*Tutorial* Non-Metal Metallic Armor

Ok Guys and Gals here is my second tutorial, this is how i paint those elusive non-metal metallics. I won't say this is easy or fast because, well it's not. It's time consuming but it can be lot of fun, or you could honestly be throwing your mini across the table halfway through.

Here are the paints we are going to be using today... Warm greys, a crazy green and a few washes.
Scorpy Green, Stonewall Grey, Basalt Grey, Black Grey, Black , White, and Turquoise (not shown)
Badab Black, Asurmen Blue and Skin Wash

As for brushes i'm using mostly a 3/0 round, 5/0 round, a 12/0 round and a 20/0 monogram (which is just a longer bristle round)


So here is how we left off: just a base of Badab Black over the Basalt Grey.
Notice where the darker areas are and what color your miniature is.
Mix your paint at this point, I like using a wet pallet as it gives me more working time with my paints. Mix your Black Grey with your Basalt Grey until you get a color slightly lighter than the current color of your mini. cover 95% of the armor with this while leaving the black wash to show in the creases. Don't worry if it looks funny right now.. ok so this was the easy step.

Now mix a little bit more of the Basalt Grey into your mix and cover less area than you painted before. you want to basically build color steps. at this point you should figure out where your light source is coming from. to make it easy just assume it's above the mini. you can use your painting light to see where the shadows are cast and which areas are brighter than others. Start to mimic this with your paint.


At this point you should mix more of the Basalt Grey into your mixture and you will probably be at 90% of Basalt Grey at this point. (I always like to have a small amount of the darkest color mixed in to keep the hue of the paint consistent.) highlight even less areas while using your desk light as a reference. As you can see by the picture above there isn't much difference at this point but don't fret it's moving along just fine.


Now add a bit of Stonewall grey and just a dash* of scorpy green into your mixture and highlight the peaks. You can go lighter at this point if you want by mixing up to the stonewall grey but you don't have to. You could even go as far as white but just painting a few tips with it. it's all up to you.
* by Dash i mean a very very tiny amount just to give your grey a green hue.


Now it's time to dirty this girl up!

Bring out your Skin Wash and water it down a bit and apply to the areas you would like to dirty up a bit. i've added it to the flamer front, the funky cables around her neck and on the back of the gun and the fuel pot on her back.

Now here is the trick to really make your NMM pop. Mix together some Black Grey and Turquoise paint. I also like to add some P3 mixing medium to it to avoid wash rings. Get it nice and dark with a hint of the turquoise. then just like a wash make sure your paint it thin but not too thin. and start adding it to the areas you want shaded. Around the rivits, between the fingers, in the creases, any and everywhere you want. I also put a couple coats of it on the top of the skin wash on the gun. I use this mix to blend the darker greys together. In the darker areas feel free to do more than one coat of this.

This wash usually helps blend in the darker areas so that your lighter areas really pop. Also in this pic I added a coat of Asurmen Blue to the end of the flamer to simulate a scorched weapon. you can also add a bit of black wash to really darken it up.
Also to help sharpen up your paint job, use the 20/0 brush and line the creases with a watered down black mix. After all it's not how well you paint, it's how well you do touch ups!

Here is a side by side view of each step. I hope that helped...