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I have noticed that I have forgotten how to paint metallics.

I have tried looking at some reference images.

And watching a few tutorials (but their painting styles were all of the GW paint on the highlights, very "painterly" which is not at all compatible with the more blended, zero paint strokes visible style I tend to use).

But they are not helping.

And I am about to start on my Thunderbolt Mountain Elves, which have a lot of metal showing.

I have no problem with chainmails.

And dark, grungy metals pose little problem (but, realistically, could be improved upon).

But those aren't going to cut it for the clean, brighter metals of Elves.

Help, please?

MB

Got any pics of the sort of end results you'd hope to achieve? (:
And when you say 'bright' are you hoping for warm or cool tones?

I use the GW technique for gold, and I don't find that it leaves brushstrokes at all.

Start with a darker metallic for the basecoat, like Balthazar Gold, and apply 1 layer of Gehenna's directly on top. If you're familiar with GW metallic paints, the layer paint is thin and translucent, so you don't want to paint it directly onto primer, or even brown.

Then, wash with Agrax. Layer thinned Gehenna, avoiding the darkest recesses. Layer Auric Gold on top of that, leaving some of the Gehenna. Finally, on the edges, use Ruenfang Steel.

If you want it to look super special, do the corners with Vallejo Silver, which is even brighter.

Here's a variety of metallics painted "the GW way" (which is really just layering it up with GW paints) that I think is pretty convincing:



This is what it looks like a little further away:

I basecoat brown and then layer gold over it for gold with GW paints; my favourite tool with elves, though, is Vallejo's alcohol-based metallics, they cover evenly and opaquely with one coat and are fantastically easy to control (though you need a special cleaning medium and you have to be careful with your brushes around them). One coat and then go back with a little grey or black to put the shadows back in and you're pretty much done with that stuff, it's thin enough that you have to go down from the top instead of building up highlights, though.

I think you're after a TMM technique. Basically it's NMM pattern (darken-to-highlight, sharp bright extreme) with the shade normally being matt (actually shade with dark browns, greys, blacks etc) and then highlighting up with actual glazes of metallics towards silvers and very bright golds. Sometimes actual white in highlights on darker metals if you want to keep a 'gleam' in a certain place.

Give this a read, it explains what Winterdyne is saying: http://www.coolminiornot.com/articles/1649-metallics

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:
Give this a read, it explains what Winterdyne is saying: http://www.coolminiornot.com/articles/1649-metallics

This explains almost exactly what I have been trying to re-achieve.

When I was in school in my late teens - twenties (the art school portion of that), we were forced to learn how to paint NMM in 2D art, and I naturally applied it to miniatures, to spectacular effect (I was one of maybe three people in the entire gaming industry in 1985 who did NMM).

But, the thought quickly occurred to me that If NMM looked good, then using metallic paints using the same techniques as NMM would look even better (and with that I graduated from being a contestant in Miniature Painting Contests to being the judge for years to come). And they did.

But not having painted for years (over a decade - and then a substantial gap before that) left me ignorant of my own techniques. Painting isn't quite like riding a bike.... You might be able to start painting again, and not "fall off the bike," but you are certainly not doing freestyle trail riding tricks and acrobatics without certain disaster.

The CMON article looks to be a good start (It helps to be up on current vocabulary, too. The vocabulary of miniature painters is vastly different from that of 2D Art for most painters.

MB


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I also notice that on all but the last eight miniatures I painted (when I stopped trying to paint miniatures in groups, and just focused on individual miniatures until I got to the point of just picking out details) my contrast is still too low.

And my paints are too F@#*ing thick.

I recently, as noted in another thread, wound up with some VMA paints, and I will be using those from now on for everything, since they are of a MUCH, MUCH, MUCH better consistency that the Goop they are calling paint for Vallejo's regular Model Colors.

MB

@BeAfraid -- I never really liked VMA metallics because I don't like the look of washes on them. For some reason, as soon as you put a wash (or glaze) on a VMA metallic, it looks very flat and makes me think "dirty plastic" rather than "shaded metal" -- not at all like when you youse a normal metallic paint, leadbelcher + nuhln oil being my gold standard.

@Talys; that's the point, you're not washing them and leaving, you layer them back over to get nice shiny surfaces - this chap's layered up with VMA aluminium, over a washed gunmetal:

Testors metals are the best Imho