Coloured Metals

I painted this model as a gift for a friend, but it did give me an opportunity to experiment with painting coloured metals. After some experimentation I managed to pull off a couple of useful new techniques; techniques that happily work very well together.

Basically, I painted the entire model gold: Citadel Doombull Brown, Citadel Auric Armour Gold, washed with Citadel Devlan Mud, drybrushed Auric Armour Gold, and finally Devlan Mud was applied heavily into the recesses. I then edge-highlighted in Scale 75's Speedmetal, which is a super-bright white metal colour, for a model with a fair amount of contrast and very bright highlights.

I then simply glazed the red areas with Badger Minitaire Ghost Tint Fresh Blood, and the yellow areas with Badger Minitaire Ghost Tint Yellow. Finally the blue glows were applied using drybrushes of Citadel Temple Guard Blue, Citadel Baharroth Blue, and Citadel Blue horror, with Skull White highlights and Badger Minitaire Ghost Tint Plasma Glow as a sort of wash/glaze.

The base was just Citadel Doombull Brown drybrushed Citadel Blazing Orange and washed with Citadel Devlan Mud (it probably would have looked better with a cooler colour like plain grey considering Iron Man's warm colour palette, but I wanted the base to fit with the previous model I painted for my friend). I used Mr Super Clear UV-Cut Gloss varnish, and matted down the base with Vallejo's brush-on matt varnish.

The results are pretty good. Using the Ghost Tints over a metallic base was the best way I found to get coloured metals, and the yellow over Speed Metal gives a fantastically bright gold; I think it's a much better way to highlight gold than my old way of just using Mithril Silver highlights.

I'm not totally happy with the glows: they are a pretty clumsy, and the blue wash around the eyes ended up going over the yellow base to create a greenish tint. But they don't look too bad overall, and I didn't have time to try to do any better (I'm far from certain that I even could do any better to be honest).

This was a fairly fun model to paint since it was just two simple colours but was still something new to experiment with. The amount of edge highlighting needed was a bit of a drag, but it wasn't too bad and the results are worth it. I did have to try to do a bit of repair work on the model thanks to Knight Model's usual casting issues, but it was far less problematic than some of their other models that I've had to deal with - plus I was a bit lazy and didn't put as much effort into repair work as I should have, but most of the problem areas were ultimately mostly hidden by the paint so it wasn't too bad overall.

Overall I'm happy with him. Fortunately I have another piece waiting for when I put together my own Avengers models, but the way things are going that day is a long way off.


On a related note, I've been a bit demotivated when it comes to painting. One reason is that my last model, Cyclops, drew a measly two comments on the forums even though I thought he came out quite nicely. Couple that with a lack of games or people to talk to (in person at least) about miniatures, and, well, it's hard to find time for it when there's so many other things for me to deal with. So yeah, I'm probably not going to be getting too many models done for the foreseeable future. This makes me sad, but there's not much I can do about it. Oh well.