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Sup Dakkas!

So I'm trying out new painting pattern using dwarf bronze and baal red wash to make fiery orange metal armor.
Thing is I've used dwarf bronze base after chaos black undercoat, shining gold as highlight and bit of burnished gold highlight. And afterwards washed with baal red for that fiery orange effect.

Now I'm puzzled if I'm done with highlights or not? Cause metal does have affinity to reflect light, so I can't tell have I done anything or its just metalic paint playing light tricks on me?

I mean, it does look cool - the whole light reflecting armor thingie, but is that it?

Regardless of the colour of the metal highlights can be silvery in normal white light. Have you tried just a touch of mithril (or whatever the really light silver is nowadays) on the very edge or upper corners? It can help give it that "ting" effect.

You could line the edges with either a little line of white or the old mithril silver to have that "reflecting" quality, but it's not necessary on your standard troops or elites. You should use it for your special models like HQ's, IC's, or some favourite models.

Ive used Mithril Silver followed by a very light touch of Necron Compound on parts I really wanted to jump out

Id agree, silver is the way forward regardless of the metal's colour. Just shine a light off various metal things you have and it always mirrors back as white light

Righto, thx guys. I'll give it a try with a little mithril silver on the very edges seeing how I already have highlights from bronze, shining and burnished gold all linked with a wash - just wasn't sure am I done with it or not.

Why highlight metal, it's shiny. It will look highlighted when light shines on it.

From,
a lazy person


PS - The lazy person is me

Metallic paints have pigment in them and fine metal shavings in them. The metal shavings reflect light, but look dull and boring without highlights. Just because something is shiny doesn't mean it can't be shinier.

They don't look dull or boring to me. Neither does a silver car, and that doesn't have highlights. To each his own it seems.

It also depends on the look of the item. For example, if it's a gun barrel you don't need to do highlights (but it looks pretty cool), but on a gold armour you need to because golds go from a dull orange/reddish yellow to a burnished yellow, and when light hits it the reflection is pure light. Un-highlighted models are very boring.

In your opinion

as a guy who paints with a LOT of metallics I have a few comments...

First off, try it. test it, nothing in the world beats your own eyes on your own models to see if you like it.

Secondly, comparing miniature painted models to real world objects is almost a useless comparison - real world items have a lot greater surface area, viewing angles and are almost never monochromatic in nature (dust, lighting, trim, etc.).

Minis also have a lot smaller details - a fender is three feet long, and easily visible to a person - a shoulder pad on a mini is about 3mm, and to be noticeable on the tabletop from 4' away requires some sort of contrast - either from lighting and angles (which are hard with small objects) or from using paint to simulate the otherwise naturally occurring contrasts.

Note, these are common facts and considerations in scale modeling and miniature painting....

In my opinion, after painting entire armies in metallics - you need differentiation. But thats just my opinion...the OP will have to make their own call...

Super Newb wrote:
They don't look dull or boring to me. Neither does a silver car, and that doesn't have highlights. To each his own it seems.

Do you highlight a red car? No. Do you highlight red on miniatures? Yes.

The reason you highlight miniatures is so that all the details "pop" out. If you don't wash or highlight metallics on small miniatures it looks pretty horrible.

 Flinty wrote:
Regardless of the colour of the metal highlights can be silvery in normal white light. Have you tried just a touch of mithril (or whatever the really light silver is nowadays) on the very edge or upper corners? It can help give it that "ting" effect.

That's what I do ! Small "points" of silver for extreme highlights. Examples...

Personally, I've been wondering the same. For now I've mostly been just washing the metallics, including the dwarf bronze trims on my Night Lords.

I use Druchii Violet on them, it fits the dark blue/dark purple color of the Night Lords.

Unhighlighted metals on minis looks so flat and unnatural is the thing. Sometimes I wash my metals after I've highlighted them, but it depends on the look I want. For example, on an Ork's slugga I'd do my basecoat of 50/50 chainmail to chaos black/leadbelcher to abaddon black, wash it with some agrax, and then highlight it with mithril silver/runefang steel. This gives it a dirty, unkempt look, but keeps it looking like metal. On an autocannon, however, I would do the 50/50 mix, then the highlight, then the wash, and then RE-highlight the areas where there would be a major reflection.

Thanks for all the replies guys! Finally getting the big idea behind mithril silver, the posted pictures really helped understanding the concept.

Was kinda worried how would silver look on orange, but considering posted picture, it should blend in just fine.

Here's some of pics for final thoughts and suggestions. Don't mind the scenery, I was in a rush and the guy is still in progress.

This is just dwarf bronze to shining gold to burnished gold all drybrushed and washed about two times with baal red while reapplying extreme highlights of burnished gold between each wash. So its without mithril silver atm. And I'm using drybrushing tech because of my back, and I love the texture of drybrushing onto the armor, feels more real somehow.

Also, I'm still a newbie at painting if the model looks horrible, don't mind me. I'm just having my fun, I guess.

That guy actually looks pretty good! But before the mithril silver edge highlights, drybrush your gold again so it really shines, otherwise you'd be better off touching up that guy with dwarf bronze again!

Cheers, thanks if you think so

I'll try re-highlighting again with golds, and just a touch of silver at light points. I should try line highlighting instead of drybrushing to really show the shine, or can I use drybrushing?

He does look more lively in person, as all of them do

Working on a fluff successor chapter of the salamanders, don't have any specific name for them atm - just calling them Dragons. Planning to add chaos wings as metalic flyers on sergeant. They're supposed to be more aggressive and durable than the salamanders, but with same traits for tactics and care for humanity. Think it'll look good

Mostly its assault marines with claws, heavy mech, heavy bolters 'fire breathers' and pair of tactical squad with 'heat' weapons. No speed deployment such as bikes or landspeeders tho.

apart from that, the guy needs wash for grenade/seal/pouch :> still working with armor after all

Looking too dull after a wash, that's mostly a symptom of the fact GW washes are matt rather than gloss. If you wash with an ink or go over with a gloss varnish, it'll combat that.

Personally I think highlighting metallics, it is VERY easy to make them look unnatural, or make them look good in pictures where you can control the lighting but terrible in person where the natural reflections oppose your painted highlights. If I highlight a metal, I'll only carefully highlight the edges so that it works with the natural reflection, or not highlight it at all.

I don't pretend to be a good painter, but some of my minis...

This bad boy was just painted metallic blue and purple, then washed blue and purple, then finally went over with a light coat of gloss varnish (probably a bit too light, a bit heavier would have brought out the natural reflections more).



This dude was done in a dark gold (I can't remember which one to be honest), washed Devlan Mud in some areas, black in others, then just did an edge highlight of shining gold. If you wanted them to "pop" more, could do a very fine burnished gold or silver highlight just on the really sharp edges.

Still did highlights on those golds though, didn't ya?

Like I said, just edge highlights to compliment the natural reflection I think people often make the mistake of highlighting a metal as if it were any other flat colour and it ends up fighting against the natural reflection.

The main reason I did the highlight on the Lizard was because I wanted an older, grittier, dustier, dirtier look, so the edges are the areas which would be cleaner and reflect more light.

The Necron I didn't do an edge highlight because I wanted it to look more pearlescent, like a blue metallic car or something, so using the wash to darken the crevices and then a gloss to bring out the natural reflections worked how I wanted and the nice thing about it, in real life it looks spot on because as you move the model/your head/the light, the reflections behave just as you think they should because they are real and just enhanced by the wash then gloss, not forced.

This may be a bit more unorthodox, but have you tried using regular paints to shade an highlight your metallics?

In this sense, the way to accomplish this is begin from your darkest colour, probably a black, and add your metallic colour to the black until you reach a mid point then start adding white - or switching to a lighter metallic and then adding white. You would layer on each successive highlight, or if you want to try blending, this would help out the gradual change in colour.

This works a little bit better for silver-based metallics. If you wanted to do this with golds, brown and yellow/beige would be the substitutes for black/white.

Keep in mind, this does produce more dull looking metallics, so if you like the sheen you get from the metallic paints on their own, I'd avoid this technique. You could hit the surface with a gloss coat afterwards, however. Thinking about it, this may be a semi non-metallic metals technique?

 jawn wrote:
This may be a bit more unorthodox, but have you tried using regular paints to shade an highlight your metallics?

In this sense, the way to accomplish this is begin from your darkest colour, probably a black, and add your metallic colour to the black until you reach a mid point then start adding white - or switching to a lighter metallic and then adding white. You would layer on each successive highlight, or if you want to try blending, this would help out the gradual change in colour.

This works a little bit better for silver-based metallics. If you wanted to do this with golds, brown and yellow/beige would be the substitutes for black/white.

Keep in mind, this does produce more dull looking metallics, so if you like the sheen you get from the metallic paints on their own, I'd avoid this technique. You could hit the surface with a gloss coat afterwards, however. Thinking about it, this may be a semi non-metallic metals technique?

Sure, but in a way that causes me many problems. And yeah, its NNM tech but I wanted the armor to be more shiny than the regular paints, so metalics work for me along with highlights I'll put up with

Thing is I'm just a begginer painter so blending is also out of question. And painting the single marine whole carefully is too long process for me and straining on my back, so I carefully drybrush to make it looking good.

I'm not sure what's the benefit to using NNM paints for highlights if they're going to look dull? Also, how does the gloss help metal after the paintjob is finished?

 Karokk wrote:

The reason you highlight miniatures is so that all the details "pop" out. If you don't wash or highlight metallics on small miniatures it looks pretty horrible.

I wash, so I guess I am good lol