Painting NMSteel and applying texture to it

[Hesser]

Hi!

I have been trying to develop my NMM skills and I am still struggling a lot.
Here is my most recent work - http://imgur.com/a/yGr05

It looks boring as hell and not metallic at all… I tried to emulate the light distribution based on the same helmet painted with metallic colors, made sure to add to some additional tones ( glazed in lighter area’s sotek and in darker khrone red). Still it does not look good.

In some other works I added additional splinters, lines, etc. They looked as well boring and misplaced.

I thought that this may be due to:
* Lack of textures - not sure, how to properly add them
* Wrong light distribution?
* More mid-tones?
* To strong contrasts?


Could you help me please and provide some feedback?

Hesser

[Hesser]

Finished this one: http://i.imgur.com/OaFkeYk.jpg?1

[Nameless]

to me it looks quite all right, but I'll let the experts speak