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Hello,

I'm building an heresy-era Imperial Fists army, and while I went "homebrew" for my 40k chapter, I wanna stick to fluff for the Fists and trying to go both pure WYSIWIG and taking inspiration from the HH books for the paint scheme.

I've found a great tutorial to make an easy yellow from Mengel Miniature's website (highly recommend it) but now I'm facing a tougher hurdle: painting a metallic black for my veteran tacticals and terminators (see attached pics).

I'm looking for a tutorial (or at least some steps/tips) to achieve a decent metallic black. The assault terminator has a bit of a bronze undertone to the black whereas the veteran tactical is more of a standard brushed-metal look. I have no idea how to get close to that. I typically would use standard brushes for smaller models of that kind but I do own an airbrush that I normally use for speed-painting or larger models (vehicles and such).

I appreciate the help.

Here's a great tutorial:
http://flameonminiatures.blogspot.com/2014/01/black-color-painting-tutorial.html

SuperNewb wrote:
Here's a great tutorial:
http://flameonminiatures.blogspot.com/2014/01/black-color-painting-tutorial.html

Brilliant.

I agree that glazing with black wash or ink is a great way to knock back brighter basecoats and get a subtle, tinted black. My efforts have been a bit more rough 'n' ready, though!

Well... the result is pretty sweet, but I was hoping for a less time-consuming technique. I guess it may not happen for black.

Good link in any case and it's giving me idea.

Keep em coming!

Reaper has a paint called Adamantium Black which you may want to look into. I believe I have a bottle of it somewhere, but I don't recall ever using it.

i was thinking of this as well. while that link does match the picture, it sort of appears a bit of NMM to me. its too bad the Tamiya clear doesnt make a clear black. because it would be easy to airbrush it over a silver. this would be for a very glossy black metallic.

To darken the steel/silver paint, you could always opt for some heavy layering of Gloss Nuln Oil to get it dark enough..

 phoenix darkus wrote:
Well... the result is pretty sweet, but I was hoping for a less time-consuming technique. I guess it may not happen for black.

Good link in any case and it's giving me idea.

Keep em coming!

Well, as mentioned, the way I did it was a bit less involved. Basecoat of metal, maybe a bit of lighter metal drybrushed or layered, then a few coats of some kind of transparent brown or black, heavier in the recesses.

Some of these aren't dark enough to be 'black' metal, but I hope they get the point across.

I kinda like that actually. Definitely worth a try.

Thanks.

There is also this:

https://www.amazon.com/Liquitex-Professional-Iridescent-Effects-Medium/dp/B001US4S68

Mix it with any paint to make it metallic. Works well, I own a bottle myself.

Vallejo has an Air Metallic called Black.

I use it guns and what you for my Bolt Action, as well as the shoulder trim on my HH Blood Angels.

It's by far one of my favorite Vallejo paints. It's a metallic black! No shading or highlighting needed. Except where it is actually needed.

I just bought "smoke" from Tamiya paint, which seems, in the bottle, to look like clearcoat black. I haven't tested it, but maybe someone can weigh in who has? Maybe say if it works over silver to give that metallic black look?

 Jathom wrote:
Vallejo has an Air Metallic called Black.

I use it guns and what you for my Bolt Action, as well as the shoulder trim on my HH Blood Angels.

It's by far one of my favorite Vallejo paints. It's a metallic black! No shading or highlighting needed. Except where it is actually needed.

This is what I came hear to say. Great paint; it's not necessarily as dark as you think it would be, but you can easily wash over it with Black to darken it down, or blues/browns to add some more tone to it.

Great paint.

I'll check it out.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
I just bought "smoke" from Tamiya paint, which seems, in the bottle, to look like clearcoat black. I haven't tested it, but maybe someone can weigh in who has? Maybe say if it works over silver to give that metallic black look?

Most of Forge World's Iron Hands were painted (before FW did their own paints) with it - albeit shaded with a bunch of yellow/green/purple washes:
https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-WW/Iron-Hands-Medusan-Immortals