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!