Painting metal with tints

[Shenordak]

No one likes painting metals, right? And still you need the metal to look good. So, you need some way to  paint it that is interesting enough, without being to tedious. During the last few years I've been slowly realizing that NMM is not for me, it's too fiddly and doesn't really fit my increasingly grim and gritty painting style. 

So, I've been thinking, experimenting and testing and come up with a method I think works for me, tinted metal. Before explaining it in detail I'll give three reasons why I like it:

1. It's fast, especially when you need to paint several different kinds of metal on the same model.

2. It's cheap. You will need less types of paint.

3. It's flexible. You get a much more precise control of the colour and a wider range of possible metallic paints.

To the example, I'll show, not tell. This is an example of (somewhat pale) gold, but the basic idea can easily be adapted for other metals.

First step, base coat with leadbelcher.

Layer and highlight with ironbreaker, runefang and finally stormhost as an extreme highlight. Nothing odd yet, this is just the standard method I use for silver/steel. From here you could just wash with badab black or earthshade, or maybe blue if you are feeling adventurus and you'll have yourself some basic steel armour. However...

...we want gold. This is a simple allover wash with Cassandora yellow mixed with a bit of eartshade. The metallic shine is still there, but the hue is changed completely. If you want a less deep and saturated colour, mix the wash with with some lahmian medium. What's great about it (apart from not having to have a shitload of different expensive metallic paints that dry out all the time) is that you get an instant shade to the gold, with shadows that are really just a deeper variant of the base colour. And the pre-highlighting means you already have that  step sorted too. The rest is gravy. Some extra stormhost highlights, a little diluted eathshade in the recesses and a final light wash of gloss black to get a bit of shine. 

Thats it! And by experimenting with different shades, washes and glazes you can get any imaginable metal, not just gold. Seraphim Sepia makes a great base for bronze, just to name one. A khornate brass would probably need eartshade and a bit of reikland flesh.

The three finished shadespire minis bellow all use slightly different recipes with different mixes and intensities. I'll probably keep perfecting it for a while yet.



Hope you like it!