Pawn - Old and New

The last of the White Pawns (five) were completed two weeks ago. Three of the eight pawns were actually painted seven years ago when I initially started the chess set and was just learning the Non-Metallic Metal (NMM) technique. The above picture shows one of the original pawns on the left, with a newly painted pawn in the same pose on the right. I tried to keep the reds and whites as similar as possible so they wouldn't clash on the chess board. Nevertheless, its obvious there are differences. The red from the old pawn was shaded with washes rather than a deliberate application of dark red in the recesses, as with the new pawn. This new technique takes longer but makes a cleaner look. The ab muscles on each mini illustrate this difference the best. The whites are actually quite similar even though I used Foundation paint for the brown and dark yellow shading. This is one of the rare instances where my new technique is actually quicker than my old (even though all thanks go to new paint technology and not my skill). The NMM gold and steel are where the models differ the most. The old style has too little contrast and way too much orange in the gold. The steel also lacks the high contrast (e.g. very dark gray/black in the areas the do not reflect toward your eye) and does not put the bright highlights in the appropriate glint points on the sword. I may go back and repaint the metals on the old ones to match.
The second werewolf (Black Castle) model is on the painting stand. Unfortunately, I've been distracted by the desire to paint the minis that come with the dungeon crawl board game Descent. Therefore, he has been sitting there for two weeks with nothing more than black primer. I have no idea when I'll get around to working on him.