I stole this image from the Heroes of Armageddon blog the other day. It's Tom Shadle's contribution to the Blood Angels army.
Here's the Heroes of Armageddon blog to see more pics of this guy and donate to the cause. You could win this guy and the whole army he goes with!
The reason I picked this though was for the attention to the metal areas. It's a NMM approach. I think so many of us (me included for sure) use metallic paint as a way of accomplishing a couple things when it comes to painting metal areas.
1. Get it done quickly.
2. Get fairly decent results with little real work.
3. Because we can get away without having to do much more to the metal.
And that brings me to the point here. By using a metallic paint and a wash, most all of the work is done and most of us don't go much further with our highlights and shading on the metal areas. In the case of NMM, you don't have this luxury. You have to put all of it on there and you have to understand how the metal interacts with it's environment to pull it off well.
That can be a huge undertaking and not really practical for most of us. So what about blending the two methods? What happens if we use our metallic paint, add our quick wash and then go back and maybe use a black, dark blue or dark grey to reinforce the shadow edge of a blade and then use white or bright silver to create a highlight?
Would adding that extra step really make our "simple" metallic paint pop more? I've tried it before and have had good success with it, it's just not something I think to do each time I have a nice metallic area on a model to paint.
Maybe it doesn't take painting in full NMM, maybe it's just an understanding of highlighting (that most of already have mastered) and then reminding ourselves to do as much work on our metallic areas as we do on the rest of our models.
As a side note, I didn't realize I'd get such a great response to my posting of discovering GW's Boltgun Metal paint the other day. Part of the discussion from over there was about using metallics, different brands and some techniques. Here's some of it...
Related links and Additional Content from comments:
1. Vallejo Model Air metallics
2. Reaper Pro Series Metallics
3. Tin Bitz works really well as an aged copper, a bit of dwarf bronze for highlights and wear then a very thinned hawk turquoise as a wash.
4. Tin Bitz for that dirty look, but if you really want a nice base for darker, dirtier metals, RMS Scorched Metal will make you smile.
5. Some Iron Warriors done with GW Boltgun Metal.
6. Insert a bearing ball into the paint pots you regularly use, they are most needed in metalics - the metal pigment is insoluble suspension which needs to be thoroughly disturbed to be consistent.
