Great tutorial and therefore pinned, Dal

Dear all,

Last weekend I painted the metallic parts of another Centurion Guard and I promised a tutorial. It is going to be posted in several parts in this thread and is fairly advanced using washes, inks and glazes and I intend to go into quite a lot of mostly boring detail.

This is not some magical technique nor is it the way you must paint metallics to get good results. It's really just a method that I have developed over time and that works for [warhammertag83]ME[/warhammertag83]. I find metallics really difficult to do well, hopefully this tutorial may be of help to others with the same problem, so take from it whatever you find works for you.

The Painting Area

To start with I thought it may be useful to post a picture of my painting area:

Feel free to ask any questions about what you can see and yes that's a Homer Simpson coffee mug 😉 full of delicious coffee at the start of the session. IMHO opinion the most important aspect of your painting area is the lighting. The light in this room is good and I have a daylight bulb in the ceiling pendant to add to it. However the room has two windows and sunlight comes through each of these in turn as the day progresses. So the light in the room changes as it gets later, therefore some of the pictures have changes in their lighting although they were taken in the same spot (the days are short here in the UK at the moment) but I have tried to minimise this. As a general comment on what lighting is preferable: direct sunlight is bad for painting, diffuse and non-direct light is good.

Stage 1 : Undercoating

Here are the three undercoating stages :

Yes that's three stages, you can get away with less but each layer does have a reason for being there.

a. White undercoat from [warhammertag52]GW[/warhammertag52] Skull White Spray. This is good spray that always dries matt IMO it adheres better than their Chaos Black spray so I add a light layer of this first. It also shows up the detail well, meaning that I can check the conversion work, mould lines and flash (note I remove flash and mould lines before this stage but this helps to check that I did a good job).

b. Black Undercoat from [warhammertag52]GW[/warhammertag52] Chaos Black Spray. I always begin painting from a black undercoat, this spray is good but I find that it does not always adhere well and it dries quite shinny if you have a dud tin. It also never undercoats fur and chainmail well unless you spray from very close which creates too thick a layer.

c. Airbrush with dilute Chaos Black.

My final stage is to use this airbrush...

...to do two things, firstly airbrushing gets into all of the nooks and crannies very easily and undercoats fur and chainmail very well. This is basically equivalent to touching up stage b with your brush however airbrushing has one major advantage, it creates a very matt finish which I prefer to paint on, even if the Chaos Black spray came out very shinny this makes the model matt.

Each of these stages is usually done with a gap of a few hours in between to ensure that the paint dries.

Stage 2 : Metallic Basecoat

This is the palette I created :

Note : all the layers in this tutorial were diluted with tap water, I have not put this in the palette description because it is a given.

The basecoat was painted using a basecoat brush (duh!) all over the metallic parts, it was not done neatly by any stretch of the imagination as it should literally take one minute to do. The result is this :

Which is a nice dark metal, you can see that it dries lighter than it looks in the palette.

Note this isn't the model I actually paint later on, it had already had these initial stages completed however these stages are exactly the same.

Stage 3 : The Black Wash

The next stage is a wash, I only use washes on metallics. A wash is a dilute ink that you spread generously over all the desired area. It darkens the model as a whole but darkens the crevices and recesses more so that there is some natural shading, it takes a long time to dry. The wash was created using the following items:

The Klear is actually 25% Klear and 75% tap water only a brush full is used in the wash I created. It breaks the surface tension of the wash so that it flows into the recesses more easily. However I find that it dries quite shinny (are you getting the fact that I don't like shinny finishes) therefore you add in some Matt Medium which counter balances this effect. Note that the Matt Medium is white but dries clear, as a result of this the wash dries with a lot less colour than it looks like it has in the palette, also the depth of liquid in the palette also makes it look more opaque. Anyway this was the palette I created :

The chestnut ink is there to add a depth of colour. Three layers of this wash were added and the model was allowed to dry between each one. You can get away with just dilute chaos black if you wanted to although you may get problems with pooling.

The end result of this was :

It really is much darker but the pictures don't pick that up well. The recesses and detail also show up much better. One problem which [warhammertag132]WE[/warhammertag132] will deal with in the next stage is that the metallic colour is a bit uneven.

Stage 4: 1st Highlight

After a few cups of coffee I am back waxing lyrical. As I mentioned the basecoat comes our a bit uneven after the washes. This is mainly becuase it runs under the influence of gravity and because it ill naturally run off curved surfaces such as helmets and into concave surfaces. Anyway here is the palette I used:

This is actually very close to the basecoat prior to the wash. It is painted over all the metallic areas and will even the colour out. As a tip for this highlight try and keep it as tight as possible and don't worry if you go over if you do then the colours are still dark enough that it won't matter later on, Sorry about the pic but here is the result:

Stage 5: 2nd Highlight

The next stage is another highlght shock. At this point the model is starting to take shape. This is the palette that I used:

The main thing that I am doing here is adding a touch of Codex Grey. I got this idea when looking at the 'eavy Metal Ironbreakers at GWHQ and I decided that they weren't simply painted using the [warhammertag52]GW[/warhammertag52] metallics alone. The ammount of Codex Grey is difficult to get across it is approximately 50%. My first two attempts at using non-metallic paints into the mix ended up in the bin as they were too embarrassing show anyone :oops: so it can take a little bit of trial and error but the effect it has is very pleasing.

This colour is painted on all the metallic parts, it may be useful to discuss how I am trying to apply the paint with this picture representing the middle band and a single rivet on the back of the model:

a. It is tempting to try and paint concentric circles for the highlights around the bolt. However this does not give the best finish. 5 highights of increasing diameter will end up making the highlighting look unrealistic.

b. Instead it is better to try and keep the highlight around the bolt very tight and dark. Use the highlights you paint to represent realistic lighting. Here in the picture the bottom of the band is recessed so should appear darker.

So after this highlight you have the following result:

Stage 6: Yet another Highlight

Right so now [warhammertag132]WE[/warhammertag132] are really getting into the highlights. This is the palette I used:

This was applied to all the main areas except the very highest (lightest) detail. These were missed out because at the end they will be painted completely with only the lightest highlight and therefore there is no need to paint it with the every palette colour.

Once again, keep the highlights tight to the bolts. Keep the flat areas uniform and use layering to represent the recesses.

Note: At these stages I am often going over into the darker areas by mistake (no-ones perfect - well maybe JrN). Normally you would black line these to restore the layering however you get a much better effect if you black line with a Chaos Black/Boltgun Metal mix which softens the black lining. This was a refinement from the first models I painted and it really helps (and it is a general tip for all models).

The result of the highlight is :

Stage 7: Highlight before Glazing

The next highlight uses this palette:

The fact that Codex Grey is being used in every mix means that it pulls highlights down. In other words you have to use Mithril Silver to make it lighter as Codex Grey is darker than Chainmail (see the second panel compared to the first). Does that make sense, basically it is difficult to make a wide range of colours, you can't change the Codex Grey so you have to change the metallic colour.

This was added just like the previous layer and the result was this:

At this stage it looks pretty good I could move onto the non-metallic areas but there are a few stages left that really add some depth.

Stage 8: The Glaze

The next stage is a Glaze, this is a very very dilute ink which you do not place liberally over the model like a wash. Instead you place the glaze on the desired area. Here is how I made the glaze:

Now it again dries with much less colour than it looks like in the palette due to the Matt Medium and again it looks opaque becuase of the depth, trust [warhammertag83]ME[/warhammertag83] it is quite weak.

This glaze should not really run on the model you are trying to place it in certain areas. The brown colour I have chosen is there to represent wear and weathering. Equally people use green glazes or blue glazes for example the 'eavy Metal Grey Knights were painted using blue glazes. I painted 5 glazes on the model concentrating on the bolts and the recesses. Here are three photographs after glazes 1, 3 and 5.

Hopefully you can see the change in colour, it is gradual and several layers are better than one in order to prevent pooling although you can see some pooling around the rivet on the [warhammertag125]ToP[/warhammertag125] band on the final picture (of the back).

Stage 9: The Ink

This stage uses inks straight from the bottle, I used chestnut ink for it. basically I painted it in the very darkest recesses similar to blacklining, I paid special attention to going around the rivets. It adds a depth of colour and works well with the glaze.

Note that so far [warhammertag132]WE[/warhammertag132] have been using metallic paints and so my water pot is very dirty with loads of metallic silt. Before you start glazes or any other non metallic painting you need to clean you water pot out and your brushes.
Here is the effect :

You have to be careful not to paint the ink onto the lighter metallic colours as it will look awful, you are aiming to paint it on only the darkest areas.

After the glazes and the inks I had small amount [warhammertag101]OS[/warhammertag101] pooling and some regions where I had gone over with the ink. Therefore I did a quick touch up using the same colour as stage 7. The result of this is shown here:

You can hopefully see that the inks and glazes are not for kicks and giggles they really do add to the model.

Note you can uses glazes at the end of the painting or as I have before the final highlight. Tammy Haye taught [warhammertag83]ME[/warhammertag83] this and the effect can be very different. I prefer to paint the glaze before the final highlight so that I can correct for any problems it caused.

Note I find that washes and inks which use Matt Medium have a very nice property of creating a finish which seems to enhance blending. I don't paint differently but it seems to blend more easily.

Stage 10: The Final Highlight

Well it has been emotional but here [warhammertag132]WE[/warhammertag132] are at the end. The final highlight was formed as follows:

You have to be careful to not have this too bright compared to the others layers. I used this colour on all the highest detail (such as the face on the breastplate) and the rivets (which really finishes the model).

This was the final result :

And that is how I paint metals, I don't do all of this for say an axe head I do the same process with less stages. But for large metallic areas it is worth it. I hope that you enjoyed the tutorial and it wasn't too tedious, any comments and questions are welcome.