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I found a few threads on people painting models silver, then washing a bunch of times with a colored wash.

Has anyone tried adding some colored ink directly to a pot of paint, shaking it, and using that for a colored metallic?

No one ever tried this? I can't be the first one who is going to try it am I?

You can try this, it will work for sure.

However, rather than adding the Ink to a pot of say Mithril Silver, go out and buy the Vallejo Metallic Medium.

The difference between the two being, that Mithril silver etc does actually have various pigments already in it and you won't have a pure tone.

Where as, the medium is just the metal flakes and solvent, so when you add the ink you should get a better tone.

Winter wrote:You can try this, it will work for sure.

However, rather than adding the Ink to a pot of say Mithril Silver, go out and buy the Vallejo Metallic Medium.

The difference between the two being, that Mithril silver etc does actually have various pigments already in it and you won't have a pure tone.

Where as, the medium is just the metal flakes and solvent, so when you add the ink you should get a better tone.

QFT, the VMC Metallic Medium is great. Instant metallic tone to any color you need. This way you should be able to get a color you need much more easily, than mixing an ink with the metal tone.

Cheers,


IK-Painter

Winter wrote:You can try this, it will work for sure.

Actually it wont work, if you do this it will result in a watered down, muted effect. Here is the problem...there is a ratio of binder/carrier/pigment/metallic flakes in the paint that is all proportioned in a way to make it look like the particular shade/color it is advertised to be. As soon as you add another element to that equation the color will be effect and the effect will be lessened. That is why washes are added on top of metallic colors, because it does not effect the overall pigmentation/metallic reflection of the paint. Even the metallic medium I would be reluctant to use.

Ashton

Personally, I'd say to paint the model silver, then lay an ink glaze over the entire area. Inks will always remain transparent, no matter how many layers you put on to increase the vibrancy of the colour, and they have a lot of vibrancy to start with. I've heard the Daler Rowney FW acrylic inks are good.

The base color of my Grey Knights is Tamiya Metallic Gray (XF-56) with several drops of the old GW Blue Ink added to tint it a subtle shade of blue. It works fine. However, I think you're missing the point of a wash applied over an opaque color.

LadyCassandra wrote:Personally, I'd say to paint the model silver, then lay an ink glaze over the entire area. Inks will always remain transparent, no matter how many layers you put on to increase the vibrancy of the colour, and they have a lot of vibrancy to start with. I've heard the Daler Rowney FW acrylic inks are good.

I do this as well. Though for red I recommend you actually use gold instead of silver as it will give a more vibrant metallic red whereas the silver will give you something more like metallic pink.

Don't mix them with actual metallic paints because you are actually mixing them with a colour as well, usually white which will dull the colour, yellow which may work with red in a way or brown which doesn't really have all that much it can mix with that won't be brown. For blue at least it leads to a very muted colour which isn't all that metallic and more like a lighter blue with glitter run through it. The ink will colour the metallic flakes whereas the paint won't as much.

For what it's worth some of the GW washes do work nicely for metallics, out of experience the blue, purple, green and yellow. The red though seemed a little too weak and I'd suggest getting ink instead.

Redfinger wrote:As soon as you add another element to that equation the color will be effect and the effect will be lessened. That is why washes are added on top of metallic colors, because it does not effect the overall pigmentation/metallic reflection of the paint. Even the metallic medium I would be reluctant to use.

I am confused. Isn't the difference between mithril silver and boltgun, just that there is more pigment/dye/whatever in the boltgun to make it darker?

Also, what is wrong with adding metallic medium? People water down their paints all the time as the GW ones are way to think IMHO - I don't see how adding metal flakey bits suspended in a solution instead of adding water is going to ruin the color.


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Some peolple here are poo pooing the metallic medium, some are not, but it seems like most are saying adding ink straight to metal paint is a bad idea? Unless the goal is to just provide a subtle hint of color?

Anyone have any examples of something painted with a paint that had metallic medium added to it?

I use metallic Medium, and I don't know how it works from a scientific, chemistry stand point. Occasionally I have added Vallejo Metallic Medium to a colour and it has changed the colour quite significantly. This isn't a major problem for me, I add other colours to get the required colour.

Joe Mama wrote:
I am confused. Isn't the difference between mithril silver and boltgun, just that there is more pigment/dye/whatever in the boltgun to make it darker?

No, this is quite far from the truth, Mithril and Boltgun have very different color pigments in them.

Joe Mama wrote:
Also, what is wrong with adding metallic medium? People water down their paints all the time as the GW ones are way to think IMHO - I don't see how adding metal flakey bits suspended in a solution instead of adding water is going to ruin the color.

When you water down the metallic paint, you are not chainging the color of the pigment, you are chagning the ratio of the parts of the paint, making it thinner and requiring more coats to acheive the inteded effect. Adding metallic medium is going to give you a different result than simply adding water. If you add ink to a metallic you are going to get a muted, dull metallic effect, depending on the amount you add. If you add ink to a metallic medium you are going to get a very bright, lighter version of the ink color you added, becuase the ink is not the prodominent color, the "color" of the metallic medium is the stronger color that will influence the ink, not the other way around.

Joe Mama wrote:
Some peolple here are poo pooing the metallic medium, some are not, but it seems like most are saying adding ink straight to metal paint is a bad idea? Unless the goal is to just provide a subtle hint of color?

My beef with metallic mediums comes down to my beff with any metallic, and that is the size of the flakes, I think they are out of scale to the models we put them on. I also dont like metallics mediums becuase they are often thick, and have a glass property to them, this means that when you combine a gloss based paint. with a flat based paint you get a semi-gloss or satin finish which is what I am not looking for when it comes to metallics. I suppose others use them from what ever rason, but I just have not found much use for them

Ashton

When I want colored metallics, I just mix whatever color I want with some GW Chainmail. Seems to work just fine. GW washes make it look darker when dry.

Example:

Necron vehicles: I use 1/4 Dark Angels Green + 1/4 Enchanted Blue + 1/2 Chainmail. The color looks pretty much like Scaly Green (if you remember that color before they nixed it) with the metal tinge I want. When it dries, it looks bright, so I wash it with Thraka Green and a little bit of water. It gets darker when it dries. When finished, I do a really light dusting of Mithril Silver on the edges.

I think it looks really great and it's easily adaptable to any color you want.

The one thing I have tried already is mixing GW paint with GW silver. The result is not what I would call good, again to my eyes. The emtal-ness of the mithril silver gets mostly taken away by adding another solid color. it doesn't look like metal anymore. At least to me. That's why I hoped adding ink would eliminate that issue. Although if I am unhappy with that, it sounds like I have to do 15 coats of washes/glazes over silver to get the desired effect.