REDAV's NMM tutorial 2.0

Hi,

Many people ask me about how I paint Non Metallic Metal I general. I wanted to do this tutorial o answer your questions.
First of all I wanted to say that from a half a year I use mostly Scale 75 paints but those that I use can be replaced with similar ones from GW or Valejjo. I think that Scale 75 paints are grate for NMM because they are very matt so you can control all the reflections. As for the NMM itself recently I take grate inspiration from many artworks from different sites. I want my NMM to be similar to that from illustrations regarding colors and placement of the lights. I always didn’t understand why people make small spots/dots of light and reflections like white lines only. The way I am seeing this it that the light usually falls in a smooth gradient way but the most important thing is the placement of reflections. If you want your NMM to be realistic you should watch your surroundings and maybe keep some shiny metal objects close to you painting place just to look at them during painting because it helps to better understand how the light reflects. 

Here you have the colors I have chosen for this specific miniature. I wanted a normal metal look so I have chosen a very deep blue/grey color Abyssal Blue and I mixed it a little with Flat Black ant that was my undercoat.

I always mix all my colors before painting and it helps me allot during painting because I have easy access to different mixes and I can jump from color to color more easily.

As for my examples I will use my latest mini the Grey Knight Terminator that I'm painting now. 

I always start with a sketch of where I would like to place the reflection. It all depends of the placement of the surface I paint and sometimes on round surfaces a white line through the middle will be sufficient (as on the photo) and sometimes you should make two reflections to reflect the main zenithal light and a reflection from the bottom to represent ambient light (you can see this on the mail leg plate).

 Ok step one: a sketch with white on the undercoat

Now I started to blend the whole element. First up was some lines with a glaze of Nacar. i like this color very much. It’s a little creamy and fits nicely just before the white to make an interesting transition from blue grey to white. As you can see now I'm making vertical lines with my brush but it won’t be always like this :D.

Some more blending with scale Graphite. Still vertical lines. Graphite is a similar color to GW Fortress grey.

Next up are some blends with Anthracite Grey. I like this color very much because it’s a nice mix of darker Grey and blue so it fits in midtones very nicely. At this point I started to even the blends with some horizontal brush movements. it’s mainly glazes and wet blendin. 

Ok next up are mixes of anthracite and eclipse grey and then pure eclipse grey for the shadows.

Here I corrected the deepest shadows o the left and right side with Abyssal Blue. 

From this point I started to correct the whole transition to make it more smooth. I use all the colors and small vertical brush strokes to achieve a nice blend. I do this using a something similar to wet blending because I do it very fast because I want the paint to mix on the miniature and the brush. Don’t clean the brush with water to much and let the paint mix on the brush so you can achieve better color transitions.

On this particular element it’s good to make the light stronger at the top.

I added more white to make the reflection stronger. you can see that there is much white but that generates light and contrast. You can’t leave to much dark colors and I think good NMM is achieved with a right balance of light and shadow. I also made some edge highlights to mark the edges of that armor plate.

Here you have some photos of how I painted the blade of his blade.

And here is the rest of the colors I have used for the blade.

I hope this tutorial will help you. I’m not used to making tutorials because I don’t have a good camera so they usually are of low quality, but I hope you will find this tutorial helpful. If you have some questions feel free to ask and I will answer them if I can.

REDAV