Months ago (April) I spent (a fraction of) a Saturday trying to develop a Non-Metallic Metal approach.

Bad things happened, so, I sat on the post for awhile … here it is now.

This is largely a companion to my first (and only?) YouTube video … which came out much too long.

What It Is

Theory

Painting miniatures progresses to the point where the painter is trying to “fake” how light reacts. True Metallic Metal (TMM) uses shiny paints (possibly with chunks of metal) to make something look metallic. Old Half-Life similarly used a reflective texture to make things, like certain weapons, look metallic.

Practice

Comic books (et al) don’t have this advantage, and had to “paint what the shine looks like” rather than “paint it shiny.” This approach is called Non-Metallic Metal (NMM) at the least in the context of miniature painting. SDubist’s Miniac channel has a long guide on how to do this to a standard that exceeds my confidence.

What I Did

Painting is (or should be) done by blending layers of paint. This layers, that slowly change the hue, should achieve the effect that I want.

I documented my efforts, but, due to limitations (I’m a crap YouTuber) the video is not as illustrative as I’d like.

Strategy

Around 05:48 I’m “dealing” out my paint to the wet palette I use, and gently loading the brush. The fact that the palette is a damp piece of paper on a soggy sponge submerged in water (makes for an interesting odour and) simplifies the effort needed to thin my paint. At several times in the video; I ran afoul of the paint being “too thin” to be useful. As long as the paint isn’t “running” this isn’t a problem - since I’ve only thinned a small area I can go to the other side of the dot and draw from there.

Up until the “wash” stage, I found myself applying two thin coats. This seemed important as I was going to be making many layers I wanted to ensure that the paint was evenly spread.

Table of Colours

colour	paint	role	method
dirty brown	Charred Brown	Start a dark “base” to contrast with further layers	a “thin” but “full coat” of the area especially the recesses
dirty brown	Charred Brown	Smooth the tone across the whole area, especially where it will show through	a “thinner” but still “full coat” with a focus on areas that were lacking
dull yellow	GoldBrown	Begin to show the brassy colour	somewhere between an all-over “glaze” and a “layer”
dull yellow	GoldBrown	Firmly establish the shade of the non-recessed colour	a “layer” which left gaps and recesses
rich yellow	Gold Yellow	Start the transition to the brighter colour	another “layer” but following the curve of the surface to inform where to leave the previous colours exposed
rich yellow	Gold Yellow + Dead White	Finish the basic gradient before the highlight	a “highlight,” again following the curve of the surface
brown wash	Game Ink Brown	Darken the recesses to pull the gradient back down	recess shading
pale yellow	Gold Yellow + two parts Dead White	Highlight the final surface to achieve the “specularity” I associate with metal	just a highlight - something like an “edge highlight” but for a surface lacking edges

Conclusion (and YouTube Video)

So, why not TMM? Largely, there are two reasons;

• I prefer how NMM looks
  • … even if I’m not great at it
• I dislike the TMM paint
  • but again, this is personal
  • … and I’m starting to come around to GW’s new ones

There are a lot of better ways for this technique and others. A friend has recommended Darren Latham Miniature Painting so it’s on my TODO list, but, I haven’t spotted any NMM specific material there. Most of the “brush handling” I do feels influenced by Sorastro’s Painting particularly his episode on The Screaming Antelope. It’s worth noting that he does have an episode focussed on The King’s Man which hammered in for me that NMM uses hues and colours other than straight white.¹

Following Dana Howl’s M$ Paint I learned that I could utilise simple image editing software to pick out shades which I wouldn’t intuitively separate. This is how I came up with my bronze recipe; sampling common images to work out that I wanted a brown, a “dull” yellow a “rich” yellow and then a pale highlight.

Regardless, the approach here seems “cooler” and isn’t that the point? Here’s a long video of the process.