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Was thinking of finally painting my tomb blades and just to break up the monotony in my silver, bronze, gold and green color schemes i was thinking of doing them in metallic red, because y'know, blades, blood stained, etc. maybe some silver accents, and the pilot and weapons done normally.

Thing: I've never done metallic paints before so, any advice on basecoating, highlighting, etc?

Green stuff world do a broad range of metallic colours, you should check them out. Not seen the same range of metallic colours in another brand.

You can base coat with leadbelcher, a classic start for metallic colours in my opinion. Or I guess you could just prime in red.

Green stuff? modeling putty? is there a paint brand called green stuff? I mostly use army painter but will look at others, maybe even choke down my bile and buy a single bottle of (Ack!) gw paint.

The contrast paints airbrush nicely over a metallic basecoat.


Greenstuff world. They are a brand of hobby supplies based in Germany? Spain? I forget. An awesome brand though. I've not used their paint personally though.

Green stuff world are based in Spain but you can buy their products from lots of other websites.

Yes they do lots of sculpting supplies and stuff you’ve never thought of but their paints are good as-well. I use them and really like them.

They do special effect paints but they also do a normal colour range.

http://www.greenstuffworld.com/en/inicio/916-metallic-paint-caesar-red.html?search_query=Metallic+&results=58

I haven’t seen GW do a metallic paint that isn’t gold silver or copper

Ok, once i get it how about shading with metallics? Any tips?

I think shading is basically the same but if you go really heavy you might dull the metallic effect, unless that’s what your after, like an old metal

Tamiya also do a metallic red, but it's an alcohol based acrylic so it's slightly harder to hairy brush it, good for airbrushing though. I have also used it for hairy brushing small areas and it's fine, just wouldn't want to be hairy brushing very large areas (or need to be patient if you do).

When you want to shade it, just shade it like you would anything else. You can use a dark red, a dark purple, a dark blue, a dark brown or a black to shade it depending on the look you're going for. You can edge highlight with a silver, maybe mix a bit of red metallic into it but if it's a bright silver it'll turn pinkish, a darker silver might work better if that's the direction you want to go.

Most shade type paints are a matte finish, so you may want to finish it off with a satin or gloss varnish to bring back the shine on the metal.

It depends. Do you want a realistic metallic effect? Metal shadows are not metallic. this is why true metallic metals use normal tones to achieve the effect. So you could use glazes to build up a shadow, or do a non metallic pre shade If you're airbrushing over a metallic base.

Also, bear in mind that metals are not glossy, so personally I wouldn't use gloss varnish on metallics.

Army painter are about to release a set of coloured metallics at the end of this month, there are a couple of video reviews on Youtube.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
It depends. Do you want a realistic metallic effect? Metal shadows are not metallic. this is why true metallic metals use normal tones to achieve the effect. So you could use glazes to build up a shadow, or do a non metallic pre shade If you're airbrushing over a metallic base.

I don't really get what you mean by "metal shadows are not metallic", I mean, I get sometimes we paint metal shadows as non metallic, but in reality a metal doesn't become less metal because it's in a shadow.

An alternative to the highlight/shade method is to use a candy colour and just let natural light do its thing to create the shadows, but it can look weird on models that have artificial shadows painted elsewhere. I did it a test piece like that with Tamiya red clear to see how it'd come out...

https://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/836705-.html

Also applied it to my blood bowl Orcs, it's Tamiya clear red over a bright silver base, I picked out the edges in silver to give a worn look but the shadows are just created by the candy, it looks more like a red painted metallic than an actual red metallic though, and these were just speed painted to get them on the table quickly so I know they're far from a high standard...

https://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/910206-.html

Also, bear in mind that metals are not glossy, so personally I wouldn't use gloss varnish on metallics.

Polished metals are shiny, and to achieve shiny from matte or satin a very thin coat of gloss varnish is the way to get there. You don't want to apply so much that it starts to look wet though.

Testors dullcote is maybe a good middle ground, even though it's got "dull" in the name it's actually more of a satin finish.

But it depends what you're trying to achieve. There's a lot of things that could be classified as "metallic red" from shiny to dull, candies, tinted metals and so on.

Badger minitaire ghost tints are also worth a look. They're almost like a glaze.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I don't really get what you mean by "metal shadows are not metallic", I mean, I get sometimes we paint metal shadows as non metallic, but in reality a metal doesn't become less metal because it's in a shadow.

It doesn't become less metal no, but visually, If a piece of metal is in shadow, the reflective elements of it are not directing any light to the eye, and therefore the eye will see them as dark and the tones will be flat, not shiny. This is how true metallic metal techniques work. You use non metallic paint for shadowed areas to create the effect our eye sees. It's a form of forced perspective, instead of relying on the true reflectivity of the metallic paint, which will not give a truly realistic effect.

For me gloss paint is too wet looking, even in thin layers. Satin would be my advice, but even matte won't remove the shine from metallic paint.