Steel Green

Whenever people would ask for advice on painting Non Metallic Metals, my response would always be to "reflect the environment around the figure as much as possible".  

In my recent live demos and previous blog posts, I have been emphasizing that more and more... but there are a few other tiny touches which can also make those 'metals' a bit more interesting with a little 'sparkle'.

The first post from this unit had a purple/lavender color as an 'accent' tone.  It probably did not even register to most viewers as purple, especially in person.  However, it was still there, just as there is a greenish accent here.

What this added color does is create a bit of "spectral" highlight here and there, as if light were refracting off parts of the surface.

This is especially helpful on larger, broader surfaces like many you see on this figure.  Otherwise it would simply be a sea of blueish gray!  Now that I see many of these NMM paint sets floating around, I feel that it is even more important to talk about this concept.

In some recent articles, I suggested that the best NMM paint set is whatever colors you are already using on your miniature and base!  This really is the case... as incorporating as much of the surrounding color as you can into your metals (no matter what it might be reflecting) will make the viewer believe that those surfaces are in fact metal!