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So I've been building and painting some GK henchmen and now I am finally getting around to painting some GK themselves. They are mostly metallic, but things like purity seals (or in the case of purifiers, helmets and shoulder pads) are NON-metallic. Would I be able to get away with doing a quick basecoat of silver on the whole model, or should I avoid areas that will not end up metallic?

I *might* do a silver spray as a basecoat, and I want to know if it will be hard to paint over certain bits with non-metallic colors.

You'll be fine. I usually re-basecoat those items with black, but that's mostly to give myself a shadow line around the object.

As long as you achieve full opacity with your topcoat, it doesn't matter what sort of paint is underneath. You may want to throw a strong color over the metal, first, especially if you're using light or low opacity colors. For purity seals, for example, I'd likely spray silver, then base them in a light brown before working up to bone/white. For reds, I'd probably trust the opacity of Mechrite Red to take care of any shiny bleed-through, but would insist on undercoating black, without it.

No problem as soon as you apply a covering layer on all non-metallic areas first, particularly in recesses to avoid them to appear "shiny" due to the metallic pigments. I generally use black or scorched brown for this step.

Several minis shown in my gallery where first painted totally with metallic paints, like my BFG ships (look at the prow), Chaplain Cassius or Marneus Calgar (yep, even his face was bolgun metal).
But also on other models like my orks Killa cans, or lootas. ^^ It works definitely fine !

Interesting. Thanks for the respsonses. Black or dark brown if I am worried or can't get a opague enough basecoat with the actual color... got it.


I better go get some more Merchite Red before it disappears forever!