First attempt at Non-Metallic Metal

So here is my first ever attempt at doing some Non-metallic metal (NMM) painting. Basically the idea is to use flat paints to achieve a metallic looking paintjob.

Most of the examples I found online were of swords or armor. It was really hard to find examples that other people had done where there were large flat surfaces so I wasn't really sure how to proceed. I spent about three hours just experimenting and trying different techniques and looks.

I experimented with several different styles on the spears in his quiver, most of which just don't look very good. These are ones that I'll definitely have to paint over and try again. I think the spearhead that I did for the one he is throwing came out much better than the ones in the quiver though.

For this spearhead I used a base coat of Shadow Grey. I then painted the edges of the spear with Ghostly Grey. Then I blended in Ghostly Grey and Shadow Grey for the rest of the spear, with a lot of Ghostly Grey on the top part of the spear. This is because I was assuming that light is coming from above him and so would make the top surface very bright and reflective.

For the side of the spearhead, I blended the bottom half to a mix of Chaos Black and Shadow Grey, so that the bottom side would look darker the further away from the light it was. I noticed that a lot of people that do NMM greys have this effect on their armor pieces so I tried to replicate it here.

Then as a last touch, I took some Ghostly Grey and "steaked" it across the top side of the spearhead, at a slight angle to try and get the reflective effect going. I think it's getting closer to what it should be, but it's still not looking right. I'll probably try hitting up the forums and seeing if anyone has any more tips for this specific mini.

I think maybe something that might help would be to highlight the edges again in skull white to really bring out the edges. I'll probably give that a try tomorrow if I have some time.

On a side note, there's a Hordes Coin tournament tomorrow at GameKastle, but I think I'm going to pass this time as I've got tons of real life work to get done, and I'm still really slow in finishing my moves...I don't think I'd make a good fit yet for the tourney scene. There's another one next month though that I'll try to make it to.