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So far, I've been painting guns one of two ways.

For armies like the Tau, that just paint their guns in camo colors anyway, I just treat them like any other part of the model: pick which color in the scheme maps to the gun, paint it that color, let Army Painter do it's magic, highlight, and move on. With armies that don't believe in "camouflage," like space marines, I paint them black, drybush them silver, and then leave them alone.

It's the latter technique I'd like to improve. I think it gives the guns a passable "gun-metal" look, but I know I can do better, and probably without a lot of difficulty. What do you do to paint guns and other exposed unpainted dark metal machinery?

I normally paint them boltgun metal and then put a badab black wash over it. Simple but looks pretty good.

UnCool Villain wrote:I normally paint them boltgun metal and then put a badab black wash over it. Simple but looks pretty good.

This looks nice on HQ units, but I find that that method looks too shiny and unrealistic. I prefer painting the barrel black, grey, or boltgun metal, the body whatever is the main color, then highlight or dry brush. Then, badab wash.

Heavy bolt gun dry brush, badab black wash, light bolt gun dry brush then if I want a shiny gun a chainmail or mithril very light dry brush.

Black followed up by a metallic drybrush is the classic look and I still use it for bits and pieces. for my Tau and guard I modified it a bit and did a grey drybrush to make them look a bit less reflecty. some of my older guard models use a grey base colour with some metallic details to make it look like they have been coloured for a particular theatre.

I usually have the casing the same colour as the armour then vary the barrel and magazine. Usually they're a dull metallic using washes to make them less shiny; with a highlight of the base metallic.

Tin bits followed by boltgun metal. Then badab black.

Of course, that's on my orks.

Oh, I forgot this:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/395630.page

It works well on big guns and I have used it on melta guns to good effect.

Sonophos wrote:Oh, I forgot this:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/395630.page

It works well on big guns and I have used it on melta guns to good effect.

Agreed. I have used this on flamers and it looks fantastic.