Every once in a while, I end up having to use metallic paints. All the Ultramarine stuff I did in the case of this army required metallic paints to match what had already been done by another painter. It is definitely not my preferred medium, but every so often, it does provide some interesting perspective on my usual NMM style.
Since the lightest metallic paints are a dingy gray, that can wreak some havoc with the usual contrasts that I look for in my painting. I only found this out recently, during another metallic experiment. I had it on my white paper palette, and I was shocked at how dark it appeared! I guess it is all about the light refractions to give it the lighter appearance.
Looks really good, but still lacks that high "color flop" of your nmm technique. Just out of curiosity, have you ever tried Vallejo metallic medium to add metal flakes to your nmm palette?
ReplyDeleteIronically, I just got myself a bottle of that medium. :-) In the last few months, I have been fooling around with mixing metallic paints with regular paints to give them some color.
DeleteI did this on the Civial War Chaos Dwarfs, as well as some of my LOTR stuff.
It was interesting to work with the metallics, but my recent Tomb Kings pieces (which were originally supposed to be metallic) have made me realize why I trend towards the NMM for my own stuff.
I tend to use a lot of tinting with metallics to get a good color gradient. Usually a nice even silver base to start and then an absolute ton of washes to create the shadow and color variation where I want. It's VERY time consuming but can give you a similar effect to the NNM shading - no where near as crisp or nice but better than trying to just highlight metallics with metallics.
ReplyDeleteHello!
DeleteThanks for the advice. That was actually the same process I did here. You do have to mix in some of the metallic with the glazes so that it does not get too flat.
I have had some fun with the newer approach of mixing paint in with the metallics, even some glaze medium. This keeps the paint wet enough for some wet into wet action.