Blast from the past: Automaton's take on metallics - by SebastianPage: 1/8 (2229 total words in this text) (4809 Reads)  Automaton's take on metallics
Here's another tutorial from the collection of articles I should have published a long time ago, but somehow I didn't manage to do it before... Well, better late than never!Big thanks to Sebastian "Automaton" Archer, who allowed us to use his article on our website.
Hello everyone, you may have already seen this article posted elsewhere - I've already put it in quite a few places haha, so I hope you're not sick of it - but Skrit contacted me and asked me to post it here on CofC as well.
I guess the advantage is that it might be easier to discuss the article or ask questions when it is here on your own forum. Of course you should feel free to post any questions or anything in this topic.
I actually lurk around here on CofC now and then anyway, and secretly read some of the forum topics hehe...so I guess this gives me an excuse to join!
So here we go:
Metals
Almost since the day I found the online community, I have been a huge admirer of the amazing metallics seen from minis by painters like Allan C, Cyril, MathieuL, and of course the metal master himself, NANO :-D I have been trying to emulate their excellent results for a long time, and I have been receiving some questions about my own metallics technique recently, so I thought it might be time to write a bit of an article about some of the things I have learned about using metallics.
Metallics or NMM? A bit of discussion.
A lot of painters seem to have a strong preference for either metallics or NMM, but the more I think about it, the less logical it seems to favour one method over the other. As I have been doing more and more painting, the ways I have been applying two techniques - metallics and NMM - have been converging, until they have reached a point where they are essentially the same. But how did we end up with such a clear distinction between the two techniques, and the way they are viewed?
I think one of the reasons that NMM became so popular a few years ago, is that true metallics were not being used properly. It was all too easy to fall into the trap of neglecting the metal areas on minis when using metallics; a bit of ink and a highlight with mithril was pretty standard procedure (I know it was for me in the old days), and this meant that the shiny properties of the metallic paint itself was relied on too much for the resulting effect.
However, when NMM came to the fore, suddenly there were these metals around with real contrast and lighting, something that was a little lacking in metallics use, but is essential when painting good NMM. So it was natural that NMM should become more popular, because it offered a way to finally achieve a great result on metal areas, to match the increasingly impressive work being done on other non-metal parts of minis.
But it does not need to be this way - if metallics are used properly, I think they can provide just as much contrast as NMM - and they have the added benefit of an extra dimension that can be used to create the contrasting effect: shine.
Theory
In my opinion, the key to painting good metallics is to think about and approach things in exactly the same way as one would when painting NMM. This means that the focus should be on creating a very strong contrast between dark areas that area receiving little light, versus very bright points of light where the light would be hitting the surface directly. By painting shadows and highlights on a mini, we are simulating the effect of light hitting the surface from a certain direction - top-down or zenithal light is the basic, conventional method. So when painting metallics, as with any other surface, it is very important to be clear from the start about the direction from which the light will be coming, so that you can paint in the light and shadows accordingly.
The main difference between painting metallics and NMM comes with the application of the highlights. With NMM, highlights are painted right up to light points of almost pure white, to achieve the maximum contrast between light and shadows in order to simulate the effect of shine on the surface. But with metallics, of course we cannot use white to highlight; instead, we substitute the brightest metallic colour we have, and use this in the same way, to achieve maximum contrast. But here is where the main strength of metallics lies: because we are using metallic paint to apply the highlights, we can obtain a contrast not only between dark and light on the mini, but also between shine and dull (flat).
This is the dimension of metallics use that I feel is often neglected, and which can ruin attempts to reach proper contrast, preventing the proper definition of details on metal areas.
So, what I am trying to say, is that in order to achieve the best from painting with metallics, we need to have the shiny, bright metallic parts in the highlights, against dull and dark areas in the shadows. To do this, we need to put aside inks, and instead use glazes of normal paint to shade a metallic base coat. The problem with inks, is that they are inherently transparent; no matter how many layers are applied, the surface will remain see-through. But with paint, the opacity of the colour can gradually be built up in layers, ending with a completely opaque (dull!) and dark surface in the shadows. Then, once the metal is shaded and the shine is killed in the appropriate areas, we can switch back to metallic paints to apply the highlights. This is the basic theory behind the technique.
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