Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Today was my first proper go even though I had sort of experimented with little success once before now. This is what I created on the sword, and I'd like any advice people can give on how to improve please.

Moar contrast. You need to highlight up to pure white.

Well. My only advice would be, listen to winterdyne. He's amazing.

Will do, I agree.

Pretty good improvement over the last two hours if I may say so myself :p

Yup. Now you can work back with glazes of grey to sharpen the white if desired. I'd probably tone it with some colour glazes as well; either a blue or turquoise - flat grey has a tendency to look like stone; people are used to seeing the reflection of the environment in metallic objects, particularly silvers/chromes and faking this impression is part of getting it to work and not look too cartoony.

Thanks winterdyne, you're always a great help I was actually about to ask about some glazing of NMM I'd seen in the heavy metal book, I'm that they have a sword where the lower side is done with a liche purple glaze and upper is done with a sort of turquoise blue colour. They had done the previous stages of Ntge NMM quite differently, so before I ruin my model, just checking if that would give the desired effect and also do I just apply the tinting glazes to the white areas lile in the book or all over?

The tint is usually applied around the midtone; glaze back toward the black so you get the gradient up to the white, the translucency of the glaze should leave the black still looking pretty black. If necessary you can take the black darker by glazing black onto it, but generally I don't think that's essential.

Quick photoshop - just a tint of turquoise over the midtone and a touch of black to up the contrast back. You'd be neater with a brush than the quick photoshop airbrush:

I like the turquoise a lot more too, hopefully I can replicate that this morning, post it here then I think ready to move in the the rest of the model, I think I have all the information I need now to start implementing this technique in the future. Thanks.

A glaze of thinned nuln oil will do good.

Slightly blue blade, I left the glazes at only a few layers since it seemed like contrast was being lost.

I happy wih it now though, I'm done in that bit of NMM.

Yeah, you do lose contrast with glazes (usually why you do them!), you'll want to retouch toward the black like I mentioned.

A very dark blue also works well as the deep shade - something like Necron Abyss or Prussian Blue.

2:1 chaos black to Mordian blue.
Please be done now :p

Looks sweet to me. :-)

Edit: And it's NEVER done, lol.

Well I feel like I've learnt a lot from this and it tuned out well plus I have a tonne of WIP pics so I made a brief tutorial to help those in the position I was yesterday: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/538500.page#5822790

Any tips for gold NMM on less curved surfaces or have I got it in one? - That principle of its never done tells me I haven't lol

General tips; highlight 'in reverse'- that is the upper surfaces tend to be dark and lower surfaces light, with a final hard edge highlight on the upper edges.

For Sky-Earth effects, remember that the reflection is in the vertical plane.
So a vertical surface has its 'horizon' in the centre of its area. The horizon moves 'up' if the surface starts to face the ground and 'down' if the surface starts to face the sky. In reality this shift is dramatic, but for model painting the reflected horizon tends to be needed to pull the effect off. The horizon line is always in a horizontal plane with respect to the model's environment, so take this into account with the model's pose when planning the scheme.

This rule applies to cylinders too, but the result is basically that the horizon tends to follow the axis of the cylinder as soon as you tilt the cylinder away from vertically aligned.

Your colour choices look good to me, I reckon youve pretty much got it.

I thought I was done with this thread, but I've tried doing a gold helmet, and I've been told it looks more yellow than gold. I guess maybe an object is harder to do than the thin decoration bits on my last attempt.

Anyway, could anyone share their wisdom?

Same as before; MOAR CONTRAST. Here you seem to have the light side done, but your shade's not dark enough to really shift it to a reflective look.

In this case I'd mix up a blackish brown and just gently glaze it in agains the brightest white from around the midpoint of the brown. You might need to pick out the edge again in the extreme highlight when you're done.

Too late for more painting this evening, but photoshopped, I guess this is what I will aim for - that looks better to me. Other than maybe a few very light colour glazes, I hope I'll defiantly be done on that gold after.