A collection of painting tips for painting metals.

Metalic Paints

These really benefit from a little extra attention than a simple flat coat of metalic paint. There are several things one can do to liven surfaces up. One is to simply use different layers, much like with normal colors. For example, a base coat of antique gold followed by gradual layers of GW's burnished gold was used on the figures below:

The figure on the right also had the sword blade painted a gunmetal color, with the blade edges painted over with a brigher silver. Same goes for teh 'halo' thing on her back. (I had run out, but went back and used on the second figure as well...)

A nice shading effect can be gained with washes. There are two choices here, either a transparent wash, or a somewhat opaque wash. An opaque wash would be done with watered down paint. For example, using black paint over silver or antique gold has the effect of making the metal look a bit weathered:

A transparent wash can be done to either shade or tint a metalic. Windsor and Newton Nut Brown Ink was used on the gold, below, to bring out details and help shade the metal. The original gold was used to highlight some of the areas:

Brighter colored inks can be used over silver, to get a bright metalic color, similar to some car paint. This works best with many layers of ink over silver, giving a somewhat glazed metal look:

Rust can be simulated on silver colors with either or both washes or drybrushing. One can use a base coat of a reddish brown, then paint silver over that, leaving the rust color exposed in some details, edges, or recesses. One can then go back and drybrush using the same rust color along exposed edges. A very thin wash of brown ink or Flesh Wash can be used on particular areas, or can be painted on (as opposed to a sloppy wash) to look like dirty streaks on metal:

To be continued...

[NMM]