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Been trying to paint some Ultramarines for 30k. My scheme so far has looked just fine (dark blue and silver), but I'm always wanting to try new things.

So, my normal highlighting procedure for the metallics is to, effectively, trace the light source I have above my painting area. I tried to highlight my blue to match this, but you can see below that it clearly does not work.

I need something else. So far, most of what I've seen online is either air brush or Non-metal metal. I don't have an airbrush, so that's out for right now. Since I'm using actual metallics, I don't see a point in doing Non-metal metal alongside the actual metallics, and I would think that wouldn't work.

I'm not opposed to wetblending, I would just need to practice it. Fortunately, my 30k army has over 120 infantry models, so I'm not short on practice models.

Someone in my gaming group suggested taking a picture of the model and using some kind of editing software to put it into greyscale/black and white to get a better idea of where to put the highlights. Honestly sounds decent, but I'm not sure if it would show blatantly where to put the highlights, and even so, I'm concerned I would get the same result as my "tracing the light".

The only other thing I can think of is taking some kind of art class to learn how to emulate a light source on an object so I can match the lighting of the metallics.

I guess I just don't know what's best. I'd prefer something semi-quick for the basic grunts, though as they are grunts, I'm not opposed to using them to practice some other complicated technique. What do you guys think I should do?

Well, aint the point of met colours to NOT highlight them?, the metalic flakes reflects the light, thus you have all the natural highlight you ever need.

I have never ever bothered to highlight any of my met coloured minis.

I dont understand.. do you want help highlighting the blue? or highlighting the metal? either way the solution is basically the same. you need to glaze down some shadows, the layer up the highlights. airbrush or NMM are most certainly not your only options, whoever told you that is lying through their teeth. you can do a basic and effective TMM using glazes and highlights, with a brush. its what I do.

Make a glaze with your midtone by combining the paint with contrast medium on your palette.

What you have going already is conceptually great you just need to smooth out the transition. Just adding in a mid-tone that’s off center between the base and highlights will give you a cell shaded look and if you add the mid tone along with feathering the edges it should look more natural.

Technique wise If you apply the highlights with a controlled drybrush and build it up more towards where the light hits that should do fine for a table top job and a glaze of the base color will smooth the transition out. Or you can go for proper blending but I can’t help you there.