Step-by-step non metallic metal (NMM)

Hello again friends and followers!

I am so sorry it took me so long to write an other article. I usually take the pictures in advance and use bits and scraps of time to write an article around them. Lately everything has been so hectic I didn't even had those little bits of free time.

Luckily I found the time to type the article I had been planning for a while. I got the WFB Chaos Lord from Games Workshop because I wanted to experiment with the non metallic metal technique. (NMM)

If you want to try this for yourself here is a list of the colors I used:

• VMC Black
• GW Snakebite leather
• VMC Golden yellow
• VMC Ivory
• GW Leviathan Purple

After applying the the colors for the armor (a mid-color green with some turquoise mixed into it) I started painting in the darkest colors of the gold. For this I used a 1:1 mix  of black and snakebite leather.

All metal parts are painted with several thin
layers of black/snakebite leather

Once you got the shadowcolor on its time to start thinking about the highlights. There are several ways to do this like using Object Source Lighting (OSL) or Sky-Earth NMM. I'm simply highlighting towards edges and obvious larger surfaces. The first highlight should be build up using thin layers of snakebite leather. Keep building it up until you got a solid color of snakebite leather, leaving the darker mix only in the deepest recesses.

First highlight of snakebite leather

With this first highlight in place you can already start to see which area's will be highlighted. now it is time to build up this highlight using a 1:1 mix of snakebite leather and golden yellow.
(no pictures of this step, sorry!)
Be sure to leave some of the snakebite leather visible and make absolutely sure you don't go over the black and snakebite leather mix!

Golden yellow layered on

Next step is golden yellow. This will make your gold look extremely yellow, as is shown on the picture above, but this will be rectified in last couple of steps. Again it is very important to leave some of the previous colors visible in order to get a smooth transition.

Next step will get you very close to the final result! I found that towards the end I used less paint on the model but spend more time painting it on. I used a mix of Ivory and Golden yellow (1:1) and applied it mainly on edges and other places that would specifically catch light or where I want to place an extra focus point.

This is the point where it looks less like layered yellow and more like NMM. The final highlight will be pure ivory and will only be painted in dots or on the edges of your edge hightlights.

Closeup on the shoulderpad

Another closeup on the shoulderpad

At this point I was really happy with my first time NMM result. To be honest it turned out a bit more yellow then I had imagined but it still looks good in my opinion. For the final step I painted the crevices with Leviathan Purple wash. Purple is a complementary color to yellow so it gave the gold a rich finish.

Final result!

So that's my first experience painting NMM. I hope you guys (and girls) enjoyed reading this and that if you are curious about painting NMM that it encouraged you to try it yourself! Good luck, happy painting and see you next time!

How to paint a miniature Star Wars Imperial logo and blood stripes on a TIE-Fighter

Hey guys and girls!
As promised I got a little tutorial on how I painted the small imperial logo on my TIE-Fighter. I found an example painted by a guy called Rodent Mastermind but no explanation how to paint it. I had to exeriment a couple of times to get it right.

 What I like about this is that it gives your X-Wing models a little extra character, like it could be a squadron leader or a decorated veteran. It's small enough to be a little forgiving on the details but it is detailed enough so it's recognizable from a tabletop distance.

You will need only one color of paint. This could be white, off-white or a very light grey. Whatever you like the most or what fits your paint scheme.

I began with the outer circle. This will mark the full location and size. I used the plastic rod to protect your brushes to "stamp" the location and used a brush to get a nice and even outer ring.

Outer ring stamped and corrected

When your satisfied with the outer ring, paint two small lines. One at the top and one at the bottom. Make sure these are pointing towards the top and bottom of your ship. After that, while trying to keep the Space between them as even as possible, add four more lines, bringing the total to six.

Divided the circle with small lines

Connect the lines inside the ring by painting a hexagon.

It's like connect the dots

At the corners of the hexagon, paint a square where the corner of the hexagon meets the line connecting it to the outer circle. I filled in the rest of the hexagon except for a small black dot in the middle.

Already starting to look like we are getting there! 

Now draw small black lines from the black dot. You can make these lines a bit triangular shaped if you like, but at this scale lines look good enough in my opinion.

Imperial logo is done! 

So on with the blood stripes. This is a visual introduced with the imperial aces. If I understood correctly imperial pilots are allowed to display these if they get ten kills. This means it is a nice way to decorate named pilots or veteran squadron leaders.

I started by masking the location of where I want to paint the stripes. Then, continuering with the weathered look, I choose to sponge on the paint.

Tamiya Masking tape applied

For this, I tore of a piece of blister sponge, dipped it into my red paint, rubbed off the excess paint on a paper towel and applied it to the miniature. The masking prevents the paint from hitting spots I don't want to to get on.

Blister sponge

I mixed up a semi-dark red for the blood stripe

Remove the masking tape and apply a thin layer of black wash.

Final, finished result

Your done now! You could touch some spots up with black, white or red but that's basically how you paint the logo and the blood stripes. Now if you weathered your ship a little (I did!) you can use some black and orangey - brown washes or pigments to give the logo and the stripe the same treatment.

I really hope you guys enjoyed this little tutorial! I sure did have a lot of fun experimenting and writing it!

Thank you for reading and see you next time.