance wood or other materials with a metallic look (also wallpaper, but my girlfriend hasn't noticed yet so...shhhh).

Above are pictured the "main items" I used in making this hobbyist approach using these waxes.
1: Cire a Dorer gilding wax, Tin and Renaissance Gold colours
2: Burnt Umber oil paint and low odour thinner/mineral spirits
3: Forge World earth and rust coloured pigments (although other pigments might just work fine)

A spare piece of wall was sacrificed for this blogpost [insert mournful wail as applicable] due to having different textures and large, flat areas.

Doomed wall, we hardly knew ye.

From the left: Solid Coat, Drybrush, "Iron Hands recipe"-brushing

From the left: Solid Coat, Drybrushes

After the black primer had cured, the two different waxes got applied. The time it takes for these waxes to dry is the downside with this method (hours upon hours..), but the downtime can always be used for other things, like other miniatures, reading or trying to get the wax off the wallpaper. A thing to note is that  the wax is soluble using the mineral spirits I mentioned earlier, so keep that in mind when using this.

Drybrushing with a wax can be done with the usual "apply paint-wipe on cloth/paper"-technique, but bear in mind that it is a good idea to practise on a test miniature before "going live", the covering capacity of these waxes are high.

From the left: "IH"-mid wash, "IH"-after final wash, Oil paint and weathering powder "mud"

The first image above pictures the tin wax on the side panel after half of the "Iron Hands Recipe"-washes are done (yellowysmoke-wash followed by purple wash splotches)- The second image is taken after a green wash got applied in splotches (most probably the cause of all the green tinted Iron Hands out there) and then a covering wash of a smoke coloured wash. Sadly it is hard to showcase the reflective effect of the metal wax when photographing these miniatures, and certainly so with my current photo setup.

The last picture shows the covered surface after the wax had dried and a coat of varnish got applied. After this, thinned burnt umber oil paint and weathering powders were applied to make a muddy effect.

I currently use the gold wax as an accent on my minis, but it too can be used to great effect. On the right is the base coat of gold. The middle picture shows gold with a black wash and the last picture shows the gold after both the black and a sepia wash.

As I promised, a "treat" at the end. A wip photo of what is currently on my desk. All of the above techniques feature on this Sicaran Battle Tank from Forge World. 

Really need to finish this tank...

I hope you, the reader, enjoyed this. It might have been a bit brief but these waxes are quite easy to use after practise.

//Nevindar