Originally posted on Reddit
I was going to do this some other time, but my brain couldn't let it go. u/ToohotmaGandhi post a request for a tutorial on how to create a certain liquid gold effect. I had to see if I could do it myself. This is my second attempt and It took me over an hour. I could spent more time on it and I might but I got other projects that need finishing. This is my first tutorial so I don't know if this is super helpful but here goes...
First I made the basic "Ink" shape by hand in Inkscape. I didn't want to waste anymore time searching for fonts.
Second drew all of the highlights by hand. There might be a better way to do this, but I didn't feel like searching for it. I grouped all of the highlight that are facing the same directions together so that I could modify the color, intensity and the blur levels independently.
Third I made copies of the main outline. One copy I made into a shadow. Another I made into a bright highlight. And another I invert
...