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Hey Dakka, long time no post. Sorry 'bout that. Anyways, I was recently inspired by this image to paint my saint in a red and gold scheme. However, I'm unsure how to get that really nice red effect. If I go metallic, what base metallic should I use under the washes? If NMM (Haven't done, but wanna learn), what colors do I need? Any other ways?

Thanks in advance for the help!

Hi,
I've made some pretty cool mettalic colours on my harlequins by mixing varying amounts of old citadel inks with my boltgun or mithril etc. Hope that helps

Uri Lee wrote:Hi,
I've made some pretty cool mettalic colours on my harlequins by mixing varying amounts of old citadel inks with my boltgun or mithril etc. Hope that helps

It does, kinda. Sadly I don't own and can't find any citadel inks. But good to know. Thank you!

Hmm...I have no idea! I've been trying to find a way to do this also.

The only thing I might suggest is mixing baal red with mithril silver...It's worth a try!

Dunno why GW doesn't make these, they have a lot of practical application.

or you can do what I did by accident and forget to completely clean a brush with boltgun on it and then start to wash a mini... now I have to be really careful with that pot or my washes come out sparkly. a little more I'd probably have a metallic black clearcoat...

Samus_aran115 wrote:Hmm...I have no idea! I've been trying to find a way to do this also.

The only thing I might suggest is mixing baal red with mithril silver...It's worth a try!

Dunno why GW doesn't make these, they have a lot of practical application.

Thanks, I might try that!

Is chainmail too different from Mithril to use? What about a "redder" metallic, like dwarf bronze?

But yeah, GW really needs to get off their butts and do something useful with their metallics.

SoloFalcon1138 wrote:or you can do what I did by accident and forget to completely clean a brush with boltgun on it and then start to wash a mini... now I have to be really careful with that pot or my washes come out sparkly. a little more I'd probably have a metallic black clearcoat...

Huh, sounds interesting.. Just gotta be careful trying that..

Chainmail is slightly darker. It's in between boltgun and mithril. either one would work fine, except boltgun, which is too dark, IMO.

For a redder metallic......Maybe try thinning down some mechrite red until it's like a wash, then adding it to the metallic color. Make sure it blends well, though.

you could try red nmm?

If you dont want it NMM there is an easy way.

Chainmail base coat.
Dev. mud wash (makes it a little darker and stand out)
Badab black wash.
Mix up blood red into a wash and wash twice.
wash the recesses with watered down red gore.

While i havent done this with red, i have done it with blue and ive simply swapped out the paints for those of the same tone in red.

Samus_aran115 wrote:Chainmail is slightly darker. It's in between boltgun and mithril. either one would work fine, except boltgun, which is too dark, IMO.

For a redder metallic......Maybe try thinning down some mechrite red until it's like a wash, then adding it to the metallic color. Make sure it blends well, though.

Hmm, sounds good..

Only problem is, I'm unsure if this'll look good or not.. Saint's gonna be the centerpiece of my army, so I figure she should look the best..

As in Celestine the living saint? Just test it out until you get the right look. By that point, I'm sure you'll have it figured out. Good luck!

HamHamLunchbox wrote:you could try red nmm?

I could.. I think I've figured out NMM in theory, but in practice.. Not so much.. Dunno exactly the colors I'd need and junk..

۞ Jack ۞ wrote:If you dont want it NMM there is an easy way.

Chainmail base coat.
Dev. mud wash (makes it a little darker and stand out)
Badab black wash.
Mix up blood red into a wash and wash twice.
wash the recesses with watered down red gore.

While i havent done this with red, i have done it with blue and ive simply swapped out the paints for those of the same tone in red.

Sounds good! Any examples of your blue? I might try this, though NMM is tempting...

Samus_aran115 wrote:As in Celestine the living saint? Just test it out until you get the right look. By that point, I'm sure you'll have it figured out. Good luck!

Yup! Living Saint. I'll be sure to try it out on my Seraphim, most likely. Or other test models. Thank you kindly!

Ill grab some pics tomorrow in daylight of the model for you.

If your going the NMM way then its still simple, just a case of knowing the lighting on a model.

Simply use progressive shading from black - red in the shaded areas and from red - a red-ish orange in the areas caught by light.

Same style for basic NMM, just need to change the colours over a bit.

۞ Jack ۞ wrote:Ill grab some pics tomorrow in daylight of the model for you.

If your going the NMM way then its still simple, just a case of knowing the lighting on a model.

Simply use progressive shading from black - red in the shaded areas and from red - a red-ish orange in the areas caught by light.

Same style for basic NMM, just need to change the colours over a bit.

Ah, orange! I didn't think of that! Thank you! I'll be sure to try it out on a test mini first, of course. Or twelve. NMM is hard. At least for a beginner like me.

I made a very nice looking, metallic green powersword with dark angel green and boltgun metal. So, yeah, play around with mixing together colors. If you're going to use it a lot, I suggest doing a fair bit at once and writing down the ratio somewhere.

Vene wrote:I made a very nice looking, metallic green powersword with dark angel green and boltgun metal. So, yeah, play around with mixing together colors. If you're going to use it a lot, I suggest doing a fair bit at once and writing down the ratio somewhere.

Alright, I'll try that too! Then try to figure out what looks best.

Oh, I forgot. I had a cypher the fallen angel model painted boltgun metal. I put thinned down dark angels green over the boltgun metal, and it had a metallic effect. maybe a pic later..idk.

Samus_aran115 wrote:Oh, I forgot. I had a cypher the fallen angel model painted boltgun metal. I put thinned down dark angels green over the boltgun metal, and it had a metallic effect. maybe a pic later..idk.

Ooh, sounds good. Similar to Jack's suggestion.

I did a metallic red, and wrote a tutorial about it:

http://www.mywargame.com/2010/02/14/painting-metallic-pre-heresy-thousand-sons/

... although afterwards I decided against doing the army that way, as it didn't feel 'red' enough for me. (EDIT: Actually, you can see my final scheme in my avatar.) But you may get something out of the method.

I actually also did a similar tutorial for pale green: http://www.mywargame.com/2010/03/20/painting-metallic-pre-heresy-sons-of-horus/

Mattarias wrote:

Uri Lee wrote:Hi,
I've made some pretty cool mettalic colours on my harlequins by mixing varying amounts of old citadel inks with my boltgun or mithril etc. Hope that helps

It does, kinda. Sadly I don't own and can't find any citadel inks. But good to know. Thank you!

I used that same technique to make a nice blue metaliic. Vallejo still makes/sells inks. You can buy them off www.thewarstore.com.

Magos Explorator wrote:I did a metallic red, and wrote a tutorial about it:

http://www.mywargame.com/2010/02/14/painting-metallic-pre-heresy-thousand-sons/

... although afterwards I decided against doing the army that way, as it didn't feel 'red' enough for me. (EDIT: Actually, you can see my final scheme in my avatar.) But you may get something out of the method.

I actually also did a similar tutorial for pale green: http://www.mywargame.com/2010/03/20/painting-metallic-pre-heresy-sons-of-horus/

Oh, sounds good! Thank you for that! Certainly looks good enough on space marines!

wyomingfox wrote:

I used that same technique to make a nice blue metaliic. Vallejo still makes/sells inks. You can buy them off www.thewarstore.com.

Oh, I'm not familiar with Vallejo, but my FLGS stocks it, so I'll be sure to ask about inks then! Thank you!

If I remember correctly, Mithril Silver is metal "dust", essentially, used as the pigment. This is why when you wash metallic out of your brush, a cloud of tiny metallic sprinkles floats to the top of the water. Mithril Silver is the prime, while the rest of the metallic range are normal citadel pigments mixed in with the metal dust. So Burnished Gold is just Mithril Silver + yellowish-brown. As such, just mixing mithril silver with what you would usually paint a model with for each stage should give you a metallic version. Chainmail and Boltgun Metal have varying amounts of black in with them, so mixing a shade with that will leave it with a slightly darker tone.

However, as others have said, I would suggest using testers. I use random bits (Horror extra arms in my case) and paint them up until I'm happy, noting things down. Pro-tip for testors, label each one with 1,2,3 or A,B,C so you remember which one is which and what you used on them, sometimes it's harder to tell than you'd think.

An even better idea to the above is purchase what is called an iridescent medium (most art stores should carry one). This is basically the blank medium that is used to make metallic paints, so it is just the solvent and the metallic flakes.

Then just mix in your paint of chosen colour and voila coloured metallics.

LadyCassandra wrote:If I remember correctly, Mithril Silver is metal "dust", essentially, used as the pigment. This is why when you wash metallic out of your brush, a cloud of tiny metallic sprinkles floats to the top of the water. Mithril Silver is the prime, while the rest of the metallic range are normal citadel pigments mixed in with the metal dust. So Burnished Gold is just Mithril Silver + yellowish-brown. As such, just mixing mithril silver with what you would usually paint a model with for each stage should give you a metallic version. Chainmail and Boltgun Metal have varying amounts of black in with them, so mixing a shade with that will leave it with a slightly darker tone.

However, as others have said, I would suggest using testers. I use random bits (Horror extra arms in my case) and paint them up until I'm happy, noting things down. Pro-tip for testors, label each one with 1,2,3 or A,B,C so you remember which one is which and what you used on them, sometimes it's harder to tell than you'd think.

I didn't know that, thanks! I'll be sure to pick up some mithril for testing, then! Though I've had some very nice luck doing successive washes of baal red over gold. Though I still dunno if it'll be good on a whole model.

Winter wrote:An even better idea to the above is purchase what is called an iridescent medium (most art stores should carry one). This is basically the blank medium that is used to make metallic paints, so it is just the solvent and the metallic flakes.

Then just mix in your paint of chosen colour and voila coloured metallics.

Even better! I'll look for that, thanks!

Reaper minis makes metallic color paints

http://www.reapermini.com/Paints/pro

I used the blue steel on a mini a long time ago.

tony_nids_10 wrote:Reaper minis makes metallic color paints

http://www.reapermini.com/Paints/pro

I used the blue steel on a mini a long time ago.

Holy , that looks incredible! I might hafta try those out, myself! Sadly, the site doesn't have any examples.. Hmm..

I can only hope that he red works as well as the blue did. I still need to hit that old fig with an ink wash of baddab black to try and bring it all together. I made that back before I know what an inkwash was. I hope that helped at least a little Mattarias.

It really did. Thanks Tony! I might pick up a bottle at my FLGS, just to try it out. Looks good! And a wash would really bring it together, yeah!

It may be a 5+year old model but maybe its time to finish it up! Thanks for the inspiration and please pm me and let me know how the red works out!

Here is the problem; The red will end up being red/pink. Normally, red should be highlighted with yellow and it will stay red but if you highlight red with white, it will become pink. Now, metal; Metal is highlighted with white with darker tones very close to the highlights. So, when you make a metal red, it will be a very strong pink sheen which will be even more noticeable with a darker red right next to it. If you don't mind this, you don't have a problem. TL;DR metal red will generally look pink.